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.
This uhh. This is just nonsense right? I’m not aware of Ukraine having broken any of the defensive first lines let alone past any of the dragon’s teeth lines. There’s 2 more lines beyond those. Getting past these lines is necessary before getting even 10%, let alone 50%.
Or are they talking about something that happened much earlier? That’s really confusing too because anyone that’s been watching the map trackers knows nothing close to 50% ever happened. Certainly some pushback several months ago but hardly 50% ???
This is since the invasion began, counting from Russia’s deepest gains into Ukrainian territory. So, this is everything that Ukraine has managed to do against the world’s second largest military. While currently there haven’t been any spectacular gains, the Ukraine has been steadily grinding the land back from the invaders and combined the amount now adds up to 50% retaken.
Meaning the job is half done, but also half finished.
This boundless optimism is so strange. Using something that was so long ago now for propaganda in the present is super misleading. Until we see a breakthrough of the defensive lines, literally just 1 layer of a line would be a good start let alone all 3 layers I can’t really agree with anyone that thinks much is going to happen from the ukrainian side. If/when that does happen I’d be happy to reassess.
Lol “so long ago”. Most of it wasn’t even a year ago dude, and the article is pretty clear about the timeline being discussed.
Yes it was? The withdrawal from the north was march30-april6.
I’m not a dude.
Not really. It’s an overall view of the progress to date. The liberation of Ukrainian territory is an continuous and ongoing process and it’s half done. The only super misleading part has been thinking that Russia would give up on its latest bout of imperialism so quickly. America is going to keep supplying Ukraine with weapons because by doing so they are absolutely wrecking their #1 enemy on the cheap.
Russia is fucked. Even if they beat Ukraine their invasion has caused NATO to expand its direct contact with Russia from over 1000km. Russian threw away decades of goodwill and cause economic cooperation with the West to completely die out. Russia was on the verge of being Europe’s OPEC and all of that potential to make their nation better has been utterly lost.
No one is going to trust Russia for at least another full generation.
Mate I don’t know why you’ve said half this shit. I talked about none of that. It’s like you’re talking at me rather than with me. US weapons? Who said anything about america? It’s like you’re reading off a script instead of actually responding to what I’ve said. I’m glad that you’re really excited to see loads of people die but like, actually talk to me instead of soapboxing.
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Maybe. It’s a bizarre response that hardly has anything to do with what I was saying, I just assumed it was someone that really wanted to say all these things that we’ve heard from neoliberals and the media like a billion times already. Like, ok?
The job is not at all half finished. There is a massive difference between taking back territory Russia strategically chose to withdraw from following their failure to advance further and taking back territory they have claimed as an integral part of their nation and will fight tooth and nail to defend.
I mean looking at this video - which is 4 months old now, too - I am eyeballing it but kinda seems like yeah, it could be 40%+? So now it’s 50% maybe, sure.
Huh I guess you can get kinda close to 40% ? I suppose most of us aren’t including the north east withdrawal because it’s largely seen as a distraction and not really a “front” that actually happened, and Kyiv feels like it happened 10 years ago now. It makes sense that Blinken would include the stuff most people wouldn’t think of as having been Ukraine “taking it back” because the bigger number looks good in media.
Lmfao " Kyiv was a feint" do you really believe that? Dude they lost so many VDV the BBC did a piece on it. To say it was just a distraction is bullshit Russian propaganda. They attacked, failed, then retreated and reinforced the areas they were more successful.
Nah I’m not talking about Kyiv. The north east was hardly any troops, no supply, just empty roads that were taken with no resistance. And then they withdrew with no resistance too after the Kyiv attack failed. My point being that it’s hardly worth considering it as having been “taken” in the first place, and most don’t. The Kyiv part itself is fair to bring up, just easy to forget given how long ago it was.
Anyway people should be more concerned about the new russian offensive getting hyped up. A lot of rumours stirring around that look similar to the rumours before Bahkmut right now.
No resistance? They sieged Chernihiv from February 25-March 31.
You count Bakhmut as a Russian victory? Nobody won Bakhmut, Russian expended a massive ammout of manpower and resources for nothing. The front didn’t change in any meaningful way, hell the fact they are struggled so much to reclaim a town they captured in 2014 should tell you how bad things are for Russia. Seriously dude they drafted 300,000 and still the only way they made progress was by throwing prisoners at it.
Also spoiler alert they have been on the offensive this entire time. The only competent people have been removed from power. The one to order defensive lines made and mines laid backed Pringlez. Pringlez is also gone now so yeah I don’t really see this offensive playing out any way.
I didn’t say anything about victories. I couldn’t give a shit about who is winning or losing I would prefer the fighting to stop immediately it’s all a waste of lives and the destruction of families.
I don’t think we should be counting Pringlez as gone, Wagner are training Belarus troops I’m not convinced that he isn’t involved in that given that he moved to Belarus.~
What I’m talking about is the 100k troops and 1k tanks that have been built up for the new Russian push. We might see a big arrow offensive again instead of this attrition stuff that has been going on. It’s all speculation obviously but the telegrams feel a lot like they did before Bahkmut when the rumours were circling that it was going to be next, this makes me think that this is actually going to happen fairly soon. But hey I’ve been wrong before so ehhh
Bit annoying that just having any kind of conversation here gets you downvoted for apparently no reason at all. Weird userbase in this comm, doesn’t happen anywhere else on lemmy.
I downvoted you because you’re saying false/insane things. That’s the point of downvotes.
What false things have I said? The troop build up they’ve been doing has been well known for a long time now, like literally months they’ve been doing this buildup for. Many are talking about it, both pro-russian and pro-ukrainian.
https://youtu.be/38Mcg_hrQLk
https://youtu.be/PXhg9DfTIVg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTTxcfKAmqA
https://t.me/Slavyangrad/56341
https://t.me/rybar/50008
https://t.me/DeepStateUA/17195
It’s like some of you aren’t actually paying any attention to anything other than ABC/Reuters/CNN. These outlets are useless for speculation content you have to go elsewhere for it.
Kiyv, Kherson, & Kharkiv.
Aight so like 15-20% and he’s referring to something that happened ages ago then. I thought it was kinda weird, I guess they’re not happy about how the current counteroffensive is going either and this kind of statement helps generate headlines that stop people’s support dropping whether it’s actually true or not.
I needed to ask because I wasn’t really sure if I’d just missed something incredibly major somehow.