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.

  • chowder@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • Move to lemm.ee@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • SCB@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I downvoted you because you’re saying false/insane things. That’s the point of downvotes.

        • Move to lemm.ee@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          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.

          • SCB@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            There is a 0% chance Russia has “thousands of functioning tanks” that mysteriously weren’t deemed necessary during their worldwide embarrassment of logistics last year.

            • Move to lemm.ee@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              I didn’t say thousands. I said a thousand. It’s actually estimated closer to 900 in this buildup along with the 100k troops but that’s neither here nor there really. Maybe if you actually bothered to read or watch anything I send you then you would know this? The issue here is that you’re unwilling to take onboard any information unless it comes from your little circle of neoliberal media sources, which are always late, and always doing an incredibly repetitive narrative that really doesn’t serve to learn or understand much at all. This leaves you completely unaware of what is actually happening.

              • SCB@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                It’s less that I don’t believe you (or can’t click links) and more that I doubt, severely, Russia’s ability to employ said armor to any degree of effectiveness.

                • Move to lemm.ee@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  The effectiveness of the armour entirely depends on how many Javelins Ukraine have left in my opinion. These were causing the bulk of Russian losses. The way this has been dragged on and delayed and delayed and delayed could imply that the Russians have been aiming to deplete the supplies and munitions that the Ukrainians have in order to make an offensive viable. The west doesn’t really have much left of this shit to give them either without taking it literally out of the hands of active units. Western manufacturing is not keeping up with the rate at which things are getting used.

                  I’m not ruling out that their offensive will go as badly as the Ukrainian one. It really depends on what they have left, how many weapons supply dumps the Russians have been managing to destroy with those regular missile attacks, etc etc.

                  • chowder@lemmy.one
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                    1 year ago

                    These were causing the bulk of Russian losses.

                    No, it’s mines and artillery.

                    deplete the supplies and munitions that the Ukrainians have in order to make an offensive

                    Dude this started out with Ukrainians making molotovs. Now they are getting shipments of Bradleys and multiple types of tanks. The west is capable of sustaining Ukraines ammo needs for a while. The US has already went from producing 14k shells a month to 24 with the goal of 85k a month by 2028. That’s just the US, now factor in all the European countries doing the same.

                    You need to stop listening to whatever sources you are reading.

        • jackal@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Will you remove your downvote now that Kupyansk is almost taken by the Russians?