Ukraine makes major new breakthrough on southern front, days after supposed annexation

Ukrainian forces achieved their biggest breakthrough in the south of the country since the war began in February, bursting through the front and advancing rapidly along the Dnipro River on Monday, threatening supply lines for thousands of Russian troops.

In a sign Ukraine is building momentum on two fronts, 300 kilometres to the northeast Reuters saw columns of Ukrainian troop vehicles heading to reinforce rail hub Lyman, retaken at the weekend and now a staging post to press into the Donbas region.

Kyiv gave little information about the gains in the south, but Russian sources acknowledged that Ukrainian troops had  advanced dozens of kilometres along the river's west bank, recapturing a number of villages along the way. The breakthrough mirrors recent Ukrainian successes in the east that have turned the tide in the war against Russia, even as Moscow has tried to raise the stakes by annexing territory, ordering mobilization and threatening nuclear retaliation.

"The information is tense, let's put it that way, because, yes, there were indeed breakthroughs," Vladimir Saldo, the Russian-installed leader in occupied parts of Ukraine's Kherson province, told Russian state television.

"There's a settlement called Dudchany, right along the Dnipro River, and right there, in that region, there was a breakthrough. There are settlements that are occupied by Ukrainian forces."

Dudchany is about 30 kilometres south of where the front stood before the breakthrough, indicating one of the fastest advances of the war and by far the most rapid in the south, where Russian forces had been dug into heavily reinforced positions along a mainly static front line since the early weeks of the Feb. 24 invasion.

While Kyiv maintained almost complete silence, as it has in the past during major offensives, some officials did describe what they referred to as unconfirmed reports of gains.

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. He said it was in the village of Mykhailivka, about 20 kilometres beyond the previous front.

"In the last days, we have seen the first photo of Osokorivka," Serhiy Khlan, a Kherson regional council member, told Reuters, naming villages in the area.

"We have seen our troops near the entrance to Mykhailivka, we have seen our troops in Khreshchenivka, next to the monument. This means that Zolota Balka also is under the control of our armed forces, and it means that our armed forces are moving powerfully along the banks of the Dnipro nearer to Beryslav.

"Officially, there is no such information yet, but the [Russian] social media pages which are panicking ... absolutely confirm these photos."

The advance in the south mirrors the tactics that have brought Kyiv major gains since the start of September in Eastern Ukraine, where its forces swiftly seized territory to gain control of Russian supply lines, cutting off larger Russian forces and forcing them to retreat.

Just hours after a concert in Moscow's Red Square on Friday, where Russian President Vladimir Putin proclaimed the provinces of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia to be Russian territory forever, Ukraine recaptured Lyman, the main Russian bastion in the north of Donetsk province.

That has opened the way for it to advance deep into Luhansk province, threatening the main supply routes to territory Moscow captured in some of the war's bloodiest battles in June and July.