Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Russia is making gains despite at a high cost, Ukrainian and American officials said. But after initially retaking some small settlements and villages, Ukraine’s advances in the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions are better measured in yards than miles, according to independent analysts.
The U.S. defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, acknowledged that Ukraine’s forces were meeting fierce resistance and suffering losses both in human casualties and in the Western tanks and other armored vehicles newly supplied to them. Those difficulties had been expected, they said.
“There is progress in all directions of the attack,” Hanna Malyar, a deputy Ukrainian defense minister, said late yesterday. Ukrainian forces heading south in the direction of Berdiansk and Mariupol two key coastal cities long held by the Russians
had moved forward about a mile, she said.
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