In Lyman, a strategically important regional hub reclaimed by the Ukrainian Army on Saturday, a day after Russia declared the region had been annexed, wind whistled over city blocks where every home is obliterated to heaps of brick. In the pine forests and rolling hills where the battles are now being fought in Ukraine’s northeast and east, fuel trucks, tanks and pickups rumble along muddy roads to press the attack, passing wholly destroyed, abandoned towns and villages. But these gains have come with a sad twist - the land it has reclaimed is largely depopulated and in ruins. SVIATOHIRSK, Ukraine - The Ukrainian Army has achieved a series of military successes in recent weeks. Ukrainian commanders have said they are within five or 10 miles of artillery range of the river, after which they could fire near-continual barrages at the bridges and piers, all but severing Russian supply lines to the Dnipro’s west bank, which serve a Russian contingent estimated at about 25,000 soldiers.Ī photograph taken during the government-arranged tour for journalists showing a destroyed bridge in Sviatohirsk on Monday. Through the summer, the Ukrainian Army has been striking the bridges and hastily built piers with U.S.-supplied precision-guided rockets, partially destroying the bridges.īut the rockets are in short supply. The advances around Davydiv Brid allow Ukraine to move shorter-range artillery systems closer to bridges over the Dnipro and piers along its banks. In this area, as elsewhere in Ukraine, the natural barrier of rivers dictate the moves of both armies. The battle to expand this thumb-like bulge through table-flat farmland and a smattering of small villages raises Ukraine’s prospects of encircling Russian forces and complicating the movement of supplies and reinforcements. The advance into Davydiv Brid widens a wedge that the Ukrainian military has driven into Russian-held territory on the west bank of the Dnipro River, threatening to divide Russian forces there. The Ukrainian military has not commented. Zelensky, appeared to confirm the advances in a Twitter post showing Ukrainian flags and a slice of watermelon, a symbol of the Kherson region.Ī Russian-appointed official in the Kherson region, Volodymyr Saldo, confirmed on Tuesday that the Russian Army had withdrawn from Davydiv Brid. “Dozens of settlements have already been liberated from the Russian sham referendum this week alone.”Įarlier, Andriy Yermak, the chief of staff to Mr. “The Ukrainian army is carrying out a pretty fast and powerful advance in the south of our country as part of the current defense operation,” Mr. He said the list included Lyubymivka, Khreshchenivka, Zolota Balka, Bilyaivka, Ukrainka, Velyka and Mala Oleksandrivka. In his nightly address to the nation on Tuesday, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Ukraine had liberated several settlements in the southern Kherson region, mostly west of the Dnipro River and northeast of the city of Kherson. “We are ceremonially hanging our yellow and blue flag over Davydiv Brid.” The location where the video was filmed could not be independently verified.įrontline forces also claimed to have captured three other villages in the south on Tuesday, according to Ukrainska Pravda, a Ukrainian news outlet. “Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the marines!” a marine said in the video. Putin of Russia had declared it and the surrounding region a part of Russia.īut a flurry of videos released by frontline soldiers and a post on Twitter by a senior Ukrainian official on Tuesday suggested a step forward in the south, too.Ī Ukrainian marine unit, the 35th brigade, released a video showing service members waving a Ukrainian flag from the steel lattice of a communications tower that they said was in Davydiv Brid, a town in the Kherson region in southern Ukraine. So far, most Ukrainian gains have been in the east and northeast, including forcing Russian soldiers from the town of Lyman in the Donetsk region a day after President Vladimir V. The annexation enables Russia to argue an attack on those territories is an attack on the nation. Last Friday, Russia illegally annexed four territories in Ukraine after hastily called referendums dismissed as shams by the West. The Ukrainian strategy of attacking at two locations at once - in the south and in the east - came into focus a month ago and has left Russian forces off balance and losing ground. Jim Huylebroek for The New York TimesĭNIPRO, Ukraine - A brigade of Ukrainian marines appears to have expelled Russian forces from a town in the country’s south on Tuesday in a sign of continuing momentum in Ukraine’s counterstrikes against the Russian Army. Ukrainian soldiers near the Kherson front in Ukraine in September.
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