UKRAINE’S counter-offensive against Russian forces has started and is proceeding according to plan, according to a Ukrainian defence department spokesman.

Yuriy Sak told GB News: “It’s going according to plan of our military command. One thing that I would like to stress from the start is that one of the worst things you can do when you’re fighting a war like this is to underestimate your enemy.

“So we understand we know from our intelligence that this is an enemy which is capable of committing atrocities, and which is capable of committing terrorist acts – as we have seen with the blowing up of the dam. This is an enemy which in many respects, has more weapons than the Ukrainian army, it outnumbers us and it is an enemy that for the last three, if not more months, has been building very strongly fortified defence lines.

“Some of these defence lines, they are reminiscent of World War Two defence lines. Nevertheless, we as the Ukrainian army, we are focused on re-occupying our land.

“Just literally ten minutes before I came on your show, we had news that another village was occupied by the Ukrainian army in the east of Ukraine and the Ukrainian flag was raised.”

In a discussion with Camilla Tominey, he continued: “We have to be quietly optimistic and we have to trust in the Ukrainian armed forces and in our partners, and I would like to use this opportunity to thank the United Kingdom for standing with Ukraine from day one of this invasion.

“And the fact that you’re one of the first countries who yesterday announced that you will be sending Ukraine a £16 million pound package, some of the funds for dealing with the fallout of the Kakhovka Dam thank you, the British people and the British government for the support.”

He added: “We have been able to evacuate from the right hand side of the Dnipro River which is under Ukraine’s control, we’ve been able to evacuate more than 3,000 people. There are still 32 villages which are completely underwater.

“The water levels are coming down a little bit during the last 24 hours. They’ve decreased by 26 centimetres, but the evacuation works still continue, and what I would like to stress, using this opportunity, is that you know the evacuation processes on the Ukrainian control side are going to plan and we are making progress.

“When it comes to the left side of the Dnipro River, which is territory controlled by the terrorists, we know that there are no evacuation process taking place. People are left to survive. Even in Odessa, which is a couple of hundred kilometres away from Kherson, the bodies of dead Russian soldiers were washed on the beaches of the sea.

“So we can see that these are terrorists who have no regard not just for the lives of civilians, they have no regard for even the life of their own soldiers, which is something we have known for a very long time.”