KHARKIV, Ukraine —
Ukraine said Sunday that its forces were
pushing back Russia’s military from strategic holdouts in the east of the
country after Moscow announced a retreat from Kyiv’s sweeping counter-offensive.
اضافة اعلان
Ukraine’s
nuclear energy agency said the final reactor at the Russian-controlled
Zaporizhzhia plant, Europe’s largest nuclear power station and a focal point of
the conflict, was shut off as a safety measure.
The speed of
Ukraine’s fight back against
Russia’s invasion has apparently caught Moscow’s
military off-guard, bringing swathes of territory Russia had controlled for
months back into Ukraine’s fold.
Crates of dumped
munitions and abandoned military hardware were seen scattered in territory left
by the Russian forces, images posted by the Ukrainian military showed.
“The liberation
of settlements in the Kupiansk and Izyum districts of the Kharkiv region is
ongoing,” the Ukrainian military said in a general battlefield update Sunday,
200 days into Russia’s invasion.
These are key
supply and logistics hubs that Russia depends on to restock its frontline
positions in the east.
Military
observers have said their capture by Ukraine would be a serious blow to
Moscow’s military ambitions in Kharkiv.
‘Weapons, weapons, weapons’
The head of the
Ukrainian military announced early Sunday that as much
as 3,000sq.km. had been wrested from Russia since the offensive began at the
beginning of this month.
That figure is
already around one-third larger than the total area announced by President
Volodymyr Zelensky late Saturday. On Sunday, he announced that Ukraine forces
had taken a village of around 4,000 people between Kharkiv and Izyum.
“The great
Ukrainian flag has been returned to Chkalovske. And it will be like that
everywhere. We will cast out the occupiers from every Ukrainian town and
village,” he said in a video online.
Ukrainian
officials this weekend hailed the “astonishing” pace of the counter-offensive
and on Sunday, the country’s foreign minister used the momentum to appeal to
Western allies for more stockpiles of sophisticated weapons.
“Weapons,
weapons, weapons have been on our agenda since spring. I am grateful to
partners who have answered our call: Ukraine’s battlefield successes are our
shared ones,” Dmytro Kuleba said.
“Prompt supplies
bring victory and peace closer,” his statement on social media read.
The reaction in
Moscow to the Ukrainian gains so far has been muted, but on Sunday an official
in the border region of Belgorod said “thousands” of people had fled the
Kharkiv region over the border and into Russia.
More than 1,000
people were being housed in temporary shelters, the official, Vyacheslav
Gladkov, said.
The Russian
military meanwhile made the surprise announcement Saturday that it was
“regrouping” its forces from Kharkiv to the Donetsk region just south to focus
its military efforts there.
But the
announcement came shortly after Moscow also said it was actually sending
reinforcements towards Kharkiv.
Around Balakliya,
one of the first towns to be recaptured by Ukrainian troops, AFP journalists
saw evidence of fierce battles, with buildings destroyed or damaged and streets
mainly deserted.
‘It was scary’
Iryna Stepanenko, 52, who was outside cycling for the first time in
months, said she had hidden in her basement for three months.
“There was a lot
of fear, shelling. It was scary,” she recounted of the Russian takeover and
Ukraine’s bid to recapture the town, where some 27,000 people lived before the
invasion.
She said she was
relieved to see Kyiv’s forces retake the town but was still worried about the
future.
“I’m worried the
Russians could return. I’m worried the shelling could start again.”
Despite the
reported Ukrainian gains,
Russian forces have continued bombardments across the
frontline, and in the Donetsk region, officials said shelling killed 10 people
and wounded another 19.
An uptick in
fighting in and around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant meanwhile has
sharpened fears of another nuclear incident comparable to the Chernobyl
disaster in northern Ukraine in 1986.
Ukraine’s state
nuclear agency on Sunday said that the sixth and final reactor at the plant had
been shut off and instead transferred to a cold shut down.
Energoatom said
that the sixth reactor had been generating energy for the plant itself for
three days and that the decision to halt its operations came when external
power had been restored to the facility.
It cautioned again,
however, that in its view the only way to ensure the safety of the facility
would be to create a demilitarized zone around it.
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