Ukrainian forces are still pressing their counteroffensive against Russia, and they liberated the eastern city of Lyman shortly after noon on Sunday. The city was home to about 22,000 people before Moscow’s invasion seven months ago; it’s now considered an especially important railway hub in the occupied Donetsk oblast, which is one of four regions Russia looked to annex Friday following weeks of battlefield setbacks throughout the month of September.
According to the Ukrainian military, “Almost all Russian troops deployed to Lyman were successfully redeployed either into body bags or into Ukrainian captivity,” officials tweeted Saturday.
“A major embarrassment for President Vladimir Putin” is how the Wall Street Journal described the liberation of Lyman, and “the first such retreat from a city that he claims is officially part of Russia” since the autocratic leader hosted an annexation ceremony at the Kremlin on Friday. But the Journal also reported many of Lyman’s existing residents have been left little choice but to scavenge for their food, in whatever form it can be found across the devastated city. The Russian-backed forces, meanwhile, have since “move[d] to reinforce their lines 25 miles to the south around the city of Bakhmut,” according to the New York Times.
From the Pentagon’s perspective, “what we’re seeing now is kind of a change in the battlefield dynamics,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told CNN on Sunday. “They’ve done very, very well in the Kharkiv area, and moved to take advantage of opportunities.” Looking to the south, Austin said, “The fight in the Kherson region is going a bit slower, but they’re making progress. So they’re getting the right things and they’re employing the right way.”
Elsewhere, a series of explosions rocked an airfield in occupied Crimea on Saturday. The Russia-appointed governor of Sevastopol reportedly claimed somewhat dubiously the enormous fireballs evident in purported video footage resulted from a plane that overshot the runway.
German military chief Christine Lambrecht visited the port city of Odesa on Saturday, where she spoke with her Ukrainian counterpart, Oleksii Reznikov. While there, Lambrecht promised Berlin would soon be sending four Iris-T SLM ground-based air-defense systems to Kyiv.
In context: Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelenskyy has been asking Berlin for German tanks for several months now, but to no avail—as The Telegraph reported in early September, and the New York Times elaborated upon a bit more just last week.
Developing: Ukrainian tanks have been rapidly advancing south along the Dnipro river, Reuters reports from Kyiv, where officials are mum about confirming much; but Russian sources seem to suggest several more villages beyond just Lyman have been liberated over the past 24 hours, particularly leading up to a location known as Dudchany. For its part, Ukraine’s military claimed to have liberated the Kherson city of Myrolyubivka on Monday, saying little else beside its “offensive in the South is ongoing.”
