In a celebratory video speech on Saturday night, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made fun of the Russians, claiming that “the Russian army in these days is showcasing the best that it can do – showing its back.”
He shared a video of Ukrainian soldiers raising the flag above Chkalovske, another town the offensive’s regained.
The largest nuclear power station in Europe, Zaporizhzhia, was reportedly reconnected to Ukraine’s electricity grid when most attention was being paid to the counter-offensive. This allowed engineers to shut down the plant’s final functioning reactor in order to protect it from the fighting. Since the beginning of the conflict, Russian forces have held the plant, one of the world’s ten largest atomic power plants.
Since a fire brought on by shelling on September 5 cut the plant’s transmission connections, the reactor has been powering vital safety equipment in what is known as “island mode,” an unreliable configuration that made the plant more susceptible to a possible nuclear accident.
In a phone discussion with French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the situation at the plant, according to the Kremlin.
Ukraine’s military chief, Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyy, declared that since the counteroffensive started in early September, its forces have reclaimed almost 3,000 square kilometers. He mentioned that the distance between the Russian and Ukrainian borders is just 50 kilometers.
Kharkiv Governor Oleh Syniehubov reported that Ukrainian forces had taken back control of more than 40 communities in the Kharkiv region, but he could not provide an exact figure.
The Russian retreat represented the biggest military victory for Ukrainian forces since they prevented a Russian effort to capture Kyiv at the beginning of the conflict, which lasted for close to seven months.
Moscow was caught off guard by the Kharkiv campaign because it had moved many of its forces from the area to the south in anticipation of a counteroffensive there.
The Russian Defense Ministry announced on Saturday that the troops’ retreat from Izyum and other places was done in order to bolster Moscow’s forces in the neighboring Donetsk region to the south, in an uncomfortable attempt to preserve face. The reason sounded a lot like the one Russia used to justify leaving the Kyiv region earlier this year after failing to seize the capital.
