Kherson to be liberated from Russia by September: Official
We can say that a turning point has occurred on the batlefield. We see that Ukraine’s forces are prevailing in their most recent milit ar y oper at ions, says Khlan
A Ukrainian official said on Sunday that the country’s southern region of Kherson, which fell to Russian troops early in their February invasion, would be recaptured by Kyiv’s forces by September.
“We can say that the Kherson region will definitely be liberated by September, and all the occupiers’ plans will fail,” Sergiy Khlan, an aide to the head of Kherson region, said in an interview with Ukrainian television.
The Ukrainian army, emboldened by deliveries of Western-supplied long-range artillery have been clawing back territory in the southern Kherson region in recent weeks.
“We can say that a turning point has occurred on the batlefield. We see that the Armed Forces of Ukraine are prevailing in their most recent military operations,” Khlan said.
“We see that our armed forces are advancing openly. We can say that we are switching from defensive to counteroffensive actions,” he added.
Russian forces seized the region’s main city, also called Kherson, on March 3. It was the first major city to fall following the start of Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine in late February.
The region, important for Ukrainian agriculture, lies next to the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014.
Meanwhile, Russian defence ministry officials insisted that an air strike on the port of Odesa — less than a day ater Russia and Ukraine signed an agreement on resuming grain shipments from there — had hit only military targets.
“In the seaport in the city of Odesa, on the territory of a shipyard, sea-based high-precision long-range missiles destroyed a docked Ukrainian warship and a warehouse with Harpoon anti-ship missiles supplied by the US to the Kyiv regime,” ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said at a daily briefing.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly televised address on Saturday evening that the atack on Odesa “destroyed the very possibility” of dialogue with Russia.
The Ukrainian military said on Saturday that Moscow had atacked Odesa’s sea port with four cruise missiles, two of which had been shot down by Ukrainian air defence.
Command spokeswoman Nataliya Humenyuk said that no grain storage facilities were hit. Turkey’s defence minister, however, said he had reports from Ukrainian authorities that one missile struck a grain silo while another landed nearby, although neither affected loading at Odesa’s docks.
It was not immediately clear how the air strike would affect plans to resume shipping Ukrainian grain by sea in safe corridors out of three Ukrainian Black Sea ports: Odesa, Chernomorsk and Yuzhny.
Russia and Ukraine on Friday signed identical agreements with the UN and Turkey in Istanbul aimed at clearing the way for the shipment of millions of tons of desperately needed Ukrainian grain, as well as the export of Russian grain and fertiliser.
Senior UN officials voiced hopes that the deal would end a months-long standoff brought about by the war in Ukraine that threatened food security around the globe.
The agreement commited both Kyiv and Moscow to refraining from strikes on the three Black Sea ports.
Elsewhere on Sunday, Ukrainian authorities reported that Russian shelling continued to kill and injure civilians in Ukraine’s south and east.
The governor of the eastern Donetsk region, one of two which make up Ukraine’s industrial heartland of the Donbas and a key focus of Russia’s offensive, said that two civilians had been killed and two more had been injured over the previous 24 hours.
The UK military on Sunday morning reported in its daily intelligence update that Russia was making “minimal progress” in its ongoing Donbas offensive, which it said remained small-scale and focused on the city of Bakhmut in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.
The Ukrainian General Staff confirmed in its regular update that Russia was “conducting military operations to create conditions” for an assault on Bakhmut, while firing on surrounding setlements and batling Ukrainian defenders for control of a nearby thermal plant.
In Ukraine’s south, regional officials said that at least five civilians were wounded by Russian shells in the Black Sea port of Mykolaiv on Saturday night and Sunday morning.