But progress has been “slower than desired,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has acknowledged. Ukraine stepped up attacks in several directions in the southeast earlier this month, a move that signaled its much anticipated counteroffensive had begun. “The enemy’s weakness is always a window of opportunity, it allows us to take the advantage,” she told AP, adding that it was too early to assess how the political game playing out in Russia might give Ukraine the military upper hand. “It is all hard, not easy, but we will certainly win.” He spoke to The Associated Press in Kyiv, where he is recuperating.Īs Wagner troops marched toward Moscow, Hanna Malyar, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, announced progress in several directions along the front line where fighting has been raging for weeks, and that Russian advances further north were thwarted. “My friend called me today and he said: ’Andrii, I haven’t been drinking for so many years, but today I have a good reason to drink,” he said. Ukrainian soldier Andrii Kvasnytsia, 50, who was injured fighting in the eastern city of Bakhmut, where battles are nonstop along the southern flanks of the salt-mining town occupied by Russian troops, said “Everyone is excited.” “Brothers! Everyone who holds a weapon at the line of contact, remember, your enemy is across from you,” read one message. On Russian Telegram channels, military servicemen who blog about the war urged Russian soldiers to stay focused on the war. But in the longer term, he said, it shows lack of unity among Russia’s fighting forces. “In the short term, it distracted attention from the war and diverted some resources from the front,” said Nigel Gould-Davies, a senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Affairs. The short-lived rebellion did not noticeably affect Russian army posture along the 1,000 kilometer (600-mile) front line in eastern Ukraine, but it could give Ukraine the impetus it needs to intensify the beginning phase of its counteroffensive, which military leaders have admitted is going slower than expected.

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