The Ukrainian army announced on Thursday that it had broken through Russian defenses and recaptured territories in several areas of the front, while the American Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, was in kyiv to announce new military aid of 2.8 billion dollars. dollars.
While Ukrainian troops have been carrying out a counter-offensive since last week, in particular to retake the occupied region of Kherson, the general staff has claimed a series of successes.
The most significant gains are, according to this source, in the Kharkiv region, bordering Russia in the Northeast, where Ukrainian forces claim to have broken through Russian defenses 50 kilometers deep and recaptured more than twenty localities.
In the south of the country, the kyiv forces say they have broken through “deeply”, up to “several tens of kilometers”, the Russian lines and “liberated several localities”, according to Oleksiï Gromov, a senior official of the general staff. Ukrainian.
In Donbass, the eastern mining basin where the heaviest fighting of the war had taken place in recent months, kyiv says its troops advanced two to three kilometers near Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, and recaptured the village of Ozerne.
These gains, which cannot be independently verified immediately, would be the biggest for Ukraine since the withdrawal of Russian troops from around kyiv in late March.
They are announced when the head of American diplomacy makes a surprise visit to kyiv, his second since the start of the Russian invasion, with the promise of a new tranche of aid.
“It’s still very early, but we see clear and real progress on the ground, especially in the area around Kherson, but also interesting progress in the East, in the Donbass”, commented Antony Blinken.
The progress of the Ukrainian counter-offensive is “regular”, also welcomed the American Chief of Staff, Mark Milley, after a meeting of Ukraine’s allies organized at the American base in Ramstein, Germany, and intended to coordinate military aid to kyiv.
Russia did not comment on the Ukrainian statements.
Arming Aid
After meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Foreign Minister Dmytro Kouleba, Blinken pledged US support “until the aggression [russe] cease and that Ukraine be fully sovereign”.
Mr. Zelensky called this aid “a very important signal, which gives the guarantee that we can take back our territories, our lands”.
“What we see is the price that Russia has to pay which is already extraordinary, and which will be increasingly heavy”, abounded Mr. Blinken, come to discuss a new tranche of 2, 8 billion for Kyiv and 18 countries in the region.
Of this sum, 675 million will go directly to kyiv in the form of deliveries of armaments, ammunition and HIMARS artillery systems, which have already enabled kyiv to hit Russian supply lines.
For the remaining 2.2 billion, they will be disbursed as loans and subsidies to Ukraine and to countries that feel threatened by Russia, for the purchase of American weapons.
This new tranche sets the total amount of US aid to Ukraine at $15.2 billion since the start of the invasion.
In kyiv, Mr. Blinken began by visiting a hospital treating child victims of war, together with his Ukrainian counterpart. “I brought some friends,” he told the young patients, giving them stuffed animals.