WASHINGTON, July 23 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that while Ukraine has reconquered half the territory that Russia initially seized in its invasion, Kyiv faced a “a very hard fight” to win back more.
“It’s already taken back about 50% of what was initially seized,” Blinken said in an interview to CNN on Sunday.
“These are still relatively early days of the counteroffensive. It is tough,” he said, adding: “It will not play out over the next week or two. We’re still looking I think at several months.”
Hopes that Ukraine could quickly clear Moscow’s forces from its territory following the launch of a summer counteroffensive are fading as Kyiv’s troops struggle to breach heavily entrenched Russian positions in the country’s south and east.
Late last month President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was quoted as saying that progress against Russian forces was “slower than desired” but that Kyiv would not be pressured into speeding it up.
Thanks for the update. Do you know if civilians are still living in these areas? Or have they been evacuated in advance?
There are always evacuations offered by the russians but there’s also always plenty of civilians that do not leave. Either due to age, inability or stubbornness “this is my home”. My understanding is that the Ukrainian side tends not to do this, and has some pretty bad habits of camping out near local civilian populations as a method of deterring missile/artillery fire against their armour. Major civilian buildings like schools and rec centres usually get turned into small bases or supply centres since they’re not being used for anything else when on the front line of a war.
If the rumours are true that Ukraine only has 1 line of defence here then things will move very quickly following a breakthrough like this. But I don’t think anyone really has reliable information on what the trench/defensive lines look like for Ukraine. The Russian defensive lines being 3 layers with shark teeth in between on the other hand is very well understood.
Real shame about the civilians. I can understand the will not to leave one’s home. But imagine just waiting on the edge of a battle not knowing whether the next missile will accidentally land in your flat. Traumatic. I wonder if people’s mind’s protect them by just zoning out the reality of it all.
Strange that the Ukrainians would only have one line. To my knowledge the Soviets learned this tactic fighting the Nazis. I’d have thought the Ukrainian military would not make the same mistakes as the early WWII Soviet army. If they do only have one line, it suggests that resources and reserves are in a dire condition. If Ukraine can only manage one line of defence, it would suggest that the war can’t last much longer, though—and it will be ‘easy’ for Russia to isolate troops and starve them out; and the sooner this shit ends, the better.
I think the concern is less the missiles and more the artillery, which can be fairly inaccurate at times when the wrong numbers get punched in.
To my knowledge the ukrainian doctrine has not changed much at all and still has the soviet structure. They really didn’t have a military to speak of until 2014 happened too, which is why they had the fascist militias fighting the front of the war vs the separatists for so long. Nato have been changing their structure and tactics through external training of specific batallions but I’m not sure we have much idea of whether those are performing any better. Given how poorly the ukrainian offensive went I’m leaning towards nato tactics and structure being completely unprepared for an artillery war and trench battle of this kind. It’s closer to ww1 than anything with heavily dug in lines that spend most of their time looking out at a no man’s land.
I don’t think Russia taking more land will end it. Russia will continue this war until they take Odessa and Mykolaiv to landlock Ukraine. At that point it loses all sovereignty as it will have to negotiate for port usage to export grain. So to be honest unless negotiations open up between the US and RU I expect this to last 1-2 more years at the current pace, especially if every major city takes as long as Bakhmut.