Russian troops panic as Ukraine continues to push into the occupied territory after the defeat at Kharkov, Volodymyr Zelensky said.
Speaking last night, the Ukrainian president said speed is now the key to pushing Russia back – he is urging allies to step up the pace of arms deliveries, while boasting that “we are now certain that the occupiers will not gain a foothold on Ukrainian soil’.
It came as his troops entered the city of Bilohorivka and returned to Luhansk province, just two months after Russia took full control of it. Governor Serhiy Gaidai said the military is now preparing to take back the entire region.
Meanwhile, Liz Truss, who traveled to a UN summit in New York, has pledged that Britain would spend at least £2.3bn in support of Ukraine by 2023 – which is equivalent to or exceeds the level of support that has been given this year.
Ukrainian troops have invaded Bilohorivka and recaptured their first city in Luhansk province, while governor says they are preparing to retake the entire province
Kiev’s men continue to advance after Russian troops defeat near Kharkiv, as Zelensky says they are ‘panicing’
Ukrainian troops ride atop an armored car through the newly liberated city of Izyum, in eastern Ukraine
After the United States, the United Kingdom has been one of the largest contributors to military and civilian aid to Ukraine.
Any new support package will likely include multiple missile systems of the kind Ukraine has used to launch precision strikes on Russian command posts, ammunition depots and supply lines.
Russia is currently on the back foot in Ukraine after undergoing a humiliating flight to the east of the city of Kharkiv last month, returning more than 3,000 square miles of previously occupied territory to Ukrainian control.
Putin’s commanders are now trying to reinforce and push back the Ukrainians, while Zelensky’s men hold the new line, examine defenses and advance where possible.
Zelensky summed up the situation overnight and said: ‘We are stabilizing the situation by holding our positions. sturdy. So strong that the occupiers are palpably panicking.
“We have warned the Russian soldiers in Ukraine that they have only two options: flee our country or surrender…
“Thanks to the Security Service of Ukraine, we are now confident that the occupiers will not gain a foothold on Ukrainian soil.”
Serhiy Gaidai, governor of the occupied Luhansk region, said soldiers had entered the village of Bilohorivka – the first in Luhansk to be recaptured.
It will be the starting point for an attack on the wider region with the aim of returning it to Ukrainian control, he added.
However, he warned that Russia is preparing its defense and “we will not just march in” – in an effort to dampen anticipation of another Kharkov-style rapid advance.
Ukraine is also attacking in the south, in Kherson, where its forces on Monday sank a Russian pontoon bridge carrying weapons and troops across the Dnipro River.
“The situation remains tense, but under our control,” said a spokesman for Ukraine’s southern command.
Luhansk and neighboring Donetsk province make up the industrialized eastern region of Donbas, which Moscow says it wants to take as a primary target of what it calls the “special military operation” in Ukraine.
Ukrainian forces have begun to penetrate Luhansk since driving Russian troops out of the northeastern province of Kharkov this month in a lightning-fast counteroffensive.
In a sign of nervousness from a Moscow-backed government in Donbas over the success of Ukraine’s recent offensive, the leader called for urgent referendums on the region’s accession to Russia.
Denis Pushilin, head of the Moscow-based separatist government in Donetsk, called on his fellow separatist leader in Luhansk to join their efforts to prepare a referendum on joining Russia.
Ukraine’s general staff said on Monday that fighting had been confined to the Donetsk region.
“For the past 24 hours, units of the armed forces of Ukraine have repulsed enemy attacks in the areas of the settlements of Mayorsk, Vesele, Kurdyumivka and Novomykhailivka,” a daily update said.
Liz Truss will make her debut speech today at the UN, where she will pledge to at least match the £2.3 billion in aid the UK has given Ukraine this year by 2023.
In the south, where another Ukrainian counter-offensive is progressing more slowly, Ukrainian forces said they had sunk a barge carrying Russian troops and equipment on a river near Nova Kakhovka in the Kherson region.
Attempts to build a crosswalk failed to withstand fire from Ukrainian troops and were halted. The ship … became an addition to the occupying forces’ submarine forces,” the army said in a statement on Facebook.
Ukraine is still evaluating what happened in areas under Russian control for months before a flight of Russian troops drastically changed the dynamics of the war earlier this month.
At a huge makeshift cemetery in the woods near the recaptured city of Izium, Ukrainian forensic experts have so far exhumed 146 bodies buried without coffins, Kharkov regional governor Oleh Synehubov said Monday. About 450 graves have been found at the site, Zelenskiy . said
As they fanned out in groups under the trees, workers used shovels to dig up the partially decomposed bodies, some of which locals say had been lying in the city streets long after they died before being buried.
The government has not yet said how most people died, although officials say dozens were killed in the shelling of an apartment building, and there are indications that others were killed by shrapnel.
Ukraine continues to excavate a mass grave in Izyum where the bodies of civilians and soldiers – some of whom appear to have been tortured – after freeing it from Russia
Ukrainian forensic scientists and war crimes investigators dressed in hazmat suits work to excavate graves in a forest near the town of Izyum
According to preliminary investigations, four showed signs of torture with their hands tied behind their backs, or in one case a rope tied around their necks, Serhiy Bolvinov, the chief of investigation police in the Kharkiv region, told Reuters at the cemetery.
Bolvinov said the vast majority of the bodies appeared to be civilians. Local residents have identified their dead by linking names to numbers on thin wooden crosses marking the graves.
“Soldiers had their hands tied, there were signs of torture on civilians,” Bolvinov said. Ukraine says 17 soldiers were in a mass grave at the site.
Reuters could not confirm the allegations of torture by Ukraine.
The Kremlin denied on Monday that Russia was responsible for the atrocities that Ukraine said it uncovered in the recaptured area.
“It’s a lie, and of course we will defend the truth in this story,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who compared the allegations to incidents earlier in the war where Russia claimed without evidence that the atrocities were committed by Ukrainians.