Ukrainian forces advanced 110 kilometres in five days of fighting during the Kharkiv counteroffensive, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an address following his September 14, 2022 visit to the region.
He said troops had advanced 19 kilometres on the first day of active operations and that almost 400 settlements had been recaptured, affecting around 150,000 residents who had remained in the area. These were the president's operational figures, not an independent battlefield survey.
Zelensky thanked the units involved and Colonel-General Oleksandr Syrsky and his staff for planning and carrying out the operation. He described extensive destruction left in recovered communities and said authorities were receiving reports of killings, torture and abductions.
The address also discussed Russian missile strikes on the Karachunivske reservoir dam at Kryvyi Rih and preparations to protect essential services. The advance in Kharkiv region did not mean all occupied Ukrainian territory had been recovered.
The Ukrainian World Congress reproduced the address containing the 110-kilometre figure. The supplied RFE/RL page provides related reporting from September 15 but its updated text centres on Ukraine's EU accession progress.
Read more at RFE/RL. Supporting source: www.ukrainianworldcongress.org.
