Russian troops in Kharkiv surrender, says Ukraine

Russian troops have surrendered en masse in view of a rapid Ukrainian counter-attack that is pinning them to ground, leading to a turning point in the year-long war, media reports said.

Kiev’s military intelligence said large numbers of Moscow’s soldiers had laid down their weapons rather than fight troops advancing east out of Kharkiv as “they understand the hopelessness of their situation”, said a report in Daily Mail.

Oleksiy Arestovich, advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said the military has captured so many Russian soldiers over the last several days that it is running out of space to house them – with military intelligence spokesman Andrey Yusov adding that “significant” numbers of Russian officers are among them, Daily Mail reported.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.(photo: https://www.instagram.com/zelenskiy_official/)

Meanwhile, Russian troops fighting a second counter-attack in the southern Kherson region were said to be negotiating their own surrender having apparently run out of ammunition but the information from the frontline is sparse due an information blackout imposed by Kiev.

In a late-night address, Zelensky said Ukraine‘s armies had captured a total of 2,300 square miles in the east and south since the beginning of September – an area about four times the size of Greater London – as he called on Western allies to supply more weapons to help consolidate the gains.

Ukraine and the West must “strengthen cooperation to defeat Russian terror”, he said, while calling specifically for air defence systems to help protect civilian areas that Putin’s commanders have begun targeting as ‘revenge’ for their battlefield defeats – blowing up power stations in the city of Kharkiv on Monday.