Kremlin-installed officials said on Monday that a Ukrainian counterattack, which has already reclaimed thousands of miles, is penetrating Russian lines in the newly annexed southern Kherson region.
Vladimir Saldo, the chief of the Kherson province hand-picked by the Russians, said on state television that several settlements had been overrun 70 miles northeast of Kherson on the Dnieper River.
“He’s tense, let’s put it this way,” Saldo said in a translation of her books. Reuters.
“With superior tank units … the enemy managed to penetrate the depths of our defense,” Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in his daily briefing. But Konashenkov said Russian forces had retreated to a defensive position and “continue to inflict heavy fire damage” on Kyiv’s forces.
The deputy head of the regional administration, Kirill Strimosov, said that Ukrainian forces “penetrated a little deeper”, but wrote on Telegram that “everything is under control.”
Ukraine also reported progress in Luhansk province days after retaking the strategic eastern city of Lyman in Donetsk province near the border with Luhansk.
Developments:
Ihor Murashov, director general of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya province, was released from Russian custody after he was arrested while leaving the facility on Friday, according to Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The Ukrainian presidential office said on Monday that the Russian bombing of eight Ukrainian regions during the past 24 hours had killed two civilians and wounded 14 others.
Britain’s Defense Secretary, Ben Wallace, said the Northern European Joint Expeditionary Force group will meet on Monday to discuss the safety of undersea pipelines and cables after explosions destroyed two natural gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea.
Petraeus: US and NATO allies will “kill” Russian forces if they use nuclear weapons
There’s an important fact to bear in mind amid the concern raised by Russian President Vladimir Putin about his nuclear threats: Former CIA Director David Petraeus says the United States and its allies will crush Russian forces.
Petraeus, a retired four-star general, said that if Putin used nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the United States would lead a collective response with other NATO countries “that would eliminate every Russian conventional force we can see and identify on the battlefield in Ukraine and Also in Crimea and every ship in the Black Sea. ”
Petraeus made the remarks during an interview Sunday with ABC’s “This Week” in which he said that Putin is not only losing the war, but that “the reality of the battlefield he’s facing is, I think, irreversible.” He added, “There is nothing for him. She could do at this point… and the losses were staggering.”
Petraeus noted that he did not speak with US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who revealed last week that the Biden administration had made clear to the Russians that they would face “catastrophic consequences” if they used nuclear weapons against Ukraine.
Although Ukraine is not a member of NATO, Petraeus said a Russian nuclear attack would be so “horrific” that the United States and its allies would have no choice but to respond militarily.
And he said, “But it’s not expanding, it’s no — it’s not nuclear. You don’t want, again, to go into a nuclear escalation here. But you have to prove that this cannot be acceptable in any way.”
Russian parliament approves annexation
The lower house of the Russian parliament on Monday approved treaties for four regions of Ukraine to join Russia. The unanimous vote in the State Duma came days after President Vladimir Putin and the leaders of the four Russian-appointed regions signed the treaties. The Senate is expected to follow suit on Tuesday. Ukraine, the United States, and its Western allies rejected the annexations as having no legal validity.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the entire Donetsk and Luhansk regions that make up the Donbass would join Russia. He said that the boundaries of the other two regions – Zaporizhzhya and Kherson – had not been determined.
The Kremlin ignores criticism of the leadership
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the regional leader’s criticism of the Russian military leadership was motivated by emotion. Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed leader of Chechnya, harshly criticized the Russian military leadership over the weekend, saying the Russian withdrawal from the eastern Ukrainian city of Lyman was the result of incompetence and nepotism. Kadyrov wrote in Telegram that the Russian military commander, Colonel Alexander Lapin, should be expelled.
“If I had had my way, I would have lowered Labin’s rank to the soldier, deprived him of his award and sent him to the front line to wash his shame with a rifle in his hands,” Kadyrov wrote.
Kadyrov also advocated the use of low-yield nuclear weapons in Ukraine to reverse the momentum of the war, which has certainly been to Ukraine’s advantage in recent weeks.
Contributing: The Associated Press
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