Ukraine’s military has retaken a swathe of eastern territory in a swift counterattack, putting to flight Russian troops who occupied the area shortly after their all-out invasion began more than six months ago.
Ukrainians hailed the breakthrough after several months of near stalemate on the battlefield, but concern continued to surround Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant in the southeast of the country, where the last operating reactor was being shut down after frequent shelling in the area.
Moscow claimed its rapid withdrawal from much of the eastern Kharkiv region was part of a planned redeployment of forces, but did not explain why so much Russian equipment – including tanks and other armoured vehicles and large stores of ammunition – had been left behind.
“Ukraine’s armed forces continue to liberate territories occupied by Russia. Since the beginning of September, more than 3,000sq km have been returned to the control of Ukraine,” Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine’s chief military commander, said on Sunday.
“In the Kharkiv direction, we began to advance not only to the south and east, but also to the north. There are 50km to go to the state border.”
Logistical problems
As the Ukrainian flag returned to a host of villages and towns, military experts said Russia’s loss of the cities of Balakliya, Kupyansk and the transport hub of Izyum could cause logistical problems for its forces in the nearby Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, and also hamper the Kremlin’s drive to seize all of the regions, which are known collectively as Donbas.
“The Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kharkiv… is routing Russian forces and collapsing Russia’s northern Donbas axis. Russian forces are not conducting a controlled withdrawal and are hurriedly fleeing… to escape encirclement around Izyum,” said the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War.
“Ukrainian forces have penetrated Russian lines to a depth of up to 70km in some places and captured over 3,000sq km of territory in the past five days since September 6th – more territory than Russian forces have captured in all their operations since April.”
Ukraine is also counterattacking – with far slower progress – in southern areas, and appears to have used Russia’s redeployment of forces to that axis to punch through its weakened positions in Kharkiv, and then moved quickly to sow panic among Russian troops, many of whom simply abandoned their tanks and other weapons systems.
Battlefield victory
“These days, the Russian army is showing its best – showing its back. And, in the end, it is a good choice for them to run away. There is and will be no place for occupiers in Ukraine,” said Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, while pledging that Russian prisoners of war “will be treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions”.
If Ukraine can consolidate its gains, it would be the country’s biggest battlefield victory since it forced Russia to abandon its bid to seize Kyiv in April.
“To achieve the stated goals of the special military operation to liberate Donbas, a decision was made to regroup Russian troops located in the Balakliya and Izyum districts so as to bolster efforts in the Donetsk direction,” said Russian defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov, claiming that “diversionary” moves had been used to disguise Moscow’s true intentions.
Ukrainian nuclear energy firm Energoatom said its technicians were shutting down the last operating reactor at the Zaporizhzhia power plant for safety reasons, after the facility’s electricity supply was stabilised by reconnection to the national grid. Ukrainian technicians run the plant under the guard of Russian troops, who seized the frontline area in March. Moscow has rejected international calls to withdraw its forces from the site.
