The Ukrainian military has liberated 29 settlements and more than 770 square kilometers in eastern Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on October 7 as Russian and Ukrainian human rights organizations were awarded a share of the Nobel Peace Prize on the same day that Russian President Vladimir Putin celebrated his 70th birthday.
The liberated Ukrainian settlements include six in the Luhansk region -- one of four that Russia illegally annexed after conducting what Zelenskiy said were "pseudo-referendums" on the question of joining Russia.
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"In total, since the beginning of this offensive operation, 2,434 square kilometers of our land and 96 settlements have already been liberated," Zelenskiy said, adding up the gains in a counteroffensive that began several weeks ago.
"There are also good results in the south of Ukraine this week. Every day we are liberating our land and our people there from the pseudo-referendum. We will certainly reach the lands that were occupied by Russia before," he said in his nightly address.
Russia's Defense Ministry said on October 7 that its forces had repelled Ukrainian advances near the city of Lyman in the Donetsk region and had retaken three villages elsewhere in the region. The ministry also claimed Russian forces had prevented Ukrainian troops from advancing on several villages in the southern Kherson region.
Reports from the battlefield could not be independently confirmed. They came on the same day that the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to Russian rights group Memorial, Ukraine's Center For Civil Liberties, and a human rights activist jailed in Belarus.
The awards were seen as a repudiation of Putin, who marked his 70th birthday on October 7.
Activists marked the milestone in various ways. In the Georgian city of Batumi, he was "gifted" a ticket to The Hague, where the International Criminal Court is located.
In the Russian city of Samara, activist Vladimir Avdonin conducted a solo picket holding a poster with the words "Putin is a criminal."
He stood at one of the busiest intersections in the city for about half an hour, according to Idel.Realii. The activist has been "congratulating" Putin on his birthday in this way for several years and has been subjected to searches and fines more than once but was not detained this time.
In a show of support for Putin, students in St. Petersburg stood in a formation on a main city square spelling out the phrase "Putin is my president." They were reportedly driven to the square and handed posters and Russian flags before they marched onto the square.
Back in Ukraine, an official in the city of Zaporizhzhya said the number of people killed as a result of an attack on October 6 had increased to 14.
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"Disappointing news continues to come to us from the analysis of debris on the houses that were affected by yesterday's attack," said city council secretary Andriy Kurtev on October 7, expressing condolences to all those who lost relatives and friends.
Moscow denies carrying out targeted attacks on civilians despite numerous testimonies to the contrary.
An official in the eastern town of Lyman, which was recently liberated by Ukrainian troops, said 200 graves and a mass grave had been discovered there.
Pavlo Kyrylenko, governor of the eastern Donetsk region, published photos on his Telegram channel showing emergency personnel in white protective suits working in a cordoned-off area. Exhumations had already begun, Kyrylenko wrote.
According to initial findings, the dead could be both Ukrainian soldiers and civilians.
Ukrainian troops took control of Lyman on October 2 after Russian forces withdrew a day earlier.
A mass burial site was found last month near the eastern city of Izyum after Ukrainian troops took over towns in the Kharkiv region. Hundreds of bodies were exhumed, including 30 with signs of torture.