Ukraine has released a video urging patience as many question the slow pace of Kyiv’s counteroffensive..
“Patience, dear, we know what we’re doing,” the Centre for Strategic Communication and Information Security of Ukraine (SPRAVDI) tweeted on Sunday, sharing a 53-second video that includes clips from video games, movies, and battlefield footage.
The clip was released shortly after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged that his forces are advancing slowly as they attempt to recapture territory seized by Russia in the 16-month-old war. Kyiv’s long-anticipated counteroffensive kicked off in early June.
SERGEY BOBOK/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said last week that the counteroffensive seeks to wear down Moscow’s forces, and said Ukraine’s focus was currently on destroying Russian equipment and personnel and that the past few days of fighting had been particularly “fruitful,” without elaborating.
“We are advancing,” Zelensky said during a visit to the Czech Republic last Thursday, Ukrinform reported. “We have the initiative now. The offensive is not fast, that is a fact. But, nevertheless, we are moving forward and not moving backward like the Russians. Therefore, I see this as a positive.”
The nearly one-minute video released by Ukraine on Sunday opens by stating that “some people think they know what war is from watching movies and playing video games.”
“Look, we know you’re impatient, but this is our fight,” the video’s caption said. “It isn’t make-believe and we know what we’re doing.”
The Institute for the Study of War, a U.S.-based think tank, said Ukraine last week launched a wave of coordinated missile attacks across the “entire front.”
That came after Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said on her Telegram channel on July 5 that Ukrainian forces were “hitting the enemy in the east so powerfully that in some areas their military units have begun to leave their positions as whole units,” adding that there was fierce fighting ongoing in the Bakhmut direction.
The ISW assessed that on Sunday, Ukrainian forces conducted counteroffensive operations on at least three sectors of the front.
Ukrainian Ground Forces Commander Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi stated that Ukrainian forces successfully continue to advance in the Bakhmut direction, in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, while Ukrainian officials reported that Ukrainian forces continued to conduct counteroffensive operations in the Berdyansk and Melitopol directions, it noted.
The think tank said it continues to assess that the current pace of the Ukrainian counteroffensive reflects a “deliberate effort to conserve Ukrainian combat power and attrit Russian manpower and equipment at the cost of slower territorial advances.”
SOURCE: NEWS WEEK
