🔄 Click here to see the most recent posts
4 posts
7 mins ago
'Everyone was fleeing': Ukrainians from Kharkiv villages describe Russia's withdrawal
By Saskya Vandoorne, Melissa Bell, Olga Voitovych, Victoria Butenko, William Bonnett
Ukrainian soldiers hold a flag on a roof in Kupiansk, Ukraine, in this image obtained from social media posted on September 10, 2022.
Ukraine has claimed major territorial gains since the beginning of the month, much of which is believed to be in the Kharkiv region.
This has given the impression that Ukraine is effortlessly pushing Russian forces back from territory they have controlled for more than six months.
The truth, inevitably for a war zone, is much less clear.
CNN had exclusive access to Kupiansk, just a day after footage emerged showing soldiers raising the Ukrainian flag on the roof of the city's municipal building.
Far from being a city under full Ukrainian control, CNN found itself a city that is still bitterly fought over.
Further west, calm has been completely restored in some towns, such as in Zaliznychne in the Kharkiv region, liberated last week, as the eastern counter-offensive gathered pace.
There, the fight seems to have been much less painful.
"I didn't even expect it to be so fast," says Oleksandr Verbytsky, 66, who witnessed the Russians retreat.
"I went to the store and when I came back, everyone was fleeing. The Russians ran through the cemetery to flee. Can you imagine?"
9 mins ago
Ukrainian officials say Kharkiv is without power due to 'insidious shelling' by Russian forces
By Olga Voitovych, Yulia Kesaieva
A street is dark in Kharkiv, Ukraine.
(Photo: Leo Correa/AP)
The entire Kharkiv region is without electricity, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, said on Tuesday, citing "insidious shelling by Russian [forces]" as the cause.
"It has just been reported that Kharkiv and the region are without electricity. The reserve line that supplied the settlements failed. Now all forces are heading to eliminate the problem. These are the consequences of the insidious bombing by the Russians the day before ( Monday)," Tymoshenko said on Telegram.
Local authorities in Derhachi, northeast of the city of Kharkiv, also reported power outages in the city center and nearby towns.
10 mins ago
Blinken describes as "encouraging" the recent advances of the Ukrainians in the Northeast region
By Ellie Kaufmann
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said recent advances by Ukrainian forces in the northeastern region of his country, retaking land captured by the Russians, were "encouraging", but added that "it is still early days". .
"So I think it would be a mistake to predict exactly where this is going to go, and when and how it's going to go, but clearly we've seen significant progress by the Ukrainians, particularly in the northeast," Blinken told a news conference in Mexico City this Monday.
Blinken attributed this progress both to "support" provided by the US and other allies, "but above all it is the product of the extraordinary courage and resilience of the Ukrainian armed forces and the Ukrainian people."
"Ukraine does not belong to Russia, it belongs to the Ukrainian people, and that is the biggest differentiating factor, as I said, that I think we are seeing now. All that being said, it is too early to know exactly where this is all going," he added. .
Blinken warned that Russia still maintains forces and weapons in Ukraine that they continue to use "indiscriminately," but said he was encouraged by recent developments.
"The brutalization of the country continues by the Russian aggressor, and unfortunately the prospect of this continues, but I think it's encouraging to see the progress Ukraine has made," he said.
12 mins ago
Zelensky says 6,000 sq km of Ukraine has been liberated since early September
By Tim Lister
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky issues a harsh warning to Russia.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukrainian forces had retaken 6,000 square kilometers of land in the east and south of the country since the beginning of the month and called for more international pressure to isolate Russia.
According to analysts, that would equate to nearly 10% of the territory lost to the Russian offensive since it began in February.
In his daily video message, Zelensky also asked: "Why [Russia] can wage war so cruelly and cynically? There is only one reason: insufficient pressure on Russia. The response to terror of this state is insufficient." .
One answer, he said, was to "increase aid to Ukraine and, above all, speed up the provision of air defense systems."
The United States rehearsed Ukraine's war strategy before it launched its counteroffensive and encouraged a more limited mission
"There is still no official recognition of Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism. Citizens of the terrorist state can still go to Europe to rest and shop, they can still get European visas, and no one knows if there are executioners or murderers among them who have just return from the occupied territory of Ukraine," Zelensky said.
Some European countries have passed tourist visa bans for Russians;
most don't.
Zelensky said that Russia was to blame for the "energy terror. Residents of many countries of the world are suffering due to the painful increase in the prices of energy resources, electricity, heat. Russia does it deliberately. It deliberately destabilizes the energy market. gas in Europe.
He added:
"Yesterday and today, the Russian army hit Ukraine's energy infrastructure. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians found themselves in the dark, without electricity. Houses, hospitals, schools, community infrastructure... The Russian missiles hit precisely the objects that were not they have absolutely nothing to do with the infrastructure of the Armed Forces of our country.”
The president called the attacks on Ukrainian power supplies "a sign of the desperation of those who invented this war. This is how they react to the defeat of Russian forces in the Kharkiv region."
war in ukraine
