President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday that the Ukrainian army had recaptured nearly 6,000 km2 of territory controlled by Russian forces during a counteroffensive in early September.
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“Since the beginning of September, our soldiers have already liberated 6,000 km2 of Ukrainian territory in the east and south, and we are still making progress,” Zelensky said in a video posted on social media.
The president thanked the three military units separately, praising their “courage” in the operation, which, if coordinated, would have resulted in Russian forces making huge territorial gains from the outskirts of Kyiv to Ukraine in late March.
The Ukrainian military first announced a counteroffensive in the south, a lightning advance last week in the Kharkiv region in the country’s northeast that borders Russia, forcing Moscow’s troops to retreat to other positions.
It claims victory in the Kherson region (in the south), which borders Russia-occupied and annexed Crimea, and in the east, which has been controlled by pro-Russian separatists since 2014.
