OUR Ukrainian army announced today that it has reclaimed 500 square kilometers of land from Russian troops within two weeks after the counter-offensive in the Kherson region (south) the first quantitative assessment of Ukrainian successes.

“Our successes in these two weeks are very convincing,” Natalya Gumenyuk, a spokesman for the military department in the south, told reporters, “we have freed about 500 square meters. km”. mainly the communities of Vysokopolya, Belogorka, Sukhi, Stavok and Mirolyubivka.

For its part, Russia said today that it bombed areas in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region (east) that were recaptured in recent days by Kyiv forces in a surprise counteroffensive.

“In the areas of the settlements of Kupyansk and Izyum, militants and equipment of the nationalist Kraken formation of the 113th motorized rifle brigade of the territorial defense and the 93rd motorized rifle brigade were hit,” the report says.

Meanwhile, in an interview published today in Monde, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said that the war in Ukraine has entered the “third stage” and Ukrainian military successes will have an “avalanche” effect until the defeat of the Russian army.

“The counteroffensive campaign is the third stage,” Reznikov said as Kyiv forces are rapidly advancing into the country’s eastern and southern regions and are said to have reclaimed 3,000 square meters of territory since early September.

Three stages of the war

“The first stage of the war was to contain the Russians. Secondly, to establish a balance between them and us at the front, to stabilize the front, to test their endurance,” the minister said.

“Our headquarters developed a plan depending on the equipment that we received from our partners – we began to use the Himars mobile artillery mounts to cut off the enemy’s rear support lines, destroy its fuel depots, ammunition, etc. This is the third stage war, which began in the south and in the north in the Kherson and Kharkov directions, ”he explains.

Complete liberation of Ukrainian territories and reparations

Ukraine’s goal is to liberate all occupied territories, “including Crimea (annexed in 2014), Lugansk and Donetsk (in the east of Donbass)”. “Our border guards will put up their posts on the Russian-Ukrainian border, where they were in 1991,” he said.

In addition to the “complete liberation” of Ukrainian territories, Kyiv is demanding a “completely clean roadmap for paying Russian reparations and holding them accountable for war crimes” committed since the February 24th invasion.

When asked about the possibility of a protracted war, Reznikov refuses to make predictions, but says: “it will look like an avalanche, it will start to roll, roll and become bigger and bigger and bigger … the second largest army in the world to give a signal to retreat” .

Source: APE/MEB