Ukrainian troops on Sunday successfully carried out their swift counterattack in the northeastern part of the country, forcing Russian units to retreat.
Ukraine’s swift action to retake Russian-occupied areas in the northeastern Kharkiv region forced Moscow’s troops to withdraw in an attempt to prevent them from “lining up” and leaving behind significant numbers of weapons and ammunition. of ammunition in a hasty withdrawal as the war marked 200 days on Sunday.
Even jubilant Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address late Saturday, saying that “the Russian military these days is demonstrating the best it can do — showing its back.”
On Sunday, he posted a video of Ukrainian soldiers raising the national flag over Chkalovske, another town they took from the Russians in a counteroffensive.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s military chief, General Valerii Zaluzhny, said on Sunday that Ukraine had liberated about 3,000 square kilometers since the beginning of September.
Thus, he noted that Ukrainian troops are now only 50 kilometers from the border with Russia.
The Russian withdrawal marked the biggest battlefield success for Ukrainian forces since they thwarted a Russian attempt to capture the capital, Kiev, at the start of the nearly seven-month war.
The Ukrainian offensive in the Kharkiv region came as a surprise to Moscow, which had moved many of its troops from the area to the south in anticipation of major Ukrainian counteroffensives there.
In a desperate attempt to “save face”, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday that the withdrawal of troops from Izyum and other areas in the Kharkiv region was aimed at strengthening Russian forces in the neighboring Donetsk region to the south.
The claim sounded similar to the justification Russia gave for withdrawing its forces from the Kiev region earlier this year when they failed to take the capital.