September 12, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

The Ukrainian military’s General Staff said in a statement Monday “the liberation of settlements from the Russian invaders in the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions continues,” stating Russian forces were dislodged from more than 20 settlements in the past day alone.

The last week has seen Ukrainian forces roll through lines of Russian defenses and recapture more than 3,000 square kilometers of territory. Over the weekend, the Russian retreat continued from border areas that had been occupied since March. Villages within five kilometers of the border were raising the Ukrainian flag.

“In the Luhansk region, the Russian military and their families left the town of Svatove, only the soldiers of the so-called ‘people's militia’ from among the local residents remained,” the statement said. Svatove has been an important hub on Russian resupply routes to the front lines further south - along the borders of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

In a separate statement Monday, Serhiy Hayday, Head of Luhansk’s regional military administration said: “The enemy has not organized any measures for evacuation - everyone escapes on their own”.

Meanwhile, Russian forces “suffered significant losses” in manpower, including the 810th Separate Brigade of Marines losing almost 85% of its personnel, as part of Ukraine’s actions in the Kherson direction, the General Staff statement said. 

Russia’s 810th Separate Brigade of Marines is permanently based in Sevastopol, part of the Black Sea Fleet. “The rest of the servicemen have an extremely low morale and psychological state, they massively refuse to return to the combat zone,” it added. 

CNN cannot independently verify the Ukrainian accounts.

Some context: Power has been restored in the Dnipropetrovsk region and 80% of the electricity and water supply is restored in Kharkiv region, local officials said Monday. 

It comes after Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said large parts of eastern Ukraine, including the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions, were without electricity following Russian missile strikes on Sunday.

As Russian forces suffer a string of stunning defeats in Ukraine, Moscow is playing up Beijing's support for its invasion ahead of a key meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping this week.

Russian troops were forced to flee the strategic city of Izium -- their main bastion in northeastern Ukraine -- on Saturday after a swift Ukrainian counteroffensive.

It was Moscow's worst defeat since its retreat from Kyiv in March -- and a sign that the war might be entering a new phase. Over the past week, Ukrainian forces have recaptured more than 3,000 square kilometers of territory -- more than Russian forces have captured in all their operations since April.

Back in Russia, senior Russian and Chinese officials have put on a united front to pave the way for an expected meeting between Putin and Xi on the sidelines of a regional summit in Uzbekistan -- their first face-to-face meeting since Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

And according to the Russian Parliament, a senior Chinese leader has voiced explicit support for Russia's war on Ukraine -- claims that are not included in the statement from the Chinese side, and run contrary to Beijing's previous efforts to maintain a veneer of neutrality.

On Thursday and Friday, China's top legislator Li Zhanshu -- a close ally of Xi and third-ranking leader of the Chinese Communist Party -- met with Vyacheslav Volodin, chairman of Russia's State Duma, and other Russian lawmakers in Moscow after attending an economic forum in the eastern city of Vladivostok.

According to a statement from the State Duma, Li assured its members that "China understands and supports Russia on issues that represent its vital interests, in particular on the situation in Ukraine".

"On the Ukrainian issue, we see how they have put Russia in an impossible situation. And in this case, Russia made an important choice and responded firmly," he added.

Beijing has firmly refused to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine -- or even refer to it as a "war." Instead, it has repeatedly laid the blame for the conflict on NATO and the United States.

That unequivocal supportive language is missing from the Chinese readout of the meetings. In fact, in the Chinese version, Li is not quoted as making any reference to Ukraine at all. 

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One employee of a Kharkiv power and heating plant has been killed following a Russian missile strike, the Head of Kharkiv Region Civil military Administration, Oleh Synehubov, said late Sunday.

Russian missile strikes left many parts of eastern Ukraine, including Kharkiv, without electricity, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

Nine out of 11 Russian cruise missiles launched toward eastern Ukraine on Sunday evening were shot down by air defense systems, the press service for Ukraine’s East Air Force Command said via Facebook.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said “he remains gravely concerned about the situation” at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant as long as any shelling continues, the UN nuclear watchdog said Sunday.

But the IAEA chief also said “he remains “gravely concerned about the situation at the plant, which remains in danger as long as any shelling continues. To address this serious situation, consultations have begun on the urgent need to establish a nuclear safety and security protection zone at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP).” 

Europe's largest

Zaporizhzhia is the site of the largest nuclear plant in Europe. The facility sits in the Russian occupied part of southern Ukraine and has been on the fire line between Russian and Ukrainian forces.

The IAEA also said a back-up power line to the plant has been restored and it is providing the external electricity needed for reactor cooling and other essential safety functions.

The 330 kilovolt back-up power line enabled the plant to shut down its last operating reactor early on Sunday, according to the UN nuclear watchdog. 

“This reactor had over the past week provided the ZNPP with power after the facility was disconnected from the grid. With the line restoration, electricity needed for nuclear safety at the ZNPP once again comes from the external grid,” the IAEA said.

Large parts of eastern Ukraine, including the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions, are without electricity following Russian missile strikes, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday.

“Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk and Sumy have problems with the power supply,” as well, the Ukrainian leader said via Twitter.

“Even through the impenetrable darkness, Ukraine and the civilized world clearly see these terrorist acts. Deliberate and cynical missile strikes on critical civilian infrastructure. No military facilities,” Zelensky said via Telegram.

The power blackouts were also confirmed by local officials, including the Kharkiv mayor, earlier in the day.

The last week has seen a stunning transformation of the battlefield in eastern Ukraine, as a swift armored offensive by Ukrainian forces rolled through lines of Russian defenses and recaptured more than 3,000 square kilometers of territory. 

That is more territory than Russian forces have captured in all their operations in Ukraine since April.

As much as the offensive was brilliantly conceived and executed, it also succeeded because of Russian inadequacies. Throughout swathes of the Kharkiv region, Russian units were poorly organized and equipped -- and many offered little resistance.

Their failures, and their disorderly retreat to the east, has made the goal of President Vladimir Putin's special military operation to take all of Luhansk and Donetsk regions considerably harder to attain.

Over the weekend, the Russian retreat continued from border areas that had been occupied since March. Villages within five kilometers of the border were raising the Ukrainian flag.

The collapse of Russian defenses has ignited recriminations among influential Russian military bloggers and personalities in Russian state media.

As the Ukrainian flag was raised in one community after another over the last several days, one question came into focus: how does the Kremlin respond?

A lightning operation

Ukrainian officials had telegraphed that an offensive was imminent -- but not where it actually happened. There was plenty of noise about a counter-attack in the south, and even US officials talked about Ukrainian operations to "shape the battlefield" in Kherson. Russian reinforcements -- perhaps as many as 10,000 -- streamed into the region over a period of weeks.

There was indeed a Ukrainian assault in Kherson, but one whose intention appears to have been to fix Russian forces, while the real effort came hundreds of miles to the north. It was a disinformation operation the Russians might have been proud of. 

Kateryna Stepanenko at the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based analytical group, says the deception worked.

"Ukrainian military officials reported that (Russian) Eastern Military District elements that had previously supported offensive operations towards Sloviansk had redeployed to the Southern Axis," she told CNN.

Their replacements were clearly not up to the job -- a mixed bag, Stepanenko said, of "Cossack volunteers, volunteer units, DNR/LNR militia units, and the Russian Rosgvardia (National Guard). Such forces were not sufficient to defend a vast and complex front line."

The Ukrainians picked the weakest spot in Russian defenses for their initial thrust -- an area controlled by the Luhansk militia with Russian National Guard units further back. They were no match for a highly mobile armored assault that quickly rendered artillery irrelevant.

Igor Strelkov, formerly the head of the Donetsk People's Republic militia and now a caustic critic of Russian military shortcomings, noted the poor training of these units and "the exceptional caution of the actions of Russian aviation." In short, Russian front-line units were hung out to dry without sufficient air support.

Multiple videos geolocated and analyzed by CNN, as well as local accounts, depict a chaotic withdrawal of Russian units, with large amounts of ammunition and hardware left behind.

The poor quality of Russian defenses along a critical north-south axis sustaining the Donetsk offensive is hard to fathom. Once underway, the intent of the Ukrainian offensive was crystal clear -- to destroy that artery of resupply. Within three days, they had done so -- not least because Russian reinforcements were slow to be mobilized.

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On the eastern front, a stunning week of Ukrainian success and Russian failures

French President Emmanuel Macron reiterated his demand for a ceasefire in Ukraine and Russian withdrawal from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant during a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Elysee Palace said Sunday.

Macron “condemned the continuation of Russian military operations in Ukraine and reiterated his demand that they cease as soon as possible, that negotiations begin and that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine be restored,” his office said in a statement.

The French President “also stressed the need to ensure the safety of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. He recalled that the Russian occupation was the cause of the current risks to the integrity of Zaporizhzhia. He called for Russian forces to withdraw their heavy and light weapons from the plant and that the IAEA's recommendations be closely followed to ensure the safety of the site be restored,” the Elysee said.

Some more context: Zaporizhzhia is the site of the largest nuclear plant in Europe, and the facility sits on the fire line between the Russian occupiers and Ukrainian forces.

The Elysee added that Macron “will speak again to President Putin in the next few days in order to reach an agreement that guarantees the safety of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.” 

On the issue of global food security, Macron told Putin that European sanctions against Russia do not apply to agricultural products. He also asked the Russian leader to ensure that the Ukraine grain export agreement between Russia, Ukraine and Turkey, under the supervision of the United Nations "to ensure that the exported grain goes to those who need it most.”

In a statement Sunday, the Ukrainian military's general staff said that Russian forces had abandoned the town of Svatove in Luhansk region, a town that until Saturday was still 40 kilometers (25 miles) beyond the known front line of the Ukrainian advance.

Svatove has been an important hub on Russian resupply routes to the front lines further south -- along the borders of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

"The occupiers have abandoned Svatove in Luhansk region," the general staff's office said in a Facebook post. "They rushed away in four Kamaz trucks, twenty Tigr AVs [armored vehicles] and stole over 20 cars of local residents."

CNN cannot independently verify the Ukrainian account.

The general staff's office also claimed that "as a result of the successful counteroffensive of our troops in the Kharkiv direction, the Russian troops frantically leave their positions and flee with the loot deep into the temporarily occupied territories or into the territory of the Russian Federation."

It referred to one alleged episode in which, it said "150 service members of the armed forces of the Russian Federation left in a convoy from Borshchova and Artemivka of the Kharkiv region on two buses, one truck and 19 stolen cars."

Borshchova is to the north of Kharkiv city, just a few kilometers from Ukraine's border with Russia.

As the Russian retreat in the Kharkiv region continues, a senior Ukrainian official has said that more than 40 settlements have now been liberated.

Roman Semenukha, Deputy Head of the Kharkiv region military administration, told Ukrainian television: "We can officially announce the liberation of more than 40 settlements. The situation is changing incredibly quickly and there are many, many more such [de-occupied] settlements."

Semenukha said the 40 referred only to those places where the situation was completely under control, and there were more where the Ukrainian flag had been raised.

"The situation is dynamically positive. And indeed the situation is changing," he said.

Semenukha said it was wrong to suggest the Russians were simply leaving. "There are fierce, fierce battles in many areas of the front and everything is very, very difficult. If we are talking about the military component, then you just have to be patient," he said.