IZIUM – Ukraine extended its hold on recently recaptured territory on Monday as troops marched farther east into areas abandoned by Russia, paving the way for a potential assault on occupation forces in the Donbas region.
In a sign of nervousness from a Moscow-backed administration in Donbas about the success of Ukraine’s offensive, its leader called for urgent referendums on the region becoming part of Russia.
“The occupiers are clearly in a panic,” Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a regular televised address, adding that he was now focused on “speed” in liberated areas.
“The speed at which our troops are moving. The speed in restoring normal life,” said Zelenskiy, who also hinted he would use a video address to the U.N. General Assembly this week to call on the international community to get weapons and aid to Ukraine more quickly.
Serhiy Gaidai, Ukrainian governor of Luhansk, a province in the Donbas now under control of Russian troops, said Ukrainian forces had regained control of the town of Kreminna and the village of Bilohorivka close to the city of Lysychansk, which fell after weeks of grinding battles in July.
“Luhansk region is right next door. De-occupation is not far away,” he wrote on Telegram.
Ukrainian troops also crossed the Oskil River at the weekend, the Ukrainian Armed Forces wrote on Telegram late on Sunday, in another important milestone for the counter-offensive in the northeastern Kharkiv region. The river flows south into the Siversky Donets, which snakes through the Donbas, the main focus of Russia’s invasion.
Further beyond lies Luhansk, a base for Russia’s separatist proxies since 2014 and fully in Russian hands since July after some of the war’s bloodiest battles.
A Russia-backed separatist official in Donetsk, the other province in Donbas, said 13 people were killed in artillery shelling on Monday in the city of Donetsk.
Reuters could not independently verify either side’s battlefield reports.
Ukraine is still assessing what took place in areas that were under Russian control for months before a rout of Russian troops dramatically changed the dynamic of the war earlier this month.
At a vast makeshift cemetery in woods near the recaptured town of Izium, Ukrainian forensic experts have so far dug up 146 bodies buried without coffins, Kharkiv regional governor Oleh Synehubov said on Monday. Some 450 graves have been found at the site, Zelenskiy has said.
