Ukrainian forces have made more gains in their counter-offensive across at least two fronts, advancing in the very areas that Russia is trying to absorb. In their latest breakthrough yesterday (October 3), their forces penetrated Russian defences in the strategic southern Kherson region, one of the four areas in Ukraine that Russia is in the process of annexing.
Kyiv’s troops also consolidated gains in the east, re-establishing Ukrainian control as Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to overcome problems with manpower, weapons, troop morale and logistics, along with intensifying domestic and international criticism.
Ukraine’s advances have become so apparent that even Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov, who usually focuses on his own military’s successes and, was forced to acknowledge it. “With numerically superior tank units in the direction of Zolota Balka and Oleksandrivka, the enemy managed to forge deep into our defences,” Mr Konashenkov said yesterday, referring to two towns in the Kherson region. He coupled that with claims that Russian forces inflicted heavy losses on Ukraine’s military.
Ukrainian forces have struggled to retake the Kherson region due to its open terrain, in contrast to their successful breakout offensive in the north-east around the country’s second-largest city of Kharkiv. Ukraine has pressed its counteroffensive in the Kherson region since the summer, relentlessly pummelling Russian supply lines and making inroads into Russian-held areas west of the Dnieper River.
The Ukrainian military has used US-supplied Himars multiple rocket launchers to repeatedly hit the main bridge across the Dnieper and a dam that served as a second main crossing. It also has struck pontoon bridges that Russia has used to supply its troops. As the front lines shifted, the political theatre in Moscow continued, with Russia’s lower house of parliament rubber-stamping annexation treaties for Ukraine’s Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk regions to join Russia.
The upper house will follow suit on Tuesday. This follows annexation “referendums” that the Kremlin orchestrated last week that the UN chief and Western nations have said were illegal and fraudulent. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Donetsk and Luhansk are joining Russia with the administrative borders that existed before a conflict erupted there in 2014 between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces.
But he added that the borders for Zaporizhzhia and Kherson are still undecided. “We will continue to discuss that with residents of those regions,” Mr Peskov said, without elaborating.
However, senior Russian politician Pavel Krasheninnikov said Zaporizhzhia would be absorbed within its “administrative borders”. He said similar logic will apply to Kherson, but that Russia will include two districts of the neighbouring Mykolaiv region that are now occupied by Russia.
In addition to the Kherson region areas that Russia’s Defence Ministry cited, other sources showed Ukrainian flags, soldiers deployed or other signs that Kyiv’s forces had retaken the villages of Arkhanhelske, Myroliubivka, Khreshchenivka, Mykhalivka and Novovorontsovka. There was no immediate confirmation from Kyiv on the gains.
The situation in the regional capital, also called Kherson, was so precarious that Russian authorities are restricting people from leaving, Ukraine’s presidential office said. A Russian-installed official in the Kherson region, Kirill Stremousov, acknowledged that the Ukrainian forces “have broken through a little deeper” but insisted that “everything is under control”.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, said that the director-general of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant had been released from Russian custody. Russian forces had blindfolded and detained Ihor Murashov on Friday for questioning.
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