September 12 (UPI) – Ukrainian officials said Monday that their forces had captured more territory as part of their lightning counteroffensive in the country’s northeast than many, Moscow added.
Ukrainian officials said on Monday they had captured villages and pushed Russian troops back to the northeastern border.
So far, the Ukrainian army has regained many kilometers after the counteroffensive of Russian forces and has led Moscow to completely withdraw its troops from certain regions in recent days.
Analysts say the Russian military would possibly have been too focused on other regions, such as Kherson in the southeast, to see what was happening around Kharkiv.
The Russian army showed territorial losses near Kharkiv and published a map indicating that its forces had abandoned almost all their positions in the region and retreated 10 miles east of Izium, a city Moscow used as a critical operational base.
Russian forces would have been incredibly outnumbered by the unexpected counteroffensive.
Russian infantrymen temporarily regrouped and retaliated with airstrikes and long-range missile movements that cut off power and utilities in parts of the region.
Meanwhile, U. S. officials had hoped the counteroffensive would spell a major setback for Russian forces in the Eastern European country, but also expressed doubts about the Ukrainian military’s ability to boost it in the long term.