As Russia’s war in Ukraine enters its sixth month, a senior military official said there isn’t “substantive change” in some Ukrainian territories.
The official’s comments come less than 24 hours after at least 53 Ukrainian prisoners of war were reportedly killed by artillery blasts in the penal colony of the eastern Ukrainian town of Olenivka, where more than 900 Ukrainian prisoners of war captured during the battle for Mariupol were being held after they surrendered from the Azovstal steel plant.
US MAKES ‘SUBSTANTIAL PROPOSAL’ TO RUSSIA FOR GRINER AND WHELAN’S RELEASE
“Around Kharkiv, as I mentioned Sloviansk, that axis down from Izium, up back over toward Siversk, we’re not seeing any real, substantive change,” the official told reporters on Friday.
A senior defense official told reporters that Russia was “failing on the battlefield” and continuing to pay “a high price for very little gain,” adding, “I was really struck this week by how Russian rhetoric was trying to mask these losses, and what we saw was really very expansionist rhetoric coming out of Moscow.”
Over the last several weeks, Russia has made limited progress in the fight in the Donbas region, while various missile strikes against civilian populations have continued to garner international condemnation. Recently, in addition to the attack against the POWs, there was a strike against the port of Odesa, which occurred just hours after the Russians and Ukrainians had announced an agreement that would permit the Ukrainians to restart their exportation of grain.
Earlier this week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said publicly that it is their goal to ensure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is removed from power, according to the Associated Press. Russia’s territorial goals had also expanded to include more of the country, raising fears of upcoming annexations and sham referendums.
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The United States has continued to provide military aid to Ukraine, a total that has eclipsed $7 billion since Russia invaded in late February. Some of it has made a difference. The administration has provided Ukraine with 16 high-mobility artillery rocket systems that have proved capable of making the war a more equal fight.
Ukrainian Minister of Defense Oleksii Reznikov said last week that his forces have already used the HIMARS to “destroy approximately 30 command stations” but said they needed “at least” a hundred to launch an “effective” counterattack against Russia.
