“First, mined areas. Sometimes our soldiers have to crawl 200-300 meters a day to clear a corridor for advancing troops. The second obstacle is Russian defense lines reinforced with concrete and steel. Third, Russian air supremacy. Our forces on the earth lacks anti-aircraft assets,” he said.
Kuleba noted that many people comment on the course of the counteroffensive and say that it is going slowly, but for Ukraine these are daily efforts and human lives.
“The most important thing is that, in spite of everything, we are progressing,” the minister said.
Context:
The aggressor country of the Russian Federation unleashed a war against Ukraine in 2014, when it occupied Crimea and part of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions. On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine from the northern, eastern and southern directions.
In April, the defense forces of Ukraine expelled the invaders from the northern regions, in the fall they de-occupied part of the Kherson, Mykolaiv and Kharkiv regions.
On June 5, 2023, the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine announced that in some areas the defense forces had switched to offensive operations. After that, the Ukrainian military liberated a number of settlements in the Donetsk and Zaporozhye regions.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview published on June 21 that the Ukrainian counteroffensive is moving slower than desired, but the country’s authorities assess its progress positively.
Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhny, in an interview published on June 30 with The Washington Post, said that he was annoyed by statements about Ukraine’s supposedly “slow” counter-offensive. “This is not a show. Every day, every meter is given in blood … Without full support, these plans are generally unrealistic,” he stressed.
2023-07-02 19:18:09
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