Free Republic

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday on CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS” that Ukraine has retaken about 50% of the territory that Russia initially seized. Partial transcript as follows: ZAKARIA: Tell us what you can sense of what is going on in the counteroffensive that Ukraine is manage– attempting with Russia. The – so far, the reports seem to be it is very slow and very tough going.

Ukrainian forces are now pushing over the defacto border established in the 2014 Russian invasion, taking back long-occupied territory in the Donbas region for the first time, the United Kingdom says. There have been “small advances” — which is on trend for the progress of the counter-offensive so far, per reports — around Krasnohorivka near Donetsk city, an area that has been occupied by Russian and pro-Kremlin forces for nearly a decade.

The long-discussed Ukrainian spring counteroffensive is underway, Volodymyr Zelensky has confirmed, with the country reporting 25 battles fought in the past 24 hours and a handful of villages reclaimed. Ukraine’s own reporting of its progress in the counteroffensive against Russia’s occupation of the southeast of their country claims a clutch of villages and positions taken encircling Donetsk on Monday morning. The gains would be the first settlements reported taken in the counteroffensive so far, which was officially declared by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday but appears to have been underway to varying degrees since early last week.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday said his country has reclaimed 6,000 square kilometers of occupied territory from Russia in recent weeks as its troops push forward with a counteroffensive. “From the beginning of September until today, our warriors have already liberated more than 6,000 square kilometers of the territory of Ukraine – in the east and south,” he said in an address to Ukrainians. “The movement of our troops continues.”