Ukraine’s military broke through Russian lines in the southern province of Kherson, pushing the occupying forces back 20 miles on Monday – just hours after Ukraine claimed victory in the Donbass city of Liman.
The advance builds on Kyiv’s promises to ignore Moscow’s claims to annex the occupied territory and claim it as part of territorial Russia.
Ukrainian forces captured several villages along the west bank of the Dnieper River in the northern part of the province.
In a rare Russian admission of losses, Vladimir Saldo, the Kremlin-founded business authority in the region, told Russian state TV that the situation was “tense”.
“There were really successes,” said Saldo, setting aside the village of Dudchani – a rural place on the Dnieper As the center of the Ukrainian advance – about 20 miles from the front line.
The central government in Kyiv had yet to confirm the move on Monday, but regional Ukrainian officials in Kherson recorded several victories along the Dnieper River north of Dudchany.
It was unclear from the initial reports whether the Ukrainian forces had managed to take Dudchani themselves, or whether they were still on the edge Of the settlement
If confirmed, the report indicates the fastest advance of Ukrainian forces on the Southern Front since the start of the war.
The city of Kherson – about 70 miles from Dudchani – and the surrounding area were among the first to fall under the Russian offensive in February, giving Russian troops ample time to dig in.
In contrast to Ukraine’s rapid and unpredictable charge through occupied territory in northeastern Kharkiv province last month, Kyiv’s southern offensive was much awaited and did not earn Ukrainian forces much territory before Monday’s victory.
Like its northern campaigns, the southern invasion of Ukraine sought to control Russian supply lines. In the week of the so-called “shaping operations” US-made HIMARS used in the summer and other long-range weapons to take out bridges crossing the Dnieper and hinder Russian re-supply efforts.
Monday’s progress gives Ukraine more control over the river – and Russian attempts to get supplies across it.
The advance is also one of the first to come after Russia’s ostentatious referendum and later claimed the annexation of the Luhansk, Donetsk and Zaporizhzhya provinces as well as the Kherson province.
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The Kremlin has previously said that any attack on the four annexed provinces would be treated like an attack on Russia, before calling an additional 300,000 Soldiers in a wildly unpopular mobilization.
But a senior US military official told reporters on Monday that Western intelligence has seen a “relatively small number” of troops being sent to Ukraine so far.
“We see replacement forces coming to aid… as [Russia has] Some fought back to try to shore up the defensive lines, but largely nothing at this stage of the game,” the official said.
“There’s clearly a reason why you’re mobilizing 300,000 troops with the intention of employing those forces at some point in time,” the official said. “We could have expected to see them move forward, but we haven’t seen it on a large scale at this stage.”
News of Ukraine’s victory over the Dnieper came just hours after Kyiv said Retaken the strategic city of Liman – A major city on the northern front of the war.
The city – a logistics hub in the northern part of Donetsk province – has been the site of fierce fighting for weeks as Russian forces try to rally from Kyiv’s northern advance.
Lyman served as the main Russian logistics center in the region, and its loss is expected to further disable Moscow’s forces in the eastern Donbass – the industrial stronghold made up of Donetsk and Luhansk provinces.
With additional reporting by Caitlin Dornbos and Wires