Ukrainian troops were filmed retaking positions along the border with Russia – a sign of the frantic evacuation of the occupation army from the area around the country’s second city Kharkiv after Ukraine’s surprise counter-offensive last week. The incontrovertible evidence of Russian military failure is creating unprecedented unrest among Moscow’s propagandists who reflect and shape public opinion while causing euphoria in Ukraine. “Many skeptics have started a total reassessment – and they will soon be quick to befriend us,” said Alexei Arestovich, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The atmosphere is much sourer in Moscow. Speaking on a live chat show, former Duma deputy Boris Nadezhdin said Russian President Vladimir Putin was misled by his advisers that Ukraine would be easy to conquer and that Russian troops would be hailed as liberators. “We have to understand that it is absolutely impossible to defeat Ukraine using these resources and methods of colonial warfare with which Russia is trying to fight,” Julia Davis, a journalist who created the Russian Media Monitor, told the show. “A strong army opposes the Russian army,” he said, adding that Russia should start peace talks. But others advocate an even more ruthless approach to Ukraine. State Duma deputy Sergei Mironov called the Kiev government a “Nazi regime” and said it “had to be destroyed.” Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of English-language broadcaster RT, which is under EU sanctions, called on Russian forces to attack Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure — a war crime. “There are nuclear plants there, a lot of infrastructure that can be turned off … very quickly and easily, and for a long time,” he said on a Sunday night broadcast. “People ask me, why don’t we do this? I do not have an answer. Maybe now is the time to do that?’ This is the approach taken by the stunned Russian army in an attempt to avenge its humiliating retreat. Russian rockets rained down on Kharkiv on Sunday, hitting a power station and plunging the city into darkness for several hours. Power also fell partially in Poltava, Sumy and Dnipropetrovsk regions. On Monday afternoon, Kharkiv faced a new blackout. “The situation of last night has been repeated. “Due to the shelling, critical infrastructure facilities were disabled, as a result of which electricity and water supplies were interrupted,” said the city’s mayor Ihor Terekhov. Igor Girkin, the former Russian officer who was one of the instigators of the 2014 war in eastern Ukraine, called the strikes on power plants “very useful.” Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Smykhal said that Russia’s “barbaric bombing … proved once again that we are dealing with terrorists.” But Russian retaliation is not slowing the Ukrainian army, which on Monday continued to advance against the Russians, while social media was filled with footage of Ukrainian troops picking up vast quantities of abandoned ammunition, tanks and weapons. Over the weekend, the Russians withdrew from most of the Kharkiv region, allowing the Ukrainians to push their troops straight to the international border. Although the Russians are trying to form a new defensive line along the Oskil River in the east of the region, there are reports that it has already been penetrated by the Ukrainian army. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry also reported that four villages were recaptured near Kherson in the south of the country. Girkin said Ukrainian artillery was shelling the village of Novomykhailivka, not far from the city of Donetsk, one of Russia’s main conquests since 2014. Arestovich said that “the phase of discovery, rapid advance, tsunami” is replaced by “a phase of consolidation of results as well as battles for the most beneficial frontiers – as springboards for the next leaps.” He warned that the attack on civilians would only bring more aid from Ukraine’s allies and “accelerate the fall of the Putin regime.”
