Kyiv launched its pushback in June after stockpiling western-supplied weapons, building up assault battalions and working to degrade Russian positions.

“Robotyne has been liberated. Our forces are advancing southeast of Robotyne and south of Mala Tokmachka,” deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar said on television.

Both settlements are in the Zaporizhzhia region, which the Kremlin claimed to have annexed last year despite not having military control over it.

Ukraine’s advance on the southern front has been limited, spurring a political debate about whether the offensive is succeeding.

Ukrainian forces are crashing into Russian defensive lines of trenches and minefields that are kilometres deep, and its forces have clawed back just several villages in the south and pressured the flanks of Bakhmut, a war-scarred town in the east.

Maliar said today that Ukrainian troops were advancing south of Bakhmut and that they had recaptured 1sq km there over the last week of fighting.

She also acknowledged a Russian push to take back territory in the northeast of Ukraine, describing fighting in the Kharkiv region as “very intense” over the past week.