Video Shows How Ukraine Captured Key City From Russian Forces

A special Ukrainian unit has released a video showing how a key city was recaptured in the eastern Kharkiv region, where a counteroffensive has recently dealt Russian President Vladimir Putin's army several blows.

The nearly 10-minute video provides what might be the closest look yet into how Ukrainian troops advanced on and ultimately freed the city of Balakliya from Russian control this month.

In the footage from the Kraken unit, Ukrainian forces are seen strategizing, traveling in vehicles and on foot, passing destroyed artillery with the Russian "Z" symbol and opening fire with guns and larger weapons, including what appears to be a U.S.-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS).

Some of the footage shows what appears to be Russian-controlled facilities and vehicles targeted from afar with large blasts. When the Ukrainian troops eventually reach a more central part of Balakliya, civilians are seen cheering their arrival on the side of the road and waving a Ukrainian flag. The Ukrainian troops surveyed the area with their weapons at the ready.

At the end of the video, Ukrainian soldiers are seen taking down Russian flags and other reminders of the occupation posted around the city and then raising their own flag on top of a building in a symbol of victory.

Ukraine's eastern counteroffensive came shortly after the start of another push to regain territory in the southern Kherson region. On September 11, General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, the commander of Ukraine's military, said that Ukrainian troops had pushed to within 50 kilometers, about 30 miles, of the Ukraine-Russia border in Kharkiv.

Russia's Defense Ministry initially said that a decision had been made to "regroup" some of its forces from the areas of Balakliya and Izium to the partially Russian-occupied eastern Donetsk region, but the explanation was mocked by a Ukrainian ambassador. Kremlin officials and Russian state media then began acknowledging the recent Kharkiv defeats in a move the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) assessed was meant to shield Putin from responsibility.

Taking control of Balakliya was strategically important for Ukraine in its eastern counteroffensive because it allowed soldiers to use it as a base to push even further into the region.

"The operation that started the counteroffensive of the Ukrainian army," the Kraken unit captioned the video on YouTube, according to an English translation. "The operation that broke the front of the occupiers in the Kharkiv region."

After Ukraine freed Balakliya, it continued toward the cities of Izium and Kupiansk, according to The Washington Post, recapturing both.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a September 15 address that almost the entire Kharkiv region had been deoccupied.

"It was an unprecedented movement of our warriors—Ukrainians once again managed to do what many considered impossible," he said.

Newsweek reached out to Russia's Defense Ministry for comment.