Ukrainian troops are mounting a long-awaited counteroffensive in the southern region of Kherson, military officials have said. “Today we started offensive actions in various directions, including in the Kherson region,” Ukraine’s southern command spokesperson, Natalia Humeniuk, said on Monday. She declined to provide more details about the offensive but said Ukraine’s recent strikes on Russia’s southern logistical routes had “unquestionably weakened the enemy”.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has urged Russian soldiers to flee for their lives after his forces launched an offensive to retake southern Ukraine. Kyiv’s forces have broken through Russian defences in several sectors of the frontline near the city of Kherson, a senior adviser to Zelenskiy claimed. Oleksiy Arestovych said Ukrainian forces were shelling ferries in the Kherson region that Moscow was using to supply Russian-occupied territory on the west bank of the Dnieper River. A separate Ukrainian military source told CNN that its forces had taken back four villages near Kherson after breaking through the frontline in three places, with the main target being Kherson.
The Kremlin has insisted that its so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine is going to plan despite the news of Kyiv’s counteroffensive in the south. The Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said: “The special military operation continues, it continues methodically, and in coordination with the current plans. All objectives will be fulfilled.”
Ukrainian forces have heightened artillery fire in the south, according to British intelligence. Several brigades of the Ukrainian armed forces increased the weight of artillery fire in frontline sectors across southern Ukraine early on Monday, the UK Ministry of Defence said in its latest report. Ukrainian long-range precision strikes continue to disrupt Russian resupply.
Kherson has been hit by a partial power outage and a partial shutdown of the water supply, Russian state news agencies have cited pro-Russia officials as saying. Traffic lights and building lights have been reported to have failed in the Moscow-held region, according to Russian media.
The first shipment of grain from Ukraine to the drought-stricken Horn of Africa since the war began has docked in Djibouti. The UN-chartered vessel Brave Commander is carrying 23,000 tonnes of Ukrainian wheat and will soon be followed by another vessel carrying 7,000 tonnes. The total shipment, which will be unloaded in Djibouti and transported to Ethiopia, is enough to feed 1.5 million people for a month.
A team of inspectors from the UN nuclear watchdog arrived in Kyiv on Monday night en route to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief, Rafael Grossi, said a team would visit the plant from Wednesday to Saturday. “We must protect the safety and security of Ukraine’s and Europe’s biggest nuclear facility,” Grossi tweeted. Missiles and shells are frequently hitting areas around the power station and nearby towns, prompting fears it may be too dangerous for the mission to proceed. The Kremlin said the IAEA mission was “necessary” but has ruled out vacating the site.
A key adviser to Ukraine’s president has accused Russian forces of deliberately shelling corridors for the UN nuclear watchdog inspectors to reach the Zaporizhzhia plant. Mykhailo Podolyak said Russia was attempting to force the IAEA mission through Crimea and parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions temporarily occupied by Moscow’s forces.
The European Commission has said it will donate 5.5m potassium iodide tablets to Ukraine amid fears that fighting in the area of the Zaporizhzhia plant could lead to nuclear catastrophe. The commission said it had received a request from the Ukrainian government for potassium iodide tablets “as a preventive safety measure” to increase the level of protection around the nuclear plant.
Ukraine has deployed a fleet of dummy rockets to trick Russian forces into wasting expensive long-range missiles on pointless targets, according to reports. At least 10 Russian cruise missiles have reportedly been fired by Moscow’s naval fleet in the Black Sea at the dummy targets, which are made of wood but look like US-supplied advanced rocket launcher systems when spotted by Russian drones, the Washington Post reports.
Germany and France have issued a joint warning against a ban on tourist visas for Russians, saying such a step would be counterproductive, reports Reuters. The split on tourist visas will be at the heart of a meeting of the bloc’s foreign ministers in Prague on Tuesday and Wednesday as they discuss what further steps they can take to punish Russia for its six-month-old invasion of Ukraine. Defence ministers meeting in Prague are likely to agree in principle on the less controversial step of organising joint military training missions for Ukrainian troops.
Russia’s Gazprom has informed the French utility company Engie that it is reducing its gas deliveries owing to a disagreement between the parties over contracts, adding to concerns related to energy supplies.
At least four people were killed and four wounded in Russian shelling of Kharkiv, the regional governor said. Writing on Telegram, Oleh Synehubov said: “As a result of the shelling of the central part of Kharkiv, at least 4 people died and 4 more were injured.”
European Union defence ministers are set to pave the way for the establishment of an EU training mission for Ukrainian forces, the bloc’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said. Reuters reports that Borrell said: “The situation on the ground continues to be very bad. Ukraine needs our support, and we will continue providing support. A general, overall political agreement (on the training mission) is what I think we have to get today … I hope we will have a political green light for this mission.”
Russia has faced “numerous failures” with Iranian-made drones acquired from Tehran this month for use in the war, according to a senior US administration official. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the US understood that Russia had received the delivery of Mohajer-6 and Shahed-series unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) over several days this month. The official said it was likely to be part of a Russian plan to acquire hundreds of such vehicles, reports Reuters.
Russian forces have killed two people and injured four others in Donetsk, the region’s governor said on Telegram. Pavlo Kyrylenko said the two people were killed in Rozdolne and Pivnichne.
Russia is struggling to find more soldiers to fight in Ukraine and has expanded recruitment efforts by eliminating the upper age limit and by tapping into prisons. “Many of these new recruits have been observed as older, unfit and ill-trained,” a Pentagon official told journalists on Monday. Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, decreed last week that his army would increase in size by about 10%, to 1.15 million service personnel, starting from January next year.
