Ukrainian troops have secured a bridgehead in the Kherson region on the left bank of the Dnieper in southern Ukraine, Andriy Yermak, head of the administration of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi, reported on Tuesday, Reuters reports.

Andriy Yermak’s statement is the first official recognition that Ukrainian troops are stationed on the eastern bank of the Dnieper in the Kherson region.

“Despite everything, the Defense Forces of Ukraine have established themselves on the left (eastern) bank of the Dnieper,” Yermak said during a speech at the American think tank Hudson Institute. His words were also published on Zelensky’s website.

“Step by step, they are demilitarizing Crimea. I covered 70% of the distance. And our counteroffensive is developing,” the official emphasized

Russian troops captured the Kherson region in the early days of their invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, but at the end of last year they left the regional capital Kherson and the west bank of the Dniester. Since then, they bombed Kherson and other cities from new positions on the eastern bank.

Although the four-month-long Ukrainian counteroffensive achieved only gradual success, Ukrainian officials were careful to describe the activities of their forces on the east bank.

A military spokesman said this month that “no bad results have been achieved” on the east bank in forcing Russian troops to redeploy. Unofficial reports emphasize Ukraine’s progress.

Last week, the Russian military said its forces had foiled an attempt by Ukraine to establish a beachhead on the east coast and nearby islands, killing about 500 Ukrainian troops. Reuters said it could not independently verify the claim on the battlefield.

On Sunday, on the eastern (left) bank of the Dnieper in the Kherson region, against the background of ground operations, Ukrainian troops made a slight advance, the Institute for the Study of War notes.

Geolocation images released on Sunday show that Ukrainian forces have not advanced in Krynyk (30 km northeast of the city of Kherson and 2 km from the Dnipro).

Several Russian military bloggers continued to claim that Russian forces tried and failed to dislodge Ukrainian forces from Krynyk, and that Ukrainian forces are conducting offensive operations near Poym (10 km southeast of the city of Kherson and 4 km from the Dnipro River), Pishchanivka (13 km southeast of Kherson and 3 km from the Dnipro River) and Pidstepne (17 km east of Kherson and 4 km from the Dnipro River).

In a highly unusual incident on Monday, two Russian state news agencies published reports that Moscow was moving troops to “more favorable positions” east of the Dnipro River in Ukraine, only to retract the report minutes later.

In the past, Russia has sometimes used similar wording about moving troops to more advantageous positions to describe a withdrawal.

In a speech at the Hudson Institute, Yermak said the only certainty is that Russia has no intention of stopping the war, but hopes “to resist and overcome the unity of democracies.”

“We need weapons now. Russia still has air superiority,” Yermak said. “It is still able to produce missiles through sanctions evasion. Not to mention Iranian drones and North Korean artillery shells.”