A local resident walks past the body of an abandoned Russian soldier on a street in the city of Lyman, Luhansk region, recaptured by Ukrainian forces in October 2022.On October 1, Ukrainian forces liberated Lyman, Donetsk region, in the northern Donbass.

　　A local resident walks past the body of an abandoned Russian soldier on a street in the city of Lyman, Luhansk region, recaptured by Ukrainian forces in October 2022 On October 1, Ukrainian forces liberated Lyman in Donetsk Oblast, a Russian logistics and transportation hub in the northern Donbass. Ukrainian forces also continued their advance in the Kharkov region, overrunning settlements around Kupiansk and Borova and closing in on the border with the Luhansk region. The Ukrainian military command recaptured more than ten towns in the Belislavsky district of the Kherson region. The Russian-Ukrainian war had killed or wounded some 315,000 Russian soldiers by then, U.S. defense officials added.

　Russian forces continued to target civilian infrastructure with artillery and airstrikes during that past week, killing dozens of civilians. In Zaporizhia, Russian troops shelled a house on October 6, killing 17 people. In addition, at least six civilians were killed and seven wounded in mine explosions in Kharkov, Donetsk, Sumy, and Chernihiv regions. Last week, several mass burial sites were discovered in Lyman and Sviatohirsk where the bodies of civilians killed during the Russian military occupation were buried; on October 6, Ukrainian police discovered 22 Russian glue torture chambers throughout the de-occupied Kharkov region.

　President Vladimir Putin announced on October 1 that Russia had taken control of nearly one-fifth of Ukraine, declaring that millions of residents would forever be Russian citizens. The annexation, which is illegal under international law, gives Russia four regions of Ukraine, Luhansk and Donetsk (home to two Russian-backed breakaway republics that have been fighting since 2014), and Kherson and Zaporizhia (two southern Ukrainian regions that have been occupied by Russian forces since shortly after the invasion began in the regions).

　Russian bloggers specializing in the Russian-Ukrainian war, which began on February 24 with the Russian invasion, published their criticism of the Kremlin's supreme military commander in November 2022. During the offensive in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, the Russian military authorities suffered enormous material and military losses. Referring to the 155th Brigade near Pavlivka, he claimed that the Russian military leadership threw the brigade into an incomprehensible offensive. In total, about 300 more Russian soldiers were killed, missing, or wounded in the offensive, which lasted only four days.

Warning: Local residents pass by the dead bodies of Russian soldiers on a street in the recaptured city of Lyman in the Luhansk area of Ukraine in October 2022.(EFE/EPA/Anastasia Vlasova)