Ukraine has regained control of Kyiv region, deputy defense minister says

KYIV  – Ukraine has retaken the whole of the Kyiv region including several towns near its capital city, The Financial Times reported on Sunday, quoting the country’s deputy defence minister.

Hanna Maliar said late on Saturday that the country’s armed forces had regained control of the entire provincial area from Russian forces. “Irpin, Bucha, Hostomel and the whole Kyiv region were liberated” from Russian forces, she said in a Facebook post — referring to suburban towns north of the capital city.

Ukraine’s national police force published a video filmed in Bucha and Hostomel, which is located near a key airport Russian forces sought to control. The video showed Ukrainian police teams in armoured vehicles patrolling bombed-out neighbourhoods including devastated buildings and cars.

In a video address on Saturday night, President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russian forces of mining territory behind them as they withdrew.

“In the north of our country, the invaders are leaving,” he said.

“It is slow but noticeable. In some places they are being kicked out with fighting. Elsewhere they’re abandoning the positions themselves. They are mining all this territory. Houses are mined, equipment is mined, even the bodies of dead people.”

Russia confirmed this week that it was reducing military activity near Kyiv and the northern city of Chernihiv to focus its efforts on taking control of the Donbas.

Ukrainian and Russian claims about military actions cannot be independently verified.

Ukraine’s announcement of its military progress came as Moldova denied claims by Ukraine’s military that Russian troops were massing in the breakaway Transnistria enclave in Moldova and mobilising for a possible attack that could open another front.

The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said it believed that troops based in the Russian-occupied, self-declared republic, which borders south-western Ukraine and is near the third-largest city of Odesa, were preparing to carry out “provocations” along the border.

But both Moldova and the separatist authorities in Transnistria denied this, with Chisinau saying it was “closely monitoring the security situation in the region”.

The threat of Russian troops based in Transnistria entering the Ukrainian conflict has been a concern for Moldovan authorities, who are also struggling to cope with the largest influx of Ukrainian refugees per capita. (MENA)