The Ukrainian soldiers are armed with a yellow-blue colored border post.

With that they stalk through the bushes.

You can see an anti-tank ditch and behind it a blue sign.

Then the camera pans to the men who have lined up next to the pole.

"Mr. President, we are at the border," says one of the soldiers, who identifies himself as a member of a territorial defense battalion.

He means: on the border "to the occupier", to Russia.

The video was released by Ukraine's Defense Ministry to document the recent success.

As usual, its authenticity cannot be verified.

It is irritating that the soldier speaks of April 15 instead of May 15.

Thomas Gutschker

Political correspondent for the European Union, NATO and the Benelux countries based in Brussels.

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Nevertheless, one thing is clear: the Russian armed forces have lost the next major battle in their war against Ukraine.

At the end of March they had to abandon the siege of Kyiv and ignominiously retreat.

Now the same thing has happened to them in Kharkiv, the country's second largest city.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg confirmed this on Sunday.

The Russian war is not going as planned, he said after a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Berlin.

“They failed to take Kyiv.

They are withdrawing from the Kharkiv area, their major offensive in the Donbass has stalled.” The day before, the Institute for the Study of War came to the conclusion: “Ukraine has probably won the Battle of Kharkiv.” The independent American think tank has changed since the 24th

Retreat via expressway to Belgorod

The Ukrainian General Staff also reported that Russian troops had started retreating across the border to the north, along the Belgorod expressway.

A militiaman from the self-declared "Donetsk People's Republic" says in a video that his unit was held up by Russian border guards for two days because the regular armed forces have priority - further evidence.

New maps show how Ukrainian troops advanced northwest from Kharkiv to the Russian border.

Once the Russian withdrawal is complete, they should take control of the entire area north of the city.

This is an important success for the Ukrainians.

Despite being inferior to the attackers in many ways, they successfully completed their first major counteroffensive in the east of the country.

Kharkiv, which had a population of around 1.5 million before the start of the war, is now completely beyond the range of Russian field artillery, which can fire up to 25 kilometers with standard ammunition.

The Russians had been doing this for weeks, causing heavy destruction especially in the northern and eastern districts of the city.

More than two thousand houses are said to be uninhabitable, including large blocks of flats.

Since the start of the Ukrainian counterattack, which the general staff in Kyiv reported on May 5, the Russian units had no longer aimed their fire at the city but at the Ukrainians.