‘Populations have been liberated’: Ukraine claims major advances against Russian forces - Sydney Morning Herald

Kramatorsk: President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine’s military had made major, rapid advances against Russian forces in the past week, taking back dozens of towns in regions in the south and east that Russia has declared annexed.

These are in Kherson, Kharkiv, Luhansk and Donetsk regions altogether,” he said in a Tuesday night (local time) address.

In the east, Ukrainian forces have been expanding an offensive after capturing the main Russian bastion in the north of Donetsk, the town of Lyman.

Russian forces in the Donetsk and Kherson regions have been forced to retreat in recent days and appear to be struggling to halt an increasingly Western-equipped Ukrainian army.

In Kherson, withdrawing Russian forces were planting mines on “infrastructure facilities” and in homes, it said.

Russia does not fully control any of the four regions it claims - Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine and Zaporizhzhia and Kherson in the south - and the Kremlin has said it had yet to determine the borders of the annexed territory.

Russian defence ministry maps presented on Tuesday appeared to show rapid withdrawals of Russian forces from areas in eastern and southern Ukraine where they have been under severe pressure from the Ukrainian counteroffensive.

On the eastern front, Denis Pushilin, the Russia-backed leader in Donetsk, said Russian forces were building a serious line of defence around the city of Kreminna after being pushed back.

The Kremlin said that what it calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine would not end if Kyiv ruled out talks, adding that it “takes two sides to negotiate”