1. Ukrainian army launches southern counter-offensive in a bid to liberate Kherson
Ukrainian forces have launched a counter-offensive in the south, aimed at pushing Russian troops back across the Dnipro river and retaking the occupied city of Kherson, local authorities announced on Monday.
“This is the announcement of what we have been waiting for since spring: it is the beginning of the end of the occupation of the Kherson region,” local deputy and adviser to the regional governor Sergey Khlan told Ukrainian media outlets.
Russian troops had seized the southern city of 280,000 inhabitants at the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine.
2. At least two killed, 24 injured in Russian bombardment of Mykolaiv, say authorities
Russian shelling hit residential areas of the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv on Monday, killing two people and destroying homes, city officials and witnesses said.
A Reuters correspondent at the scene said the strike hit a family home directly next to a school, killing one woman. Both houses on the property were left in ruins, with large craters gouged out of the ground in front.
Mayor Oleksandr Senkevych said on Telegram at least two people had been killed, and residential homes and educational institutions had been hit. The local governor, Vitaliy Kim, said on Telegram that 24 people had also been injured.
Police, military officials and Ukrainian war crimes prosecutors were at the site in a residential neighbourhood of Mykolaiv.
A main transportation hub, a shipbuilding centre and a port just off the Black Sea, Mykolaiv has suffered heavy Russian bombardments throughout the war.
3. Russia claims to have identified a second Ukrainian suspect in Dugina killing
Russia’s FSB security service on Monday named another Ukrainian it said was part of a team that assassinated Darya Dugina, the daughter of a prominent Russian ultra-nationalist who believes Ukraine should be absorbed into a new Russian empire.
Dugina, who like her father Alexander Dugin was a vocal supporter of what Russia calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine, was killed in a car bombing outside Moscow on 20 August in what Russian President Vladimir Putin called a “vile, cruel crime”.
Two days after the 29-year-old’s murder, the FSB, Russia’s main domestic intelligence agency, said it had solved the case, naming a Ukrainian woman it said had trailed Dugina for weeks, rented an apartment in her housing complex and planted the car bomb before fleeing Russia to Estonia – all with Kyiv’s backing. read more
Ukraine, which says Russia is waging an imperial-style war of aggression against it, has denied involvement in the murder of Dugina, who has since been portrayed by pro-Kremlin politicians and by Russian state TV, where she often appeared as a pro-war commentator as a martyr.
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