Ukraine officials make claim Russian volunteers are refusing to serve in combat conditions after their counter-offensive
The military command of the Russian federation has stopped sending new units into Ukraine following a dramatic Ukrainian counter-offensive that has reshaped the war and left Moscow reeling, the general staff of the armed forces of Ukraine said Monday.
“The military command of the Russian federation has suspended the sending of new, already formed units into the territory of Ukraine,” officials said on the general staff Facebook page.
“The current situation in the theatre of operations and distrust of the higher command forced a large number of volunteers to categorically refuse the prospect of service in combat conditions,” the statement continued. “The situation is affected by information about the actual number of dead, while losses from private military companies and those mobilised from temporarily occupied territories are not taken into account. The situation worsens due to the general attitude toward their own wounded. In particular, in Russian hospitals, diagnoses and the nature of combat injuries are deliberately simplified and no time is given for rehabilitation in order to quickly return servicemen to the combat zone.”
This information could not be corroborated. The Kremlin has yet to respond.
Thank you for reading today’s Ukraine live blog. We will have more updates tomorrow. It is nearly 1am in Ukraine here’s what has happened in the ongoing conflict today.
Since the beginning of September, Ukrainian forces have taken back 2,400 square miles of Russian-held territory, Reuters reports.
Russian troops have left behind stockpiles of ammunition and other supplies following Ukraine’s days long counteroffensive in Kharkiv Oblast, the Kyiv Independent reports.
The United States assesses that Russia has largely ceded its gains near Kharkiv and many retreating Russian soldiers have exited Ukraine, moving over the border back into Russia, a senior US military official said on Monday, Reuters reports.
The Ukrainian authorities have said they are capturing so many prisoners of war among Russian soldiers retreating from occupation of the north-eastern region that the country is running out of space to put them, the Associated Press reports.
The military command of the Russian federation has stopped sending new units into Ukraine following a dramatic Ukrainian counter-offensive that has reshaped the war and left Moscow reeling, the general staff of the armed forces of Ukraine said Monday.
Municipal deputies from 18 districts of Moscow and St Petersburg have signed a public statement demanding that Vladimir Putin resign. “We, the municipal deputies of Russia, believe that the actions of President Vladimir Putin harm the future of Russia and its citizens.”
Ukraine is looking for tens of thousands of children in the country’s orphanage system who have been displaced by the months long war happening in the country, according to an in-depth investigation by Reuters.
The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) says they have lost track of that at least 26,000 children who, instead of being moved within Ukraine’s orphanage system, were reunited with their parents and legal guardians once Russia invaded Ukraine in February. The United Nations worry that the lack record-keeping and follow-up by Ukrainian officials can put orphaned children at risk of violence, exploitation and human trafficking.
.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Ukraine’s National Social Service (NSS), tasked with overseeing children’s rights, said it had done “everything possible to preserve the lives and health of children and prevent them from being left in the epicenter of hostilities.” It said that support for families is provided by specialized social services, and that it was working to resolve problems,” Reuters reports.
Read the rest of this investigation here.
Since the beginning of September, Ukrainian forces have taken back 2,400 square miles of Russian-held territory, Reuters reports.
.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Since the beginning of September and up to today, our fighters have liberated more than 6,000 square km (2,400 sq. miles) of the territory of Ukraine in the south and in the east,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video. “The advances of our forces continue.”
Russian troops have left behind stockpiles of ammunition and other supplies following Ukraine’s days long counteroffensive in Kharkiv Oblast, the Kyiv Independent reports.
More from the story:
.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Liberated Kharkiv Oblast residents from Zaliznychne told the Washington Post that Russians dropped their weapons on the ground when they fled, with some jumping onto stolen bicycles, trying to pass for locals.
Vehicular losses were also great. Many pictures of Kharkiv Oblast showed abandoned Russian assets ranging from main battle tanks to engineering vehicles, self-propelled mortars and supply trucks.
Analyst Jakub Janovsky estimated that Russia lost a total of 336 fighting vehicles in the country from Sept. 7-11. A full 102 vehicles were lost on Sept. 11 alone, most of them in Kharkiv Oblast.”
Read the rest of Kyiv Independent’s reporting here.
Lend-lease from Russians
Ukrainian soldiers showed the full Russian ammunition depot that they captured in the Kharkiv direction during the offensive. The "gift" Russian left have been already loaded for the proper use in the next battles. pic.twitter.com/oEO0pF5jJE
It’s just after 11 PM in Ukraine. I am Abené Clayton and will be taking over the blog for the next hour. The impact of recent counteroffensive operations seems to have swung the pendulum in favor of Ukrainian forces, though it remains unclear how much their gains will impact the ultimate trajectory of the more than six month conflict.
Other notable happenings from the war include:
The United States assesses that Russia has largely ceded its gains near Kharkiv and many retreating Russian soldiers have exited Ukraine, moving over the border back into Russia, a senior US military official said on Monday, Reuters reports.
The Ukrainian authorities have said they are capturing so many prisoners of war among Russian soldiers retreating from occupation of the north-eastern region that the country is running out of space to put them, the Associated Press reports.
The military command of the Russian federation has stopped sending new units into Ukraine following a dramatic Ukrainian counter-offensive that has reshaped the war and left Moscow reeling, the general staff of the armed forces of Ukraine said Monday.
Municipal deputies from 18 districts of Moscow and St Petersburg have signed a public statement demanding that Vladimir Putin resign. “We, the municipal deputies of Russia, believe that the actions of President V. V. Putin harm the future of Russia and its citizens.
The United States assesses that Russia has largely ceded its gains near Kharkiv and many retreating Russian soldiers have exited Ukraine, moving over the border back into Russia, a senior US military official said on Monday, Reuters reports.
.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Overall we assess the Ukrainians are making progress as they fight to liberate and reclaim territory in the south and east.
On the ground in the vicinity of Kharkiv we assess that Russian forces have largely ceded their gains to the Ukrainians and have withdrawn to the north and east. Many of these forces have moved over the border into Russia,” the US military official told reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity, without offering a number.
We’ll bring more details on this shortly.
NEW: Russia's low troop morale, logistics issues, and the inability to sustain operations helped contribute to losses of occupied territory to Ukraine in Kharkiv region in recent days: senior U.S. military official
Here’s another voice.
#Ukraine has presented #Russia|n forces w/"multiple dilemmas" per senior US military official
Russia's ceding ground in #Kharkiv area "indicative" of morale & other issues, per the official
The Ukrainian authorities have said they are capturing so many prisoners of war among Russian soldiers retreating from occupation of the north-eastern region that the country is running out of space to put them, the Associated Press reports.
As Ukrainian troops retook a wide swath of territory from Russia on Monday, pushing all the way back to the north-eastern border in some places, it was not yet clear if the Ukrainian blitz could signal a turning point in the war.
Momentum has switched back and forth before, but rarely with such a big and sudden swing.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovich did not specify the number of Russian prisoners but said the POWs would be exchanged for Ukrainian service members held by Moscow.
Military intelligence spokesman Andrey Yusov said the captured troops included “significant” numbers of Russian officers.
Ukraine’s deputy interior minister accused fleeing Russian forces of burning official documents and concealing bodies in an attempt to cover up rights violations in the areas they controlled until last week.
Here is some footage with subtitles (and a warning of blurred images of bodies) tweeted by the UK’s Sky News from its reporter in Zaliznychne, which the channel explains is a rural village that was occupied after the Russian invasion and until three days ago.
Sky's Deborah Haynes was granted access to Zaliznychne, a rural village that three days earlier was occupied by the Russians.
Residents there spoke of relief that they have gone – and gave rare testimony about what has been unfolding.
More here: https://t.co/X3flQUBL0r pic.twitter.com/XOy6EdtBQC
There’s more detail from Ukraine’s advance to the Russian border, as reported by the Associated Press, quoting residents of the Kharkiv region.
“The Russians were here in the morning. Then at noon, they suddenly started shouting wildly and began to run away, charging off in tanks and armored vehicles,” Dmytro Hrushchenko, a resident of Zaliznychne, a small town near the eastern front line, said.
Oleh Syniehubov, the governor of Kharkiv region, said that “in some areas of the front, our defenders reached the state border with the Russian Federation”.
And a spokesman for Ukrainian military intelligence said Russian troops were surrendering en masse as “they understand the hopelessness of their situation”.
Video taken by the Ukrainian military showed soldiers raising the Ukrainian flag over battle-damaged buildings. In one scene, a fighter wiped his boots on a Russian flag on the ground. Other videos showed Ukrainians inspecting the wreckage of Russian military vehicles, including tanks.
Efforts to disarm landmines were under way in the recaptured areas, along with a search for any remaining Russian troops, Ukrainian military officials said.
Here’s the Guardian’s editorial on the counteroffensive in Ukraine: “A stunning breakthrough that could be a game-changer for Kyiv”.
Read more here:
It is 9pm in Ukraine.
The military command of the Russian federation has stopped sending new units into Ukraine following a dramatic Ukrainian counter-offensive that has reshaped the war and left Moscow reeling, the general staff of the armed forces of Ukraine said Monday. This information could not be corroborated. The Kremlin has yet to respond.
Municipal deputies from 18 districts of Moscow and St Petersburg have signed a public statement demanding that Vladimir Putin resign. “We, the municipal deputies of Russia, believe that the actions of President V. V. Putin harm the future of Russia and its citizens. We demand the resignation of Vladimir Putin from the post of President of the Russian Federation!” read the statement published by Ksenia Torstrem, the municipal deputy of the Semenovsky district of St Petersburg.
Ukrainian forces have gained significant ground these past few days, particularly in the Kharkiv region. Today, it appears they continued to make great strides, reaching the border at one more location in the Kharkiv region: near the village of Ternova.
Meanwhile, just today, Russia launched five missile strikes, more than 10 airstrikes and more than 20 attacks from rocket systems on military and civilian targets in Ukraine, the general staff of the country’s armed forces said. After knocking out the power and water supply once again to the Kharkiv region with earlier missile strikes, Russian forces continued its offensive on the city, this time directing its shelling toward the residential Nemyshlyansky district.
Authorities found the bodies of four tortured civilians in the recently recaptured Kharkiv town of Zaliznychne, the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office said. The discovery is an echo of the war crimes uncovered after Ukrainian troops retook Bucha and other areas around Kyiv.
Russian soldiers engaged in mass looting as they fled Kharkiv oblast, the defence intelligence unit of Ukraine’s defence ministry said. Soldiers loaded “generators, telephones and computers taken from Ukrainians into their cars. Rare cases of school robberies have been recorded, even horizontal bars and sports equipment were taken out of gyms”.
Municipal deputies from 18 districts of Moscow and St Petersburg have signed a public statement demanding that Vladimir Putin resign.
“We, the municipal deputies of Russia, believe that the actions of President V. V. Putin harm the future of Russia and its citizens. We demand the resignation of Vladimir Putin from the post of President of the Russian Federation!” read the statement published by Ksenia Torstrem, the municipal deputy of the Semenovsky district of St Petersburg.
“It is difficult to speak out publicly because of the repression. Therefore, we came up with such a concise text,” Torstrem told the The Insider. “Deputies are not yet forbidden to have an opinion. And it is also not forbidden to speak for the resignation of the president. He is not a monarch, but a hired worker, receives a salary from our taxes.
“Our function is to represent the interests of the people, and we see that the people are not satisfied. And our people are the source of power according to the Constitution. I personally do not understand the motives of Vladimir Putin’s actions. I think you can’t be in power for so long.”
NEW: Deputies from 18 Moscow & Petersburg regions said Putin should resign as he is ‘harming the future of Russia & its citizens.’ It is another rumble of discontent. Yesterday Putin ally Kadyrov criticised Russia’s army for ‘astounding’ losses in Ukraine https://t.co/yJPXHDBMyU
It’s too early to say whether this poses a real threat to Putin’s power. Most Russians get news from state TV & have no idea what is really going on in Ukraine but will be interesting to see what happens if criticism from Putin allies & opponents continues & living standards fall https://t.co/oyGwOXwXoJ
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