Swiftly advancing Ukrainian troops were bearing down on the main railway supplying Russian forces in the east on Friday, after the collapse of a section of Russia’s front line caused the most dramatic shift in the war’s momentum since its early weeks. In a video address, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian troops had “liberated dozens of settlements” and reclaimed more than 1,000 square km (385 square miles) of territory in the east and south in the past week. Zelenskiy posted a video in which Ukrainian soldiers said they had captured the eastern town of Balakliia, which lies along a stretch of front stretching south of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city. The Ukrainian military said it had advanced nearly 50 km through that front after an assault that appeared to take the Russians by surprise. That would make it by far the fastest advance by […]