The announcement is enough to cheer up the Ukrainian soldiers. According to the local governor of the strategic region of Kherson, in the south of the country, kyiv’s counter-offensive against the Russian army has borne fruit. “To date, 46 occupied localities have been liberated in the Kherson region,” leader Dmytro Boutry told state television.
According to him, these villages are on the border with the Dnipropetrovsk region and in the southern part on the border with the heavily bombed Mykolaiv region. Some of the recaptured villages “have been 90% destroyed and are still under constant fire”.
A “critical” humanitarian situation
The humanitarian situation in the region is “critical”, the governor said, reiterating the authorities’ appeal to those who still remain in the region to “evacuate to safer areas”. During the first days of the invasion launched on February 24, Russian troops seized almost all of this strategic region bordering Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014.
But in recent weeks, the Ukrainian army, bolstered by deliveries of long-range artillery supplied by the West, has launched a counter-offensive. Kyiv forces carried out strikes against Russian warehouses and military positions and damaged bridges serving as crucial supply routes for Moscow troops in the city of Kherson.
Last month, a Ukrainian official promised that the Kherson region would be taken over by Ukrainian forces by September. Russian forces captured the region’s capital, Kherson, on March 3. It was the first major city to fall to the Russians after the invasion began.