Lukrainian forces have launched a counter-offensive in the south, aimed at pushing Russian troops back across the Dnieper River and retaking the occupied city of Kherson, local authorities said on Monday. The Russian army claimed to have repelled them and inflicted “heavy losses” on them.
“Today there were powerful artillery attacks on enemy positions […] throughout the territory of the occupied Kherson region. This is the announcement of what we have been waiting for since spring: it is the beginning of the end of the occupation of the Kherson region”, announced on Ukrainian television Serguiï Khlan, local deputy and adviser to the regional governor. . He assured that Ukrainian forces had the “advantage” on the southern front after several strikes in recent weeks that targeted bridges in the Kherson region and were intended to hamper the logistics of the Russian army.
Ukrainian media had earlier quoted the spokeswoman for the Ukrainian army’s “southern” command, Natalia Goumenyuk, as saying that kyiv forces were attacking “from many directions” on this front. The Ukrainian military group “Kakhovka” assured him on Facebook to observe the retreat of a unit of pro-Russian separatist fighters from their positions in the region.
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These claims were unverifiable from an independent source. Moscow also denies these assertions. The Russian army claimed to have repelled Ukrainian “offensive attempts” in the regions of Kherson and Mykolaiv, in southern Ukraine, while claiming to have inflicted “heavy losses” on the forces of kyiv. “This new attempt at offensive operations by the enemy has failed miserably,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.
A strategic region
At the start of the invasion of Ukraine, Russian troops seized Kherson, a city of 280,000 inhabitants located on the Dnieper River. Essential for Ukrainian agriculture, this region is also strategic, as it borders the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Moscow in March 2014. For several weeks, the Ukrainian forces said they were preparing a counter-offensive to retake Kherson, but had not ‘now reported that the conquest of several dozen villages.
The Russian bombardments have also not ceased on the front line which extends from north to south. The local authorities notably mentioned strikes in the regions of Kharkiv (north-east), Dnipropetrovsk (center), where they left one dead, and Mykolaiv, where they left two dead and 24 wounded. “It was shaking and everyone ran out,” Olga, a 40-year-old resident of Mykolaiv, told AFP after a missile and a rocket fell in her neighborhood. “It happened in a second and, in a second, it was dark in the house,” testified one of his neighbors, Oleksandre Tchoula, 66, whose wife had just been killed.
In the Kherson region, a former Ukrainian MP who joined the Russian occupation forces, Alexei Kovalev, was shot dead in his home, according to Russian investigators. “It’s not a war of the (Vladimir) Putin regime, it’s a war of Russia against Ukraine,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hammered Monday on the sidelines of the Bled strategic forum in Slovenia. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has for his part made it known that he will once again welcome his counterparts from the allied countries to Germany on September 8 to organize Western support for Ukrainian military capabilities.
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IAEA visit about to start in Zaporizhia
On the same day, the IAEA announced that it was sending a mission, led by its director general Rafael Grossi, to the Zaporijia power plant in southern Ukraine. Expected Monday in kyiv by the Ukrainian authorities, she must visit these facilities “later this week”. Rafael Grossi had been asking for several months to be able to go there, warning of the “real risk of nuclear catastrophe” after a series of bombings for which the two belligerents held each other responsible.
In a statement on Monday, the G7 countries, “deeply concerned” about the risk of a nuclear accident in Zaporizhia, called for full freedom of movement to be granted to international experts. “Russia must ensure safe and unimpeded access” to the IAEA team, a US official claimed shortly after, for whom the “safest” option would be a “controlled” shutdown of the reactors.
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In particular accused by kyiv of having positioned artillery pieces on the site of the power plant to shell the positions of its army, Russia on the same day deemed this inspection “necessary”, through the voice of Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov. The Ukrainian operator Energoatom nevertheless claimed that the Russian soldiers “put pressure on the staff of the plant to prevent them from revealing evidence of the occupier’s crimes”. “Ukrainian sovereignty over this plant must not be disputed,” said French President Emmanuel Macron.
The town hall of Zaporijjia said since August 23 has been distributing iodine tablets to the population within a radius of 50 km around the plant, to be taken in the event of a radiation alert. On Monday, the townspeople were preparing for the worst. “You know, we experienced the Chernobyl accident, the threat was already very great, but we survived, thank God. Today, the threat is total, 100%,” commented Kateryna, a retiree.