After imposing full control of the strategic town of Lyman in the Donetsk region, the Ukrainian army announced that it had begun to advance to regain control of the so-called "Triangle cities", namely Severodonetsk, Leschansk and Robyzhny, the most important cities of Lugansk Province.
This coincides with the ratification by the Russian State Duma on Monday of the agreements to annex the four Ukrainian provinces, which witnessed referendums that supported - according to the Russian version - the option to join Russia.
complete control
On Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that his country's forces had fully taken control of the strategic town of Lyman, noting that more Ukrainian flags would fly in Donbass within a week.
"The Ukrainian army continues to advance. The Ukrainian flag is now flying in Lyman in the Donetsk region. The fighting is still going on there and more flags will be flown in Donetsk in the coming days. There is no trace of the fake referendum," he said.
Zelensky also confirmed that his country's forces had made progress in the south of the country, and had regained control of the towns in northeastern Kherson, thanking the fighters of his hometown in the city of Kryvyi Rih who had made progress in the region.
Reuters quoted a pro-Russian official as saying that Ukrainian forces had made some breakthroughs in Kherson.
setback for packing
Meanwhile, thousands of Russians mobilized for military service in Ukraine have been sent home and the military commissioner of Russia's Khabarovsk region has been sacked in the latest setback to the chaotic mandatory mobilization ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin for some 300,000 soldiers.
Mikhail Degarev, the governor of Russia's far eastern Khabarovsk region, said several thousand men applied for conscription within 10 days, but many of them were unqualified.
And he added - in a video clip posted on the Telegram application - "about half of them returned to their homes because they did not meet the selection criteria to enter the military service," noting that the military commissioner in the region was dismissed, but his dismissal will not affect the mobilization.
German support
On the other hand, German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht said - during an unannounced visit to the Ukrainian city of Odessa - that Berlin will deliver the first advanced air defense system "IREST" (IREST) to Ukraine.
The German Ministry of Defense stated that Germany, Denmark and Norway will finance the purchase of 16 "howitzer" field guns for Ukraine from Slovakia, in a deal worth 72 million euros.
American support
For his part, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin confirmed that he expects Kyiv to continue its field progress, pointing to his country's support for Kyiv's attempts to regain all of its territory.
The US State Department also stressed that Washington will always respect Ukraine's internationally recognized borders, and will continue to support it politically and militarily in order to restore all of its territory.
She said that Minister Anthony Blinken conveyed this message to his Ukrainian counterpart Dmitro Kuleba during phone conversations between them.
She added that Blinken and Kuleba discussed Moscow's illegal efforts to change Ukraine's borders by force, and what it described as the atrocities committed by Russian forces against the Ukrainian people.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that Ukraine's recapture of Lyman shows that it can defeat Russian forces, as well as the impact of Ukraine's deployment of advanced Western weapons on the conflict.
And he added - in an interview with "NBC" (NBC) - that "the allies are intensifying their support for Ukraine, and this is the best way to ensure that Ukraine is indeed able to liberate and restore the occupied territories."
bombing and attacks
In the latest field developments, the Russian Defense Ministry announced the thwarting of a military attack by the Ukrainian forces carried out from several axes simultaneously in Mykolaiv and Kryvyi Rih, and the elimination of hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers.
The ministry also said that it destroyed 7 arms and ammunition depots for the Ukrainian forces during the bombing of the Ukrainian army's sites in Kherson, Kharkiv, Zaporozhye, Donetsk and Mykolaiv.
And websites belonging to the pro-Russian separatist forces published pictures, which they said were of the Russian forces while targeting the infrastructure of the Ukrainian forces in the Kherson axis.
Yesterday, Sunday, Russian television broadcast scenes of Russian and pro-Russian forces preparing to strengthen their defenses on the Lyman front against the advancing Ukrainian forces.
For its part, the Ukrainian army announced - early Monday morning - that the Russian forces had bombed with missiles and air raids about 25 Ukrainian towns during the past 24 hours.
The Ukrainian Security Service confirmed the deaths and injuries of civilians in the bombing of residential neighborhoods in the Mykolaiv region.
The Ukrainian police in the city also documented damage to more than 20 residential buildings and a number of government and private institutions.
On the Russian side of the border, the mayor of Russia's Belgorod region announced that a woman had been killed by Ukrainian artillery.
The Russian official added that the bombing led to destruction in the center of the village of Golovchino, as the relevant authorities rushed to inspect the targeted area.