In retreat on Ukrainian fronts, Russia shows signs of disarray

Ukrainian forces have begun to move, in what a Ukrainian military official described as the beginning of the active phase of operation

Russian forces in Ukraine were on the run Monday across a broad swath of the front line, as the Ukrainian military pressed its blitz offensive in the east and made gains in the south, belying President Vladimir Putin’s claims to have absorbed into Russia territories that his armies are steadily losing.

Following the capture over the weekend of Lyman, a strategic rail hub and gateway to the eastern Donbas region, Ukrainian forces showed no sign of stopping, pushing eastward toward the city of Lysychansk, which Russia seized three months ago after bloody fighting. Any loss of territory in the Donbas undermines Putin’s objectives for the war he launched in February, which has focused on seizing and incorporating the region.

The Kremlin reflected the disarray of its forces on the ground, where territory was rapidly changing hands, acknowledging that it did not yet know what new borders Russia would claim in southern Ukraine. “In terms of the borders, we’re going to continue to consult with the population of these regions,” Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters Monday.

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Putin had meant for Monday to be a triumphant day in Moscow, where the lower house of Russia’s rubber-stamp parliament, the State Duma, voted unanimously to ratify his proclaimed annexation of four Ukrainian regions after sham referendums there.

But events on the battlefield threatened to make a mockery of such declarations, as Ukrainians continued to recapture blasted, largely depopulated cities and towns from the retreating Russians. North of Lyman, the village of Pisky-Radkivski, retaken last week, was littered with burned-out Russian tanks, abandoned Russian gear and the bodies of Russian soldiers Monday.

Hundreds of miles away in the south, Ukrainian forces have also begun to move, pushing deeper into the Kherson region, in what a senior Ukrainian military official described as the beginning of the active phase of a monthslong offensive operation.

Despite Ukraine’s recent gains, Russian forces still control about one-sixth of Ukrainian territory. Moscow still holds the advantage in firepower and has demonstrated repeatedly that it can rain destruction on Ukraine. On Monday, Ukrainian officials said a Russian strike on a hospital in Kupiansk, in the Kharkiv region, had killed a doctor and wounded a nurse.