The Ukrainian army is still advancing in the north-east. Within a few days she was able to liberate thousands of square kilometers. Meanwhile, the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant was completely taken off the grid. You can find all the latest news about the war in Ukraine in the ticker.
8:06 p.m .: There were power outages in large parts of eastern Ukraine on Sunday evening. Representatives of the Ukrainian authorities in the city of Kharkiv and in the Donetsk and Sumy regions published corresponding messages in online networks, AFP reporters reported power outages in the city of Kramatorsk.
Ukrainian authorities blame Russian attacks for the power outages. According to the AFP news agency, the Russians attacked critical infrastructure such as electricity and water works. In Kharkiv, the Russians attacked the country’s second largest thermal power plant, according to the city’s mayor, Ihor Terekhov.
“Russian terrorists remain terrorists and attack critical infrastructure. No military goals, just the goal of leaving people without light and heat,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on Twitter on Sunday evening.
The governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region accused Russian troops of attacking “energy infrastructure” to avenge their “defeat on the battlefield”. In the past few days, the Ukrainian army had recaptured numerous towns and cities in eastern Ukraine from Russian troops.
4:01 p.m .: The Ukrainian army launched a counter-offensive in the Kharkiv region earlier in the week and has since recaptured an area of 3,000 square kilometers. This was announced by the Ukrainian commander-in-chief Valery Zaluzhnyi on Sunday. “Since the beginning of September, more than 3,000 square kilometers have been under Ukrainian control again,” said Zaluzhnyi.
3:12 p.m .: After Ukrainian counterattacks, Russian troops have cleared most of the Kharkiv region in northeastern Ukraine. According to maps shown by the Defense Ministry in Moscow on Sunday, Russian units completely cleared the north of the area bordering Russia and retreated to a line behind the Oskil and Siverskyi Donets rivers.
The withdrawal was not commented on separately. Earlier there was talk of “regrouping” to strengthen units in Donetsk region. At the beginning of the week, the Russian army still controlled about a third of the Kharkiv region.
1:16 p.m .: After successful Ukrainian counterattacks, the Russian troops are apparently also withdrawing from the northern part of the Kharkiv region. According to media reports on Sunday, residents in the village of Kosacha Lopan, 30 kilometers north of the metropolis of Kharkiv, hoisted the Ukrainian flag. The Russian units had previously left the site, almost four kilometers from the Russian border, which had been occupied at the beginning of the Russian war of aggression at the end of February.
On Saturday Moscow had already announced the withdrawal of troops from strategic cities in the south of the Kharkiv region. Moscow officially justified the withdrawal by saying that units in the neighboring Donetsk region should be reinforced. However, many experts assume that the Russians have recently come under so much pressure in view of the Ukrainian advance in the Kharkiv region that they have decided to flee.
11:52 a.m .: According to US experts, the Ukrainian soldiers have regained more territory within five days than the Russian troops have occupied since April. “The liberation of Izyum will be Ukraine’s greatest military success since the victory in the Battle of Kyiv in March,” said the Institute for the Study of the War (ISW) in its analysis of the situation on Sunday. As a result, Russia’s planned advance on the Donbass from the north failed, the experts said.
Meanwhile, after the rapid advance of the Ukrainian military in the north-east of the country, not all Russian troops managed to retreat, according to information from Kyiv. “In the Kharkiv area, enemy units from the 3rd Motorized Rifle Division of the 20th Army are cut off from the supply routes and are in a panic,” the Ukrainian General Staff said in its situation report on Sunday. In addition, the losses on the Russian side were high, with 400 dead in one day. The information has not been independently verified.
08:37: After the withdrawal of Russian troops from several occupied Ukrainian towns, fighting in the area continues, according to British military experts. This emerges from the intelligence update from the Ministry of Defense in London on the Ukraine war on Sunday. “In the past 24 hours, Ukrainian forces have continued to make significant advances in the Kharkiv region,” the statement said on Twitter. Russia has withdrawn units from the area, “but fighting continues around the strategically important cities of Kupyansk and Izyum.”
8:21 a.m .: According to Ukrainian information, the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant has been completely disconnected from the power grid and is being shut down. “It was decided to put reactor block number six in the safest state – the cold state,” said the Ukrainian nuclear agency Enerhoatom on its Telegram channel on Sunday. The nuclear power plant has been under fire for weeks. Russia and Ukraine blame each other for the escalation of the situation around the nuclear facility.
According to Enerhoatom, the nuclear power plant has been operating in “island mode” for the last three days, which means that it only produces electricity for its own use, because all connection lines to the Ukrainian power grid have been interrupted by the shelling. On Saturday evening, a line to the power grid was restored. As a result, it was decided to supply the nuclear power plant via this line and to shut down the last functioning reactor block and cool it down to a safe cold state.
Already in August there was an emergency shutdown of the power plant. This was preceded by a shelling of the plant, for which both warring parties blame each other. The information cannot be verified independently.
9:47 p.m .: As part of its counter-offensive, according to President Volodymyr Selenskyj, the Ukrainian army has recaptured around 2000 square kilometers in the past ten days in areas previously occupied by Russia.
In his video speech on Saturday evening, Zelenskyy thanked all the soldiers who were involved in the recaptures in the Kharkiv region in eastern Ukraine. Earlier in the day, Russia’s military announced a withdrawal from the region. The Russian army made a good decision by fleeing, said the Ukrainian head of state: “Occupiers have no place in Ukraine and will not have one.”
8:03 p.m .: According to its own statements, Ukraine destroyed parts of the Russian air force worth 155 million euros within three days. This was reported by the Ukrainian Air Force Command. The command also states that, among other things, six Ch-101 cruise missiles, two Ch-59 airborne standoff weapons, two Kamov Ka-52 Alligator attack helicopters, one Mi-24 attack helicopter, two Sukhoi Su-25 ground attack aircraft and ten Orlan-10 reconnaissance drones were destroyed be.
7:25 p.m .: The Russian front is collapsing – the Ukrainian military has now recaptured an area of more than 1000 square kilometers in the east of the country. More than half a year after the start of the Russian war of aggression, Ukraine claimed to have reconquered the strategically important city of Kupyansk in the eastern region of Kharkiv. As a railway junction, it is particularly important for Russian logistics.
The spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, Igor Konashenkov, said in Moscow on Saturday that soldiers should be withdrawn from the strategically important city of Izyum – which, according to Ukrainian information, was also recaptured.
The military governor of the eastern Ukrainian region of Luhansk, Serhiy Hajday, later reported that their own troops were also advancing there and had already advanced to the outskirts of Lysychansk. Lysychansk was the last major city in the Luhansk region to be conquered by the Russian army in July.
You can read more reports on the Ukraine conflict on the following pages.
