Ukraine’s armed forces have launched a crucial counter-attack in the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson, following a furious warning from Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to Russia’s occupying troops.
There is “heavy fighting” in “almost the entire territory” occupied by the Russian military, Ukraine’s government said on Tuesday.
“Powerful explosions continued throughout the day and throughout the night in Kherson region,” the president’s office said in a morning update.
“Heavy fighting is taking place in almost the entire territory of the Kherson region. The armed forces of Ukraine launched offensive actions in various directions,” it added.
Regional officials said the long-awaited offensive was “the beginning of the de-occupation of Kherson region”.
It came as Zelensky vowed that Ukrainian troops would chase the Russian army “to the border” in his nightly wartime address.
“If they want to survive — it’s time for the Russian military to run away. Go home,” he said.
“Ukraine is regaining its own. And it will regain the Kharkiv region, Luhansk region, Donetsk region, Zaporizhzhia region, Kherson region, Crimea.”
In an intelligence note, Britain’s defence ministry said although it was “not yet possible to confirm the extent of Ukrainian advances”, its army had increased “artillery fire in front line sectors across southern Ukraine”.
It added that it was using “long-range precision strikes to disrupt Russian resupply” lines.
At least four people were killed on Tuesday as Russian shelling hit the centre of Ukraine’s second city of Kharkiv.
“The Russian occupiers shelled the central districts of Kharkiv,” Oleg Synegubov said on Telegram, giving a toll of four dead and another four injured and warning residents to “stay inside the shelters”.
Russian forces seized Kherson, a town of 280,000 inhabitants, on March 3.
It was the first major city to fall following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
“Today there was a powerful artillery attack on enemy positions in … the occupied Kherson region,” local government official Sergey Khlan told Ukraine’s Pryamyi TV channel.
“This is what we have been waiting for since the spring – it is the beginning of the de-occupation of Kherson region.”
US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Ukraine’s move was already having an impact on Russian military capabilities as it forced them to reposition forces and deplete some units in the east.
“Because the Russians have had to pull resources from the east simply because of reports that the Ukrainians might be going more on the offence in the south,” Mr Kirby told reporters on Monday, CNN reported.
A senior Pentagon official said Russia was struggling to find soldiers to fight in Ukraine and that many new recruits were older, in poor shape and lacking training.
Russia’s defence ministry meanwhile claimed it had repulsed attacks in the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions and inflicted “heavy losses” on Ukrainian forces.
The spokeswoman for the Ukrainian military’s Southern Command, Nataliya Gumenyuk, had said Kyiv’s forces were attacking from many directions to push the Russians back to the other bank of the Dnipro river.
In an update on Facebook early on Tuesday, the Southern Command said the situation remained “tense” in its area of operations.
“The enemy attacked our positions five times, but was unsuccessful,” it said. The city of Mykolaiv, just northwest of Kherson, had come under “massive bombardment” from Russian anti-aircraft missiles, with two civilians killed and 24 wounded, it said.
Originally published as ‘Go home’: Zelensky’s warning as Ukraine launches counter attack in Kherson