Published: Less than 40 min ago
The soldiers raise the Ukrainian flag in liberated villages at the front.
They are also said to have knocked out ramps for Putin’s “panic bombs” and blown up railways.
– It is important that the Russians feel that they do not have much time left, says Zelenskyj about the launched counter-offensive.
The three villages along the front line in western Donetsk are said to have been retaken by Ukrainian troops during the last day’s fighting.
“The invaders held out to the last man, but they could not resist the attack,” writes Ukraine’s army on Facebook to photos of a Ukrainian flag being put up in a window in the ruins of a building in the village of Blahodatne.
Fierce fighting in the east
The soldiers of another brigade filmed themselves in the village of Neskuchne.
A third village is said to have fallen during Sunday morning, writes The Guardian.
The villages along the front are the first places Ukraine has officially declared liberated since the counter-offensive was launched a week ago.
They are located near the town of Velyka Novosilka, which was used as a starting point for the offensive in Donetsk.
But the Ukrainian troops are still a good distance from the Russian defense lines, where they have dug in, mined and built large barriers.
The fighting in eastern Ukraine in recent days is described as fierce.
Whipped out the panic weapon
– The enemy continues to focus on fully occupying Donetsk and Luhansk. Fierce fighting continues, the Ukrainian military leadership said in a statement.
The offensive is also underway in the strategically important region of Zaporizhzhya in southeastern Ukraine.
In two sabotage operations, railway lines connecting Zaporizhzhya with the occupied peninsula of Crimea have been blown up.
In another Ukrainian advance in Zaporizhzhya, two Russian launchers for dreaded thermobaric bombs, also known as vacuum bombs, have been knocked out.
This is stated by the military analysts in ISW in their latest analysis of the situation in Ukraine.
– You are now getting formidable weapons that surpass anything in the Western world and that create panic among our enemies, a Russian commander told paratroopers when the system was used for the first time in Ukraine writes Newsweek.
Making it difficult for the Russians
The TOS-1A thermobaric weapon system creates huge explosions using the oxygen in the surrounding air.
– The pressure wave means that there is not much left of a human body. They have a charge in the projectile that disperses flammable liquid when it hits the target. When it detonates, you get a gigantic overpressure, defense expert Jörgen Elfving has said.
The weapon creates “great devastation” but is a “limited resource”, ISW states.
According to military analyst David Hambling, the launchers are a high priority for Russia in its strategy to push back against Ukraine, but only have access to a smaller number, writes Newsweek.
“Successful attacks against the TOS-1A system have the potential to hamper the Russian ability to cope with the defense,” ISW writes.
“Not much time left”
On Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy commented for the first time on the launched counter-offensive.
During a press conference in Kiev, he received questions from reporters due to Putin saying that Ukraine’s counter-offensive “so far has not achieved any success”.
– It is interesting that Putin is talking about our counter-offensive. It is important that the Russians feel our counteroffensive, feel that they don’t have much time left, Zelenskyy said.
– The counter-offensive and defense efforts are ongoing in Ukraine, but I will not state in detail what stage we are in.