KIEV — Kiev made a major military breakthrough in south Ukraine on Monday, Reuters reports. Ukrainian troops recaptured villages along the banks of the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine, creating a large front that is forcing Moscow to abandon ground it annexed only days ago.
The advance into the Kherson region was the biggest Kiev has made since the war began in February, according to Reuters.
It comes off the back of similar breakthroughs in the east that have turned the tide of the war in recent weeks, prompting Russia to mobilize hundreds of thousands of reserve troops.
Monday's advance was confirmed by an official of the Russian-backed administration in Kherson province, which Russia seized early on in the war.
Vladimir Saldo said that a number of settlements along the river had been captured, reaching as far as the village of Dudchany. This would represent an advance of around 40km (25 miles) in a single day.
"Information is tense, let's put it that way, because, yes there were indeed breakthroughs," Saldo told Russian state television. Kiev has so far remained tight-lipped about the situation in Kherson.
In one of the rare images apparently confirming the advance, Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine's Interior Ministry, posted a photo of Ukrainian soldiers posing with their flag draping a golden statue of an angel.
Gerashchenko said it was the village of Mikhailivka, which would represent an advance of around 20 km (12 miles). Euronews cannot independently verify these reports.
In another development, the head of Russia's Chechen Republic announced on Monday that he would send his teenage boys to fight in Ukraine.
Ramzan Kadyrov, a staunch ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said his three sons — aged 14, 15 and 16 — would head into battle in Ukraine on Telegram.
He made the announcement just days after criticizing the Russian military command and calling for the use of nuclear weapons.
"The time has come [for them] to shine in a real battle, and I can only salute their determination," Kadyrov wrote in a Telegram post on his official channel, referring to his sons named Akhmat, Eli and Adam.
Also a head of military recruitment in Russia's Far East has been suspended, after thousands of people were mistakenly called up to fight in Ukraine, announced a local official on Monday.
"The military commissar of the Khabarovsk region, Yuri Laiko, is suspended from his duties," Governor Mikhail Degtiariov said in a video on Telegram. "This will have no influence on the goal set for us by the president."
He did not give the exact reason for the suspension but implied that it was linked to several errors.
"In ten days, several thousand of our compatriots received summonses and went to military police stations. We sent home about half of them because they did not meet the selection criteria to enter the army," the governor said.
Other conscripted men in eastern Siberia have been sent home, while military officials in the Magadan region have also been dismissed for recruitment errors.
In September, Putin ordered a "partial" mobilization of 300,000 reserve forces, after significant battlefield losses in Ukraine.
Only people with military experience or useful skills were supposed to be mobilized in the official announcement. However, multiple cases have been reported of the elderly, students, the sick or conscripts without military experience being called up to fight.
This has provoked discontent in some areas of Russia, especially Dagestan, an impoverished region in the Caucasus that has one of the highest numbers of soldiers killed in Ukraine
Last week, Vladimir Putin demanded that the "errors be corrected" in the mobilization, which has triggered demonstrations in Russia and caused thousands of men to flee abroad. — Euronews
