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Ukraine has set its sights on liberating all the lands occupied by Russian forces, after pushing it back in a quick counter-attack in the northeast, a goal that US President Joe Biden said the road to achieving would be “long.”
In a speech, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that his country’s forces have liberated about eight thousand square kilometers so far this month, and it seems that all of them are in the northeastern Kharkiv region.
He added that “stabilization measures” have been completed in about half of those lands, and “are still underway in a liberated area of the same size.”
It is not yet possible to verify how much success Ukraine says it has had on the battlefield. The total area mentioned by Zelensky is roughly the size of the Greek island of Crete.
Asked if Ukraine had reached a turning point in the six-month-old crisis, Biden said it was hard to predict.
“Obviously the Ukrainians have made great progress, but I think the road to that complete liberalization will be long,” he added. The White House, which has provided billions of dollars in weapons and support, said earlier that the United States was likely to announce a new military aid package to Ukraine in the “coming days.”
A US spokesman said that Russian forces had left defensive positions, particularly in and around Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine.
Russian forces still control about a fifth of Ukraine in the south and east, but Kyiv is now on the offensive in both regions.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Aristovich spoke of the prospects for action in the eastern Luhansk province, which is known with Donetsk as Donbass, a major industrial region close to the border with Russia.
“Now there is an attack on Lyman and there can be progress in Seversk,” Aristovich said in a video posted on YouTube, referring to two towns. He predicted a battle for control of the town of Svatovo, where he said: The Russians have warehouses for storage.
“And this is what they fear most,” he said, “that we will take the Lyman and then advance on Lyschansk and Severodonetsk, and they will be cut off from Svatovo.”
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