Ukrainian troops plant flags on railway center as the offensive threatens to turn into roads
Ukrainian officials shared photos on Saturday showing the military raising the nation’s flag over the main railway city that supplied Russian forces in northeastern Ukraine, as a collapse in Russia’s frontline is in danger of turning into a movement.
A Reuters journalist inside a large area recaptured by Ukrainian forces in recent days has seen Ukrainian police patrolling towns and ammunition boxes piled up at captured positions. Russian soldiers flee.
With the Ukrainians now in the city of Kupiansk, the confluence of railways linking Russia with eastern Ukraine, the offensive has penetrated as far as Moscow’s main logistics route, potentially leaving thousands of Russian troops dead. stuck.
A Ukrainian Army tank advances towards fronts in the northeastern region of Kharkiv, Ukraine on September 8, 2022.
Metin Atkas | Anadolu Agency | beautiful pictures
Natalia Popova, an adviser to the head of the Kharkiv regional council, shared on Facebook an image of the army raising the Ukrainian flag in front of the Kupiansk town hall. A Russian flag lay at their feet. “Kupiansk is Ukraine. Glory to the armed forces of Ukraine,” she wrote.
In Hrakove, one of dozens of villages recaptured, Reuters journalists saw cars bearing the “Z” symbol of the Russian invasion burned to the ground, and piles of trash and ammunition in places. mind that the Russians had hastily abandoned.
“Hello everyone, we are from Russia,” is spray-painted on the wall.
Three bodies lay in white body bags in the yard.
The regional police chief, Volodymyr Tymoshenko, said Ukrainian police had moved the day before and had checked the identities of local residents who had been living under Russian occupation since the second day of the invasion. .
“The first function is to provide the help they need. The next is to document the crimes committed by the Russian invaders on the territories they temporarily occupy.”
Capturing at least part of Kupiansk, if confirmed, could potentially leave thousands of Russian troops stranded on the front lines and cut off supplies. Reuters could not independently verify the situation in the city.
Ukraine has seized a huge swath of territory in the east in recent days in its fastest advance since it defeated Russia’s attack on the capital Kyiv in March.
In an overnight video address, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said at least 30 settlements had been liberated in the Kharkiv region.
“Our military, intelligence units and security services are doing active operations in several areas of operations. They are doing it very successfully,” he said in a video address.
Moscow acknowledges that its frontline is struggling in Kharkiv but says it is rushing to add more troops to fortify the area.
The head of the Russian-installed administration in the occupied parts of the province, Vitaliy Ginchev, described the offensive as a Ukrainian victory and urged civilians to flee.
Ukrainian officials have released a series of images of troops sweeping into towns formerly administered by Russia and being embraced by local residents who have been occupied by Russian troops for six months.
The Ukrainian advance threatens to encircle thousands of Russian troops in Izium, Russia’s main stronghold and logistics base in the northeastern region of the front.
Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to the office of the president of Ukraine, in a video posted on YouTube, said the Russians in Izium are almost isolated.
Reuters was unable to immediately verify reports describing the situation in Izium. Ginchev, the Russian-installed regional official, included Izium among the cities he said civilians should evacuate.
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Ukraine’s progress has so far been the fastest in months, after a long time when the war has turned into a phase of relentless fierceness along entrenched front lines.
Ukraine’s offensive in the east comes as a surprise just a week after it announced the start of a long-awaited counter-offensive to recapture Russian-occupied territory hundreds of kilometers away at the opposite end of Ukraine. front at Kherson in the south.
Black smoke rises at the front line in Mykolaiv Oblast on August 30, 2022. Ukraine has begun a massive counter-offensive to retake Kherson city and the southern region of the same name. Kherson was the first Ukrainian city to fall to Russia after the invasion began in February.
Dimitar Dilkoff | Afp | beautiful pictures
Less information has been published about that operation, but Kyiv has also claimed some success there, cutting supply routes for thousands of isolated Russian troops on the west bank of the Dnipro River.
“We see success in Kherson now, we see some success in Kharkiv and that’s very, very encouraging,” US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told a news conference in Prague on Thursday. Five.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed, millions displaced, and Russian forces have destroyed entire cities since launching what Moscow calls a “special military operation” aimed at “liberating bordering “Ukraine. Russia denies intentionally targeting civilians.
