Ukraine advances in the areas annexed by Putin

Emboldened by their successful advance on Izium, Ukrainian forces first recaptured the important Liman railway junction and the neighboring village of Torske, both in the north of Donetsk. Far from stopping, this Monday they continued in a straight line until they crossed the Lugansk administrative border. In this way, the northern front line has gone back 35 kilometersto the city of Kreminnawhere the soldiers who fled from Limán have barricaded themselves.

“The situation is quite hot there,” recognized the pro-Russian spokesman for the area, Andréi Marochko, on the Soloviev Live channel. However, sheltering in a territory that Putin, in his delirium, considers part of the Russian Federation, does not change the reality. And it is that, hours or weeks later, everything indicates that the resistance is about to break the new Russian defense line in Kreminna.

Once that town falls, the Ukrainian forces will likely head north towards Svatove, where the battalions that have just liberated some of the last occupied areas of Kharkov are already pressing. Regardless of whether they arrive from above or below, if Zelensky’s soldiers seize this logistics hub, they will be able to cut off the supply routes to the industrial cities of Lisichansk, Rubizhne and Severodonetsklocated a little further south.

Precisely from there, after a long and bloody battle, the Ukrainian troops withdrew last July, thus giving up the province of Lugansk. Since then, Russia has been concentrated resources and arsenal in the zone. In this sense, liberating those emplacements located on the banks of the Seversky Donets River would mean not only a military victory for the Ukrainians, but also an almost fatal blow to Putin’s pride.

[El aviso del exdirector de la CIA a Putin si usa armas nucleares: “Destruiremos sus tropas y su flota. Todo”]

Because if Limán’s setback has already amplified criticism from some of his closest allies, the entry of the Ukrainians into the only annexed province – the one in Lugansk – that Russia actually fully owns could end up discrediting its “special operation” even more.

imitation in the south

In the south, more than 600 kilometers away, kyiv has replicated the same strategy that is giving so many profits in the north. Apparently with the same result.

Although they have not provided much information, it seems that the Ukrainian forces have managed this Monday to break the Russian lines in the Kherson region, static for months. It was recognized in this way by Vladimir Saldo, the head of the Ukrainian region of Kherson installed by Russia. «The situation is tense, let’s put it that way», he said on Russian state television.

[El caos del reclutamiento forzoso obliga a Putin a retrasar un mes la llamada a filas para Ucrania]

“Where the Kakhovka reservoir is, there is a settlement called Dudchany… It is in this area that there is an advance and there are settlements taken by the Ukrainian troops,” he detailed. Dudchany, on the west bank of the Dnipro River, is about 40 kilometers from where the front line was before the offensive, which would attest to the rapid advance of the Ukrainians.

It would also mean that kyiv is threatening supply lines for the estimated 25,000 Russian soldiers who are entrenched on the other side of the river. Coupled with the fact that Ukraine has already destroyed major bridges, forcing Russian forces to use makeshift crossings, Putin’s troops are increasingly in danger of being cut off.

“The fact that we have broken through the front means that … the Russian military has already lost the ability to attack, and today or tomorrow it may lose the ability to defend,” Oleh Zhdanov, a kyiv-based military analyst, told the news agency. agency Reuters. “A month of our work destroying their supplies and reducing the combat effectiveness of this group means that they are operating on minimal rations in terms of ammunition, fuel and food“, he added.

For his part, Serhiy Khlan, a member of the Kherson regional council, mentioned Osokorivka, Mykhailivka, Khreschenikvka and Zoloto Balka as recaptured villages or where Ukrainian troops had been photographed. All of them, located along from the banks of the Dnipro.