A Ukrainian counteroffensive that already has reclaimed thousands of thousands is breaking through Russian lines in the Kherson region recently annexed by Moscow, Kremlin-installed officials said Monday.
Vladimir Saldo, the Russian-installed head of Ukraine’s Kherson region, said on state television that multiple settlements about 70 miles northeast of the city of Kherson on the bank of the Dnieper River had been overrun.
“It’s tense, let’s put it that way,” Saldo said in a translation by Reuters.
Russia’s Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in his daily briefing that “with superior tank units… the enemy managed to penetrate into the depths of our defense.” But Konashenkov said Russian troops had fallen back to a defensive position and “continue to inflict massive fire damage” on Kyiv’s forces.
The deputy head of the regional administration, Kirill Stremousov, said Ukraine forces “have broken through a little deeper” but wrote on Telegram that “everything is under control.”
Developments:
►Russian shelling of eight Ukrainian regions over the past 24 hours killed two civilians and wounded 14 others, Ukraine’s presidential office said Monday.
►The Joint Expeditionary Force group of northern European nations will meet Monday to discuss the safety of undersea pipelines and cables after blasts ruptured two natural gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said.
Russian parliament approves annexations
The lower house of the Russian parliament on Monday approved the treaties for four regions of Ukraine to join Russia. The unanimous vote by the State Duma came days after President Vladimir Putin and Russian-installed leaders of the four regions signed the treaties. Ukraine, the US and its western allies have dismissed the annexations as having no legal validity.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the entire Donetsk and Luhansk regions that make up the Donbas would join Russia. He said the issue of the borders of the two other regions – Zaporizhzhia and Kherson – have not been determined.
Kremlin shrugs off criticism of leadership
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says criticism of Russia’s military leadership by Chechnya’s regional leader was driven by emotions. Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed leader of Chechnya, scathingly criticized the Russian military command over the weekend, saying that the Russian retreat from the city of Lyman in eastern Ukraine was a result of incompetence and nepotism. Kadyrov wrote on Telegram that Russian military leader Colonel-General Alexander Lapin should be fired.
“If I had my way I would have demoted Lapin to private, would have deprived him of his awards and would have sent him to the front line to wash off his shame with the rifle in his hands,” Kadyrov wrote.
Kadyrov also called for the use of low-yield nuclear weapons in Ukraine to reverse the momentum of the war that has been decidedly in Ukraine’s favor in recent weeks.
Contributing: The Associated Press
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George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism