Kiev: In southern Ukraine, towns along the west bank of the Dnipro River were reportedly being retaken by Ukrainian forces on Monday, and Moscow was reportedly forced to cede territory along a second major front line just days after claiming to have annexed it.
The extent of the Ukrainian advance was unclear because Kyiv remained largely silent about the situation there.
However, military bloggers from Russia described a Ukrainian tank advance through miles of terrain along the river's edge.
Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the interior ministry, posted what he claimed was video of a Ukrainian soldier waving a flag in Zolota Balka, downstream from the former frontline , in one of the few comments by a Ukrainian official on the situation.

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Russian bloggers claimed that their forces were retreating as far as Dudchany, which is 40 kilometres (25 miles) downstream from where they had faced off against Ukrainian troops the day before, according to Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the think tank Foreign Policy Research Institute.
He stated on Twitter that "when this many Russian channels are sounding the alarm, it usually means they're in trouble."

Thousands of Russian troops could become stranded on the opposite side of the Dnipro River by a Ukrainian advance and cut off from all supplies. Since Ukraine has already destroyed the main crossings, the river is incredibly wide.
The reports, which came a day after Ukraine routed Russian forces in Lyman, a significant bastion on the other end of the front in the east, were the first to mention a swift Ukrainian advance in the south of the country since the war began.
The largest military advances so far in the war have all occurred in areas that President Vladimir Putin claimed to have annexed from Ukraine on Friday, when a concert was held outside the Kremlin walls in celebration.

Additionally, they coincide with reports of chaos in a mobilisation that Putin ordered less than two weeks ago, which resulted in tens of thousands of Russian men being unexpectedly recalled to the military and tens of thousands more fleeing the country.
The governor of the Khabarovsk region in Russia's Far East, Mikhail Degtyarev, reported that several thousand men had shown up for enlistment in the last ten days, but many of them were ineligible.
Degtyarev said in a video posted on the Telegram messaging app that "about half of them we returned home because they did not meet the selection criteria for entering the military service."

He claimed that although the military commissar for the region had been fired, this had no bearing on the mobilisation.
According to officials, 300,000 Russians with "relevant" skills or military experience would be called up.
But when people who weren't eligible, like students and elderly or infirm people, received summonses, there have been outbursts of annoyance.
Putin emphasised the need for officials to "correct all mistakes" from the recruitment drive last week.

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Hours after Putin declared his annexation, Lyman fell in the Donetsk province of eastern Ukraine, allowing Ukrainian forces to advance deeper into Russian-controlled territory and cut off the last of Russia's supply lines.
"A second supply line will be disrupted," said reserve colonel Viktor Kevlyuk at Ukraine's Centre for Defence Strategies. "Thanks to the successful operation in Lyman, we are moving towards the second north-south route."
Lyman's capture, according to Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, demonstrated Ukraine's ability to drive back Russian forces and the effect Ukraine's use of cutting-edge Western weapons was having on the conflict.
Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, stated on Sunday that Lyman was not the only soldier who had success.

He had promised to retake additional territory in the eastern Donbas region of the country the day before.
In response to Ukrainian progress, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said Washington was "very encouraged."
Some experts have cautioned that Putin may turn to nuclear weapons as Russian losses mount, a possibility floated by one of Putin's allies.
Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Chechnya, stated on Saturday that after Russian troops were ejected from Lyman, Moscow should think about using "low-yield nuclear weapons."

The State Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament, will discuss annexation treaties on Monday, according to Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin.

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Josep Borrell, the head of foreign policy for the EU, claimed that Russia's merger action made resolving the conflict "much more difficult, almost impossible". Pope Francis criticized the annexations as a violation of international law and on Sunday "requested" Putin to stop the "spiral of violence and death".

The Crimean peninsula, which was annexed by Moscow in 2014, is now accessible by land thanks to four regions. About 20% of Ukraine is made up of the five regions combined.