
Kiev forces have reportedly breached Russian defenses in several sectors of the front line near the city of Kherson, a senior adviser to President Zelensky has claimed.
"I must emphasize today that the Russian defense was disintegrated within a few hours," Oleksiy Arestovych said in a video interview on YouTube.
A spokeswoman for Ukraine's southern command, Nataliya Humenyuk, said Ukrainian forces had struck more than 10 sites in the past week and had unquestionably weakened the enemy, reports The Guardian.
Humenyuk declined to give details, saying that Russian forces in the south remained quite strong and that the operation needed to be kept quiet as media attention could affect the results.
Sergiy Khlan, a local deputy and adviser to the regional governor, told Ukrainian TV channel Pryamyi on Monday that this had been expected since the spring, while calling it the beginning of the end of the Russian occupation of Kherson.
"Today there was a powerful artillery attack on enemy positions in ... the entire territory of the occupied Kherson region. What is happening now is a prepared and balanced start of a counteroffensive," said Khlan.
A separate Ukrainian military source told CNN that its forces have recaptured four villages near the city of Kherson after penetrating the front line in three places, with Kherson as the main target. The operation began with heavy bombardment of Russian positions, forcing them to flee, the source was quoted as saying.
Ukrainian forces were also reported to be bombing ferries in the Kherson region that Moscow is using to supply Russian-occupied territory on the west bank of the Dnieper River.