AFP

After Ukraine announced new military successes and confirmed that it had reached the Russian borders and regained the equivalent of seven times the area of ​​Kyiv in one month, the Russian army responded by bombing some of the reoccupied areas.

The Ukrainian army first announced a counterattack in the south, before making lightning advances in the Kharkiv region (northeast) during the past week.

In the east, the Ukrainian army said that "the liberation of towns from Russian invaders continues in the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions." He stressed that he had regained in the Kherson region (south) 500 square kilometers within two weeks in the first estimates in numbers of his progress in the south.

"Since the beginning of September, our soldiers have liberated 6,000 square kilometers of land in eastern and southern Ukraine," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video posted on social networks, stressing that they "continue to advance." On Sunday, Kyiv did not talk about more than three thousand square kilometers "liberated."

On the entire front, the Ukrainian army announced, Monday, that it "succeeded in expelling the enemy from more than twenty sites" within 24 hours. "The Russian forces quickly abandon their positions and flee," he added.

On Monday evening, the director of the Ukrainian presidential office Andrei Ermak published a video recording explaining that "the 14th separate mechanized brigade has reached the border of the Kharkiv region with Russia. This is the village of Ternova," located five kilometers from the Russian border.

"Obviously we've seen a lot of progress from the Ukrainians, particularly in the northeast," US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken told a news conference Monday in Mexico, but "it's too early to know exactly where this is going."

"The Russians deploy very large forces in Ukraine, equipment, weapons and ammunition, and continue to use them indiscriminately not only against the Ukrainian armed forces, but against civilians and civilian infrastructure," he noted.

Also in the Kharkiv region, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office announced Monday that the bodies of four civilians bearing "traces of torture" were discovered in the village of Zalznychny, which the Ukrainian army recently recaptured from the Russians. "The preliminary investigation indicates that the Russian soldiers killed the victims during the occupation of the village," he added.

Russian forces have repeatedly been accused of abuses in Ukraine.

- 'Big operational defeat' -

Izyum (northeast) was one of the cities that Ukrainian soldiers entered and was a major point of logistics and supplies for Russian troops. The loss of this city, which had about fifty thousand inhabitants before the war, could affect Moscow's military ambitions in eastern Ukraine, according to military experts.

The American think tank the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said that "Ukraine inflicted a major operational defeat on Russia by regaining control of almost all of the Kharkiv region (...), but the current counterattack will not end the war."

"Ukrainian soldiers also regained control in the Lugansk region" where pro-Russian separatists, as in neighboring Donetsk, unilaterally declared a "republic" in 2014.

The occupation authorities in the Kharkiv region indicated on Monday that they had moved to the Belgorod region in Russia, near the border, officially to help deal with the influx of refugees, Russian news agencies announced.

"In the Kharkiv region (...) Russian forces have largely given up their gains (of territory) to the Ukrainians and retreated. To the north and east, most of these forces have returned to Russia," a senior US officer told AFP on condition of anonymity.

He added that "the Ukrainians are carrying out operations that force the Russians to decide on the battlefield where and how to direct their resources," explaining that given the difficulties the Russians face "in terms of supply, logistics, as well as leadership (...) This is a very difficult problem to solve."

Moscow said on Monday it had bombed Ukrainian-held areas near Kharkiv in the Kubyansk and Izyum sectors.

For its part, the Ukrainian General Staff counted about forty Russian raids during the day "on Ukrainian military and civilian facilities." She spoke of damage to many "basic infrastructures of peaceful Ukrainian cities", including Kharkiv, Zaporizhia, Slovyansk and Kramatorsk.

The Kremlin stressed that the Russian offensive, which began on February 24, will continue "until its goals are achieved," noting that "there are no prospects for negotiations now" between Moscow and Kiev.

Denis Pushlin, one of the main pro-Russian separatist leaders in eastern Ukraine, acknowledged Monday the "difficult" situation on the eastern front but stressed that Russian forces were "steadfast".

Meanwhile, Ukrainian shelling on the Russian border post Lugachevka killed at least one person and wounded four, according to the Russian governor of the Belgorod region.