As CBS News correspondent Debora Patta reports, the Ukrainians’ recent successes on the battlefield around their country’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, have been among the most significant since they crushed an attempt by Vladimir Putin’s army to seize the capital Kyiv near the beginning of the war. Their counteroffensive, largely centered around Kharkiv, has already taken back about 1,000 square miles of territory lost to Ukraine since Putin launched his invasion on February 24. Ukrainian forces have swept through the northeast with breathtaking speed and, Patta reports, are being greeted like conquering heroes, with citizens rushing to offer flowers, hugs and tears of joy. Ukrainian ambassador vows forces will ‘liberate all of Ukraine’ amid counterattack 07:00 Ukraine’s blue and yellow flag is once again flying high in liberated towns and villages across the region as the country’s advance troops push north, just 30 miles from the Russian border. It’s a humiliating defeat for Putin’s men as they are forced to retreat, abandoning key supply hubs like Kupyansk and Izyum as they go. “The Russians were here,” said local resident Dmytro Khrushchenko. “Then suddenly they started shouting wildly and running away, loading into their tanks.” A Ukrainian soldier walks past a Russian tank damaged in a battle in newly liberated territory on the road to Balakleya, in Kharkiv region, Ukraine, September 11, 2022. AP For those who have lived under Russian occupation, it has been more than half a year of hell. “I was very afraid all this time,” said Maria Chryhorora, another resident of a liberated town. “I can still see an image of a huge pool of blood before my eyes.” As the Russian troops fled, fearing they would be surrounded and captured, they left behind the usual trail of destruction, destruction – and the possibility of new crime scenes for the police to investigate as they begin the now-grimly familiar task of digging up the bodies of civilians allegedly killed by the invading forces. Ukrainian police work to exhume unidentified bodies of people allegedly killed by Russian troops in the village of Grakovo, recently liberated by the Ukrainian army, in Kharkiv region, September 9, 2022. Andrii Marienko/AP As Moscow ordered its troops to withdraw from around Kharkiv — under the pretext that it was going to reinforce the front line further southeast — they fired a gruesome parting gift: A rocket strike hit a thermal power plant that left the area under a partial blackout. during the night. Patta says that while Ukrainians have certainly been emboldened by the steady flow of Western military aid, no one in the country is under the illusion that the war will end quickly and say more heavy weapons are needed to maintain momentum. More
