Ukraine extends battlefield gains as Kremlin reels from setback

KYIV, Ukraine – Blue-and-yellow flags were raised in more liberated towns and villages in northeast Ukraine on Monday, as the stunning counteroffensive that pushed Russia into a messy retreat boosted optimism at home and abroad over a potential turning point in the war and renewed international calls to send Ukraine more weapons in hopes of hastening Russia’s defeat.

The lightning push by Ukrainian forces, in which they recaptured in a matter of days nearly all of the Kharkiv region occupied since the early days of the war last winter, left Moscow reeling. Despite the setback, the Kremlin and its proxies insisted that the war would go on until President Vladimir Putin’s goals are achieved, and they blamed NATO and the United States for Ukraine’s refusal to surrender.

The Ukrainian military said Monday that in the previous 24 hours it had advanced into an additional 20 towns and villages that had been under Russian control – claims that could not be independently verified.

On Sunday, Ukraine’s commander in chief, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, said his forces had retaken more than 1,100 square miles, in less than a week.

In their hasty retreat, spun by Russia’s Defense Ministry as a “regroup,” the Russians abandoned tanks, armored vehicles and ammunition that Ukraine plans to refashion and use on the battlefield.

Posting a video of a fully intact Russian howitzer, a Ukrainian official joked on Twitter that the Ukrainian “military accepted its first lend lease supplies from Russia” in the liberated city of Izyum.

Some Western officials and analysts cautioned that despite the gains, negotiations to put an end to the war were still far off and that heavy fighting would likely continue. Russia still occupies large swaths of eastern and southern Ukraine, including cities like Mariupol and Kherson, Putin’s coveted “land bridge” to Crimea, which Russia annexed illegally in 2014, and most of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions where Russia has recognized two self-declared separatist “republics.”

Military analysts, however, said that the equipment losses could be a significant blow to Russia – and that Ukraine will use its recent success to lobby for even more security assistance.

In recent weeks, Ukrainian officials had been worried about support from Western partners eroding ahead of U.S. elections that could shift control to the Republicans in Congress and what’s expected to be a difficult and expensive winter in Europe because of spiking energy prices tied to the war.

But in a thread on Twitter, Lithuanian Foreign Affairs Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said “all stockpiles of western advanced armaments,” including long-range missiles, fighter jets and tanks, “must be made available to Ukraine.”

“Let me be frank. It is now beyond doubt that Ukraine could have thrown Russia out months ago if they had been provided with the necessary equipment from day one,” he wrote.

The call by Landsbergis was echoed by Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas.

“Brave Ukrainians are demonstrating that if we want peace we must scale up our military aid,” Kallas said.

In Moscow, the retreat exposed fissures among Kremlin loyalists.

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said he might have to speak with Putin himself because he didn’t trust that Putin was receiving the bad news from his advisers. And pro-Russian military bloggers have sharply criticized the government for not mobilizing more soldiers for the fight – a move that Putin has sought to avoid because conscriptions could risk turning public support against the war.

On Monday, officials reiterated that the aims of the “special military operation” – the Kremlin term for the war – would be accomplished regardless of the setbacks, though the precise aims have never been fully clear. At first, Putin was intent on capturing Kyiv and toppling the government, but that failed.

“The goals of the special military operation will be achieved,” Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of the Russian Security Council said on Monday in Kemerovo at a meeting in the Siberian Federal District. “The events around Ukraine show that the United States and its vassals are trying to prolong the conflict in Ukraine by increasing the supply of weapons and military equipment, which is later used against civilians.”

Russia appeared to respond to Ukraine’s counteroffensive with retaliatory missile strikes on critical civilian infrastructure on Sunday night, plunging several regions, including Kharkiv, into darkness as the power went out.

Kremlin propagandist Margarita Simonyan, the editor in chief of the government-funded TV channel RT, formerly Russia Today, cheered the attacks, adding on social media that “electricity is a privilege.”