Ukraine’s counter-offensive was gaining fresh momentum on Tuesday after its forces recaptured territory and destroyed dozens of Russian tanks to achieve an important new breakthrough in the south of the country.

Several settlements were recaptured as Ukrainian troops advanced towards the southern city of Kherson in a success that also threatens to cut off Russian supply lines.

The advance, which saw the destruction of 31 Russian tanks and a multiple rocket launcher, came at the same time as a separate advance by Kyiv’s forces in eastern Ukraine and was hailed by the country’s president Volodomyr Zelensky.

“New population centres have been liberated in several regions,” he said in his daily video address, adding that “heavy fighting is going on in several sectors of the front.”

The breakthrough near Kherson follows the weekend retreat of Russian forces from the town of Lyman in the eastern Luhansk region. It means Moscow has already lost territory in two of the four areas of Ukraine which it illegally annexed in the wake of widely denounced referendums.

In the south, Ukraine’s advance was marked in a video released by its defence ministry showing soldiers from its 128th Mountain Assault Brigade raising the blue and yellow national flag in Myrolyubivka, a village between the former front line and the strategically important Dnipro river.

• The Evening Standard report