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Ukraine Has Retaken 6,000 Sq Km Of Land – Zelenskiy

TUE, SEPTEMBER 13, 2022

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy Said On Monday That Ukrainian Forces Had Retaken 6,000 Square Km. Of Russian-Held Territory Since The Beginning Of The Month.

“Since the beginning of September and up to today, our fighters have liberated more than 6,000 square km of the territory of Ukraine in the south and in the east,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video. “The advances of our forces continue.”

Ukrainian chief commander General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi said on Sunday his troops had retaken more than 3,000 square km (1,160 square miles) this month.

As thousands of Russian troops pulled back following Ukraine’s gains, leaving behind ammunition and equipment, Russia fired missiles at power stations on Sunday causing blackouts in the Kharkiv and adjacent Poltava and Sumy regions.

Ukraine denounced the strikes as retaliation against civilian targets for Russia’s military setbacks.

“Buildings, hospitals, schools, communal infrastructure. Russian missiles hit precisely those objects that have absolutely nothing to do with the infrastructure of the armed forces of our country,” Zelenskiy said on Monday.

On Monday, Russian strikes again disrupted power and water supply in Kharkiv itself, killing at least one person, its mayor said.

Throughout the day, shelling of residential areas and infrastructure sparked fires in the city, regional emergency services said on Facebook.

Zelenskiy also repeated a call for Russian citizens to be denied tourist visas in European and other countries in his video address on Monday.

“Citizens of the terrorist state can still go to Europe to rest and go shopping, they can still get European visas, and no one knows whether there are executioners or murderers among them,” he said.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday that it was still early days in Ukraine’s counteroffensive against the Russian military, but Ukrainian forces have made “significant progress.”

Blinken, in Mexico for economic talks, was asked for his assessment of recent developments in Ukraine.

“What they have done is very methodically planned out and of course, it’s benefited from significant support from the United States and many other countries in terms of making sure that Ukraine has, in its hands, the equipment it needs to prosecute this counteroffensive,” Blinken said.

Blinken said the conflict in Ukraine was likely to continue for some time as Russia still has very significant forces and arms in the country, which it is still using “indiscriminately” against civilians and civilian infrastructure.

A Ukrainian demining unit said it started clearing a village of explosives left by Russian forces near the border with Russia north of Kharkiv on Monday 

Videos obtained by Reuters showed the unit finding and clearing fragments of explosives that were said to be anti-personnel mines using an improvised wooden stick carrying a cut-out plastic bottle on its tip.

Reuters has not independently verified the date and location of the video.

The head of the police unit, Yaroslav Kostin, said his crew had cleared anti-personnel mines in the village of Udy, some seven kilometres from the Russian border, a claim Reuters could not verify.

The demining unit displayed mines, projectiles, and weapons they said they had found near Russian positions in Udy in the nearby town of Zolochiv.

Soldiers returning from Udy said it was still unsafe, littered with land mines, grenades and weapons left behind by fleeing Russian troops, with abandoned farm animals wandering about.

The swift Ukrainian gains in the Kharkiv region have left Moscow facing its most serious defeat since being driven back from the outskirts of the capital Kyiv in the spring. The advance has deprived Russia of vital logistics hubs it had used to supply its forces in eastern Ukraine.

Russia, however, still occupies about a fifth of the country.