Times-Herald

Ukraine claws back more territory

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian forces scored more gains in their counteroffensive across a broad front Monday, advancing in the very areas Russia is trying to annex and challenging its effort to bolster its military with fresh troops and its threats to defend incorporated areas by all means, including with nuclear weapons.

In their latest breakthrough, Ukrainian forces penetrated Moscow's defenses in the strategic southern Kherson region, one of the four areas in Ukraine that Russia is absorbing.

Ukraine's advances have become so apparent that even Russia's Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov, who usually focuses on his own military's successes and the enemy's losses, was forced to acknowledge it.

"With numerically superior tank units in the direction of Zolota Balka and Oleksandrivka, the enemy managed to forge deep into our defenses," Konashenkov said, referring to two towns. He coupled that with claims that Russian forces inflicted heavy losses on Ukraine's military.

Ukrainian forces have struggled to retake the Kherson region, in contrast to its breakout offensive in the northeast around the country's second-largest city of Kharkiv that began last month.

As the front lines shifted, the political theater in Moscow continued, with Russia's lower house of parliament rubberstamping annexation treaties for Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk to join Russia. The upper house will follow suit Tuesday as a culmination of annexation "referendums" the Kremlin orchestrated last week — actions the U.N. chief and Western nations have said are illegal.

Russia's moves to incorporate the Ukrainian regions, as well as President Vladimir Putin's effort to mobilize more troops, have been done so hastily that government officials have struggled to explain and implement them. Putin admitted last week that some of the men called up had been mistakenly selected and ordered them sent home. On Monday, the issue was even more basic: Exactly what areas of Ukraine is Russia trying to incorporate?

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Donetsk and Luhansk are joining Russia with the administrative borders that existed before a conflict erupted there in 2014 between proRussian separatists and Ukrainian forces. But he added that the borders of the two other regions — Zaporizhzhia and Kherson — are undecided.

"We will continue to discuss that with residents of those regions," Peskov said, without elaborating.

A senior Russian lawmaker offered a different view. Pavel Krasheninnikov said Zaporizhzhia will be absorbed within its "administrative borders," meaning Moscow will incorporate parts of the region still under Kyiv's control. He said similar logic will apply to Kherson, but that Russia will include two districts of the neighboring Mykolaiv region that Moscow holds.

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2022-10-03T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-10-03T07:00:00.0000000Z

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