Momentum is shifting in the war in Ukraine, the White House said Tuesday.
A major Ukrainian counteroffensive in the eastern part of the country appears to have had a massive breakthrough in the otherwise grinding war, which has even led to calls for Vladimir Putin’s resignation from within Russia.
UKRAINIAN COUNTEROFFENSIVE RECAPTURES MORE RUSSIAN-CONQUERED TERRITORY
Asked if the war had reached a turning point, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby confirmed that things are changing.
“What you’re seeing is certainly a shift in momentum by the Ukrainian armed forces, particularly in the north,” said Kirby. “We’ve been talking about this for quite some days now. This long-planned counter-offensive is really two counter-offensives, one in the north and one in the south.”
Kirby said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would decide whether a true turning point had been reached but that Ukraine was clearly seeing success in the Donbas region, adding that the United States would continue to support the country.
“In the north, we’ve seen Russians evacuate, withdraw, retreat from their defensive positions, particularly in and around the Kharkiv Oblast,” Kirby said. “They have left fighting positions, they’ve left supplies. They are calling it a repositioning, but, certainly, they have withdrawn in the face of Ukrainian armed forces that are clearly on the offensive.”
Ukrainian forces have recaptured almost all of the Kharkiv province, according to the Institute for the Study of War’s Sunday update, which attributed the success to the “skillful campaign design and execution that included efforts to maximize the impact of western weapons systems such as HIMARS.”
The military struggles led more than 30 Russian officials to risk retaliation by calling for Putin’s resignation, though such a move remains unlikely.
Kirby said it would be up to the Russian people to decide whether Putin remains in office, adding that the country remains militarily dangerous right now.
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“They clearly still have a military capable of inflicting great damage and casualties, and we’ve seen that, sadly, to some effect in Ukraine,” Kirby said. “It’s still a very large and very powerful military. And Mr. Putin still has an awful lot of military capacity left at his disposal, not just in Ukraine but potentially elsewhere.”
