Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Malyar wrote on the Telegram social messaging app on Wednesday morning: "Urozhaine has been liberated. Our defenders are consolidating their positions. The offensive continues."
On Monday, Malyar said that Ukraine had retaken 3 square kilometres of land in the direction of the Russian-held city of Bakhmut in the eastern Donetsk region over the past week, the Ukrainska Pravda website reported.
On Tuesday, Ukraine’s General Staff said Ukrainian forces had been successful in Urozhaine and were consolidating their positions there, according to Ukrainska Pravda.
Ukrainian counteroffensive makes gains in Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia
Meanwhile, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a US think tank, reported that Ukrainian troops on Wednesday kept up their counteroffensive on at least three sectors of the front and reportedly advanced in the eastern Luhansk region and the southeastern Zaporizhzhia province.
Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in the direction of Bakhmut as well as towards the southern ports of Melitopol (in the western part of Zaporizhzhia) and Berdyansk (through the border area between the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions), the ISW added, citing Ukraine’s General Staff.
According to coordinates published by a Russian military blogger on Tuesday, Ukrainian forces have advanced south of the village of Dibrova (7 km southwest of Kreminna) in the Luhansk region; according to geolocated footage posted on Monday, Ukrainian troops have also advanced into the village of Robotyne in Zaporizhzhia; and, according to Russian and Ukrainian reporting on Tuesday, Ukrainian forces have committed additional brigades to step up counteroffensive operations in the western part of Zaporizhzhia, the ISW reported.
The US think tank cited Ukraine's Col. Petro Chernyk as saying that the counteroffensive in the south had to overcome a three-part Russian defensive line.
The Russian defences consist of a first line of minefields stretching several kilometres wide; a second line with artillery, equipment, and personnel concentrations; and a third line of rear positions designed to preserve resources, Chernyk said, as quoted by the ISW.
Russia launches drones on Ukrainian port of Izmail: reports
A swarm of Russian army drones entered the mouth of the Danube river and headed towards the Izmail port near Ukraine’s border with Romania overnight on Wednesday, the air force in Kyiv said.
According to social media groups, air defence systems were heard firing near Izmail and the fellow Danube port of Reni, Britain’s The Guardian newspaper reported.
Oleh Kiper, governor of Ukraine’s southern Odesa region, asked the inhabitants of the Izmail district to take shelter at 1:30 a.m. local time and called off the air-raid alert an hour later.
Ukraine’s Danube ports handled around a quarter of the country’s grain exports before Russia last month quit the United Nations-backed Black Sea Grain Initiative, designed to safeguard the export of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea, The Guardian noted.
Since then, the Danube ports have become the main route out for Ukrainian grain, which is sent on barges to Romania’s Black Sea port of Constanta and shipped onwards, the Reuters news agency reported.
Russia’s attack on Izmail earlier this month sent global food prices higher, The Guardian reported.
Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, launching the largest military campaign in Europe since World War II.
Wednesday is day 539 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, Reuters, Ukrainska Pravda, ISW, The Guardian