Russia-Ukraine war: Russian maps appear to show rapid withdrawals in east and south; US promises more weapons to Kyiv – live | Ukraine

Ukraine has continued to liberate territory in the east and the south, Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said, as Russian defence ministry maps appeared to show rapid withdrawals of its invasion forces, reports Guardian correspondent Isobel Koshiw in Kyiv.

The ministry’s daily video briefing made no mention of any pullbacks, but on maps used to show the location of purported Russian strikes, the shaded area designating Russian military control was much smaller than the day before.

The maps included in Tuesday’s daily military briefing showed that Russian forces were no longer in control of the village of Dudchany on the west bank of the Dnieper River, where Ukraine’s forces have been pushing to reclaim territory captured at the start of Moscow’s offensive.

In the north-eastern Kharkiv region, where Kyiv’s run of battlefield victories began in early September, Russian defence ministry maps showed that its forces have left positions on the west bank of the Oskil River.

Western officials said at a briefing on Tuesday that Ukraine was currently dictating the operational tempo on the battlefield and doubted whether Russia had the ambition or ability to return to the offensive.

The US president, Joe Biden, told the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, that Washington will provide Kyiv with $625m (£544m) in new security assistance, including High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (Himars) launchers, the White House said.

Reuters reports:

Biden was joined in the call by Vice-President Kamala Harris, the White House said in a statement. The president underscored that Washington will never recognise Russian annexation of Ukrainian territory, it added.

Biden “pledged to continue supporting Ukraine as it defends itself from Russian aggression for as long as it takes”, the statement said.

Russian defence ministry maps appear to show rapid withdrawals of Russian invasion forces from areas in eastern and southern Ukraine where they have been under severe pressure from a Ukrainian counteroffensive.

Reuters reports:

The ministry’s daily video briefing made no mention of any pullbacks, but on maps used to show the location of purported Russian strikes, the shaded area designating Russian military control was much smaller than the day before.

In northeast Ukraine, where Russia suffered a rout last month, its forces along a frontline running some 70 km southward from Kupiansk along the River Oskil appeared to have retreated some 20 km to the east, as far as the border of Luhansk province.

This would mean they had vacated the last remnants of Ukraine’s Kharkiv province – where Russia for several months maintained an occupation administration – but for a small patch between the town of Dvorichna and the Russian border.

In southern Ukraine’s Kherson province, Russia’s line of control on the right bank of the Dnipro river had shifted 25 km southward on the map, to a line running westward from the riverside town of Dudchany.

Both areas are battlefields where Ukraine has been reporting advances, albeit without giving full details.

It would not be the first time that Moscow had acknowledged a withdrawal so obliquely. On 11 September, a map presented by the defence ministry showed that Russian forces had abandoned most of the parts of Kharkiv that they had controlled, as far east as the Oskil, after a lightning Ukrainian offensive.

Haroon Siddique

The Guardian’s legal affairs correspondent, Haroon Siddique, reports on the United Nations inquiry into whether war crimes were committed in Ukraine:

About 2,000 videos, photographs and audio files of alleged war crimes captured through an app designed to create verifiable evidence have been submitted to the United Nations mandated international commission of inquiry (UN COI) on Ukraine in relation to Russia’s invasion of the northern city of Chernihiv and surrounding villages.

They came from the eyeWitness to Atrocities app, which enables people to take footage with the time, date and location recorded. They are then stored encrypted so they cannot be edited.

Wendy Betts, the director of the UK-based charity eyeWitness to Atrocities, said:

Civilian homes, schools, community spaces and food supplies in and around Chernihiv were devastated during Russia’s siege. Given the veracity and quality of the footage, there are reasonable grounds to believe that the incidents included in this submission constitute at least gross violations of human rights and, pending further analysis, violations of international humanitarian law.

The submission concerns alleged violations committed between late February and late March 2022.

It covers four key areas of destruction believed to have been perpetrated: residential neighbourhoods, schools and a children’s library, cultural heritage sites and key supermarkets. Several hundred people are believed to have died in the siege of Chernihiv, before Russians left the city.

Dr Mark Ellis, the International Bar Association’s executive director and the app’s creator, said:

Footage from Ukraine has already been securely delivered by eyeWitness to relevant accountability mechanisms, including the Ukrainian authorities and Europol, and now the United Nations mandated COI as reliable evidence of potential war crimes and other incidents. The international order is at stake and so is the need to ensure that those accused of committing the most heinous crimes are brought to justice.

More than 20,000 items relating to Ukraine have been submitted through the app since the start of Russia’s invasion.

Exhausted, cold and hungry, the people of liberated Lyman are not yet convinced war has moved on

Peter Beaumont

Peter Beaumont, who is reporting from Ukraine for the Guardian, has just got back from newly liberated Lyman today and shared his impressions in a phone call:

It’s an important victory because Lyman is a big strategic junction. The Ukrainians are looking at it as the gate into liberating occupied Luhansk and further down. It’s now towards one edge of the occupied eastern area.

It’s quiet there, the fighting has moved a long way as the Ukrainians continue their offensive. We saw the sheer level of destruction in the city. It’s quite a long approach now because one of the main bridges is blown, even though you would normally get there quickly from Sloviansk. It’s a circuitous route along roads that were formerly the Russian frontlines.

You’re going through this rolling countryside, with woods and forests, but you can see where shells have snapped trees in half – and missiles have knocked down several dozen trees. When you get into the town, you can see there is a lot of destruction: the house of culture is gutted, there isn’t an apartment that isn’t damaged, houses have been flattened.

It’s a huge railway town, and on the bigger junctions you find where the Russian dugouts were. Many have been hit by different kinds of munitions before soldiers fled towards Crimea. It used to be a busy place, a town of 30,000 where most people worked for the railways, but there are only estimated to be 1,000 people left. There’s no electricity, no gas, a lot of the apartment houses have had all their windows blown out, and it’s beginning to get chilly now.

Quite a common sight as you’re wandering around is people – mainly the elderly residents stayed – cooking food out on the street on open fires, which is all they can do at the moment. We managed to pop into a little supermarket, and most shelves were empty. The bakery got hit so there’s no bread. During the occupation, it sounds like grocery supplies weren’t coming through much anyway because most Russians insisted on bribes.

Ukrainian troops are very much in evidence now, the national police are back, but it’s a ghost town. There’s quite a heavy military presence around areas where they’re going to try to run the south from. It’s a long way from being normal and it’s really been destroyed.

One older gentleman I spoke to had only returned to the town 18 days before the battle started. There’s a story I’ve heard in other parts of Ukraine, that pensioners can’t really afford rents in the safer cities and they run out of money and end up going back. Like many, he didn’t see much of battle because he was hiding in his basement, and only came out when it started getting quieter and saw Ukrainian flags had been put up.

We weren’t there when the town was liberated but I got the sense from quite a lot of people who are still there that they’re just exhausted, cold, hungry, and still not convinced the war has gone away. Even though this battle has been won, it’s only moved down the road essentially so you can still hear loud booms coming over the countryside.

The other issue about the aftermath is it’s lousy with mines. You cannot go off the road, there are booby traps. All the solders we’ve spoken to said everywhere not on a path or cleared road is a mine risk and there are an awful lot of mines there, especially in the forests where the Russian positions were.

Ukrainians have been quite efficient about getting food supplies in but getting it ready for winter, turning gas and electricity on in a deserted town with so much damage is a big job, and the war hasn’t gone away yet.

Russia at risk of losing control of towns critical to retaining Kherson city and Crimea, say western officials

Patrick Wintour

The Guardian’s diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour reports:

Russia is at risk of losing control of the strategic towns critical to retaining the city of Kherson and eventually Crimea, western officials said, but they warned the fighting along the Dnipro River “will not be an easy rush into constrained territory”.

They warned the situation in the south “could become increasingly messy with potentially a more desperate Russian force with their backs to the river Dnipro”, adding the Russian leadership politically will be unable to sanction a retreat from Kherson.

Asked if Russia was preparing to act on its repeated threat to use tactical nuclear weapons, the official insisted they had seen no indicators or actions by Russia that were out of the norm. They pointed out that Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov had slapped down the calls from Chechen leaders to use such weapons, saying it was not right to resort to emotions.

Giving one of its most upbeat assessments of the military balance, the western officials said Ukraine was dictating the operational tempo at the moment and doubted whether Russia any longer had any ambition or ability to return to the offensive. “Ukrainian commanders in the south and the east are creating problems for the Russian chain of command faster than the Russians can effectively respond”.

They also doubted the capacity of the 300,000 Russian conscripts to tip the military balance, pointing to the importance of warm weather, clothing and logistics. “Currently you’ve seen videos of Russian recruits lighting fires in fields at minus 5C at night – that is not going to be a situation where you have high morale over the winter.”

Western officials highlighted the progress being made by Ukrainian forces in the south along the Dnipro River, with the start of a potentially fatal pocket being created containing 20,000 Russian troops trapped on the western side of river. But the officials warned as Ukrainian forces pushed south along the river they could potentially be at risk from artillery fire by Russian forces on the other side of the river. “This won’t be an easy rush through unconstrained territory. We think it unlikely the Russian leadership would sanction a full pullout from Kherson for political reasons.

The officials said the town of Nova Kakhovka, about 50km from the most advanced Ukrainian troops, was “a critical challenge to the viability of the Russian troops in Kherson”. The town has a major road bridge, power station and dam, as well as a canal taking fresh water to Crimea, so is seen by the western military officials as central to a nexus of communications. “If you can control that it allows you a much greater military advantage, putting areas of the Kherson and Crimea area at risk”.

The western officials said Russia’s headlong weekend retreat on the northern front in Lyman occurred despite orders to defend and remain.

He said the Russian army “suffered high casualties from artillery fire as they attempted to leave the town to the east. As part of the supposedly newly annexed Donbas, relinquishing these areas is exactly what the Kremlin didn’t want to happen”.