Ukraine conflict: Army admits defeat
Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, General Valery Zaluzhnyj, ... he admitted in an interview with the British newspaper The Economist that the counteroffensive had reached “a stalemate”.
It is definitely a euphemism that hides a failure, confirmed in these hours by the fact that, by Zaluzhnyi's own admission, the Ukrainian army retreated to the "outskirts of Marinka", the city in Donetsk that the Russians claimed to have conquered . The blow inflicted by the Ukrainians on the Russian landing ship Novocherkassk in the port of Feodosia, in Crimea, is certainly not enough to straighten out a rather heavy reality. “The counteroffensive did not achieve the desired results.” With these words, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky commented on the work of his army over the last year, which should have annihilated the Russian forces, but which instead is currently in a clear state of stalemate and in some areas even retreating. Despite some occasional blows inflicted on the Russians in the Black Sea and the losses suffered by the Russian army, Kiev's counteroffensive was not very successful, leading even Zelensky to admit the reality of the facts. Despite military aid arriving from all over the Western world, Kiev was unable to reconquer the cities of Melitopol, Berdyansk and Mariupol, still in Russian hands, much less Crimea. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, meeting with journalists, declared the failure of the Ukrainian counter-offensive that began in June this year and assured that the Russian army is advancing in all sectors of the front. For two months, Russian forces have significantly intensified their action in various areas, especially in the Donetsk region; they also made good progress in the Kharkiv region, in an attempt to get closer to Kupiansk, a city from which Russian forces were forced to retreat in September 2022.
The US has announced the latest military aid package to Ukraine for this year. The State Department reports this in a note. It is a shipment of 250 million dollars. The new military aid package for Ukraine includes ammunition for air defense and for high-mobility artillery missile systems, artillery shells 155 mm and 105 mm and over 15 million rounds of firearms, we read further in the State Department note which concludes with an appeal for Congress "to act quickly, as soon as possible, to promote our national security by helping Ukraine to defend itself and guarantee its future."
