The Ukrainian army’s attack on Kherson on Monday appears to be large-scale, targeting the entire line of defense of Russian forces in this region in southern Ukraine.

UPDATE 16:21: Kyrylo Stremousov, deputy head of the Russian occupation administration in Kherson, left the region in southern Ukraine and is now in Russia. He talked about the “useless counteroffensive” of the Ukrainians in a video he published on his Telegram channel.

American journalist Chuck Pfarrer, a former Navy SEAL, now a special military correspondent for the online newspaper Kyiv Independent, created a map of Ukrainian attacks based on information that appeared mainly in the Telegram channels of Russian units and Russian military bloggers.

He notes that Kyiv Independent journalists do not broadcast information from the Ukrainian armed forces after presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak on Monday afternoon asked Ukrainian media and politicians in Kyiv not to broadcast information about the offensive in Kherson Oblast, so that it would not be used by Russian defenders. .

The map of the battles shows that the Ukrainian soldiers were able to advance the most in the southern direction of the offensive and that the Kyiv troops attacked almost the entire defense line of the Russians.

Ukrainian missile attacks were aimed at ammunition depots of the Russian Armed Forces, located behind the front line in the cities of Berislav, Kakhova and Nova Kakhova.

Also on Monday, the Ukrainians launched a new attack on the strategic Antoniv bridge, spreading images on social networks showing how the bridge is shrouded in smoke. Over the past month and a half, Ukrainian troops have repeatedly shelled this bridge with the help of HIMARS systems received from the United States, the destruction of which could leave Russian forces without a retreat from Kherson.

By the way, the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyi, in a video message broadcast on Monday evening, told Russian soldiers that “if they want to survive, it’s time to run.”

Russian troops fear encirclement in Kherson

The former commander of the Donbas separatists, Ihor Girkin, in a message published on Monday evening on his Telegram channel, warned that the goal of the Ukrainian offensive on Kherson is “roughly” clear: “the encirclement and defeat of our group east of Kherson.” , the confluence of the Dnieper and Ingulets”.

In a separate message released early Tuesday, Girkin confirmed the authenticity of a video released a day earlier by a group of Ukrainian armed forces showing a suspected separatist in Donetsk warning that Ukrainian soldiers had breached Russia’s first line of defense.

The Ukrainian military, which released the video, said that a regiment of pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk and the Russian paratroopers who supported them had fled the battlefield. Girkin notes that when they reached the second line of defense, they were met by “friendly fire.” “C’est la vie,” he says ironically.

Girkin is one of the harshest critics of how Moscow’s military command conducts the “special military operation” and has repeatedly criticized Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

Some foreign analysts, in particular the well-known “Dmitry” – the founder of the website War Translated – questioned the authenticity of this recording, saying that it is more like a “psychological operation” of the Ukrainian special forces.

Ukrainian military journalist Ilya Ponomarenko, who a day ago urged caution in reporting the scale of the Ukrainian offensive, said Tuesday morning that the clearest indication of the fighting’s progress is that the Kremlin is behaving as if nothing is happening in southern Ukraine over time. what Russian military bloggers are cooking:

They either act as if everything is fine, or they are frightened by the development of the situation in Kherson.

The Kherson region officially became the epicenter of heavy fighting

“Intensive fighting” is taking place “in almost all” of the Kherson region in southern Ukraine, which has been occupied by the Russians since the beginning of the invasion, the leadership in Kyiv said on Tuesday.

The presidency of Ukraine reported that during the day and night of Monday, strong explosions were heard in the region and “the armed forces of Ukraine began offensive actions in various directions.”

The Office of President Volodymyr Zelensky also says that several ammunition depots and all major bridges across the Dnipro have been destroyed.

Kherson Oblast is vital to Ukraine’s agriculture and plays a strategic role as it borders Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014 and used as a base for the current invasion.

On Monday evening, Moscow announced that it had halted Ukrainian offensives that “failed miserably” in Kherson and the nearby Mykolaiv region.

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