Sun 23 July 2023:
Disclaimer: A number of claims and counterclaims are being made on the Ukraine-Russia conflict on the ground and online. While Independent Press takes utmost care to accurately report this developing news story, we cannot independently verify the authenticity of all statements, photos and videos.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says Ukraine has taken back about 50 percent of the territory that Russia seized, although Kyiv’s counteroffensive will extend several months.
“It’s already taken back about 50 percent of what was initially seized,” Blinken said in an interview with CNN.
“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.”
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.
Putin claims Ukrainian counteroffensive ‘failed’: Russian news agencies
Vladimir Putin told his Belarus counterpart Alexander Lukashenko that an ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive to push back Russian forces from Ukraine has “failed”, according to Russian news agencies.
“There is no counteroffensive,” Lukashenko said, according to the TASS news agency, before being interrupted by Putin who said that “there is one, but it has failed”.
Lukashenko is currently on a working visit to Russia.
SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES
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