President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has vowed there will be no truce in Ukraine’s struggle to regain its territory as Kiev said its troops had crossed a major river, paving the way for an attack on Russian occupying forces in the east. Donbass region.
Reflecting the dramatic shift in momentum since Ukrainian forces defeated Russian troops earlier this month in the northeast, US President Joe Biden made his strongest prediction yet that Ukraine would win the war.
“They’re beating Russia,” Biden said in an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes.”
Victory will come only when Russian forces are completely expelled from Ukrainian territory, and the United States will support Ukraine “as long as necessary,” Biden said.
“Russia is proving not as competent and capable as many people thought it would be.”
The crossing of the Oskil River is another important milestone in Ukraine’s counter-offensive in the northeastern region of Kharkiv. The river flows south into the Siversky Donets, which meanders through the Donbas, the main focus of the Russian invasion.
Further away is Luhansk province, the base of Russia’s separatist allies since 2014 and fully in Russian hands since July, after some of the bloodiest battles of the war.
Ukrainian troops “crossed the Oskil. Since yesterday, Ukraine controls the east bank,” the Ukrainian Armed Forces wrote on Telegram late on Sunday.
Serhiy Gaidai, Ukrainian governor of Luhansk, wrote on Telegram: “The Luhansk region is right next door. Unemployment is not far away”.
Gaidai said Ukrainian forces had regained full control of the city of Kreminna and the village of Bilohorivka. The two settlements are located on roads on the northern approach to the city of Lysychansk, whose fall after weeks of fighting in July brought Luhansk fully under Russian control.
Bilohorivka, the closest to Lysychansk, is located just eight kilometers from the outskirts of the city.
Ukrainian forces swept through the Kharkiv region this month after storming the frontline, sending thousands of Russian soldiers to flee and abandon their tanks and ammunition. In recent days, the pace of the Ukrainian advance has slowed again, but Zelenskiy said that was only because forces were consolidating and preparing for new offensives.
“Perhaps it seems to some of you that after a series of victories, we now have a sort of lull,” he said in his regular evening speech on Sunday. “But there will be no lull. There is preparation for the next series… Because Ukraine must be free. All of it.”
Ukraine accused Russian forces on Monday of bombing near the Pivdennoukrainsk nuclear power plant in the southern region of Mykolaiv country.
An explosion occurred 300 meters away from the reactors and damaged the plant’s buildings just after midnight, Ukraine’s atomic energy operator Energoatom said in a statement. The reactors were not damaged and no personnel were injured, he said, posting photographs showing a huge crater that he said was caused by the explosion.
“Russia endangers the entire world. We have to stop it before it’s too late,” Zelenskiy said in a post on social media.
The attacks will heighten global concern about the potential for an atomic disaster, already heightened by fighting over another Ukrainian nuclear power plant in the south, Zaporizhzhia, captured by Russian forces in March. Moscow ignored international calls to withdraw and demilitarize it.
Since its forces were driven out of Kharkiv, Russia has repeatedly fired on power plants, water infrastructure and other civilian targets in what Ukraine says is retaliation for defeats on the ground. Moscow deliberately denies targeting civilians.
illusory goals
Russia’s rapid losses in recent weeks have shaken a Kremlin public relations campaign that has never strayed from the line that the “special military operation” is “going to plan”.
Officially, Russia announced that it was withdrawing some troops from the Kharkiv region to regroup elsewhere. But the losses are being openly acknowledged on state television, by commentators calling for escalation.
Alla Pugacheva, 73, Russia’s most celebrated pop diva since the Soviet era, has become by far the biggest dominant cultural figure to oppose the war, with an Instagram post denouncing “the death of our guys for illusory goals that are turning our country into a pariah and making the lives of our citizens worse.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin met the leaders of China and India at a summit last week and acknowledged their “concerns” about the conflict, a rare nod to the friction with Asian powers that he has resorted to amid a total break with the West.
He belittled the Ukrainian advance: “The Kiev authorities have announced that they have launched and are conducting an active counter-offensive operation,” he said with a smile at Friday’s summit. “Well, let’s see how it develops, how it ends.”
The Kremlin on Monday denied that Russia is to blame for atrocities that Ukraine says it has discovered in territory it has recaptured from Russian forces.
“It is a lie, and of course we will defend the truth in this story,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, comparing the allegations with previous incidents in the war, where Russia claimed without evidence that the atrocities were staged by Ukrainians.
Ukraine has sent forensic experts to a huge cemetery in a forest near the town of Izium, where it says 17 soldiers were found in a mass grave with some showing evidence of being tortured under Russian occupation.
In London, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal and First Lady Olena Zelenska attended the funeral of British Queen Elizabeth II. Russia was banned from the ceremony.
Source: CNN Brasil
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