Hanna Malar announced the latest figures on the counter-offensive in a Facebook post on Wednesday, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
The official said: “Since September 6, around 8,500 square kilometres of land, 388 settlements, some 150,000 people have been liberated in the Kharkiv region.”
Malar added that the frontline currently extended over 2,500 kilometres, with active military operations underway along 1,300 kilometres, the PAP news agency reported.
‘8,000 square kms liberated in September’: Zelensky
Meanwhile, as the Ukrainian counter-offensive continued in the east and south of the country, President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday made a surprise visit to Izyum - a key city in the Kharkiv region that had been retaken from Russian forces four days earlier.
The Ukrainian president watched as the Ukrainian flag was raised in front of the charred city council building, later writing on social media: "Our blue-yellow flag is already flying in de-occupied Izium. And it will be so in every Ukrainian city and village," the Reuters news agency reported.
Earlier in the day, Zelensky handed out medals to troops who freed Balakliia, another town recaptured recently.
Ukraine’s president has said the country’s army has liberated about 8,000 square kilometres of territory so far in September, an area nearly equivalent to the island of Cyprus, according to Reuters.
Ukraine has made ‘significant progress’: Biden
Ukraine’s sweeping advance over the past week has been welcomed by its supporters, but Western leaders have cautioned that it’s too early to say if the counter-offensive marks a turning-point in the war.
The US President Joe Biden said: "It's clear the Ukrainians have made significant progress.
But I think it's going to be a long haul," as cited by Reuters.
Meanwhile, German Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht told Reuters it was too early to say if Ukraine's "remarkable success" signalled a turning point because “Moscow has yet to react.”
With Ukrainian forces on the offensive in the south and east of the country, the White House said this week that it would likely announce a new security assistance package in the "coming days," in addition to the billions of dollars already provided to Ukraine, news outlets reported.
At the same time, Ukraine’s General Staff said on Wednesday that its forces had successfully repelled Russian attacks near eight settlements in the eastern Donetsk region.
“The Russian occupation forces are continuing to focus their efforts on trying to capture the entire Donetsk region, hold on to captured territories and stop the offensive of Ukraine’s Defence Forces,” Ukraine’s military command said.
It added: “the intensity of enemy shelling has diminished significantly in the Kharkiv sector… Thanks to the successful actions of the Defence Forces, the moral and psychological state of the occupiers is extremely low,” as cited by public broadcaster Polish Radio’s IAR news agency.
Thursday is day 204 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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Source: IAR, PAP, Reuters