Ukrainian forces have broken through the most difficult line of Russian defences in the south and should be able to advance more quickly now, a commander on the southern front has claimed.

“We don’t stop here,” a commander who led some of the troops into Robotyne told Reuters. Kyiv said on Wednesday that its troops had raised the national flag in the settlement of Robotyne in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, about six miles south of the Orikhiv frontline. “Next we have Berdiansk, and then more. I made it clear to my fighters at once: our goal is not Robotyne, our goal is (the Sea of) Azov.”

Reaching the Sea of Azov would sever Russia’s land route between occupied Crimea and Donetsk.

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