Ukraine pushes forward on two fronts
IZIUM, Ukraine — Amid Russian disarray in Moscow and on the front lines, the Ukrainian army was on the move Monday in two theaters, as Kyiv’s forces chased retreating Russian troops outside the reclaimed city of Lyman in the east and Kremlin-installed officials acknowledged losing ground in the southern region of Kherson.
Ukraine’s progress on the battlefield extended a run of success its forces have enjoyed for weeks in the northeast against Russian troops, some ill-equipped and wearing flip-flops, who have made hasty retreats from areas they captured after heavy fighting over the summer. The Russian setbacks have amplified unusually public criticism of the war effort from some allies of President Vladimir Putin, even as the Kremlin pressed ahead with its widely discredited attempt to annex four Ukrainian territories — including some where it was losing ground.
On Monday, buoyed by their recapture over the weekend of Lyman, a strategic rail hub and gateway to the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Ukrainian officials said that forces pushing east from the city had destroyed a Russian armored column near the village of Torske. The attack left roads in the dense pine forest cluttered with burned tanks and armored vehicles, said Vladyslav Podkich, a Ukrainian military spokesman.
The attack could not be independently verified. But Russian officials admitted setbacks in the east, saying that Ukrainian forces had crossed the administrative border of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic, a territory claimed by Moscow-backed rebels, and had set up positions closer to the city of Lysychansk, which Russia claimed over the summer following weeks of bloody fighting.
“Despite casualties, Ukrainian forces managed to cross the LPR administrative border and to secure their positions in the direction of Lysychansk,” a spokesman for the separatist group, Andrei Marochko, told Russia’s Interfax news agency. He said Russian air and ground forces were firing at the advancing Ukrainians.
Hundreds of miles away in the south, where a Ukrainian counteroffensive against dug-in Russians has been slower to advance, there were new signs of progress for Kyiv’s forces. Russia’s Defense Ministry acknowledged Monday that Ukrainian tank units had managed to penetrate its line of defense in part of the Kherson region.
A Russian-installed official in the region, Kirill Stremousov, said that Ukrainian troops had advanced along the Dnieper River in the direction of the Russian-held regional capital of Kherson, but insisted that “the situation is completely under control.”
The announcements suggested that Ukrainian forces were attacking Russian forces as they pulled back in both eastern and southern Ukraine. “The successes of our military are not limited only to Lyman,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly address Sunday.
Despite Ukraine’s recent gains, Russia still controls large parts of eastern and southern Ukraine, and Moscow’s forces overall still hold the advantage in numbers and firepower. Although they have had little time for training, new troops from the chaotic mobilization announced by Putin two weeks ago have begun arriving in Ukraine, Russia’s Defense Ministry said Monday.