The Ukraine Offense is NOT moving so fast….
US Military leaders expect the Ukraine effort to take time and causalities ….
The Russian’s have had time to harden their positions
For a third day, Kyiv did not claim to have retaken any villages, as Russian strikes and heavily mined fields pose obstacles.
Here’s what we’re covering:
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Ukrainian forces find it ‘very difficult to advance’ in the southeast.
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Ukraine builds an ‘Army of Drones’ to drop explosives on the front lines.
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NATO defense chiefs vow to stand by Ukraine, pledging more air defenses and training for fighter pilots.
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Russian antiwar activist dies in custody after claiming he had been tortured.
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Grossi visits the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant to assess its safety.
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Zelensky pleads with Switzerland to provide ‘vital’ weapons.
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Russian missiles break through Ukraine’s air defenses in cities far from front lines.
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The dam collapse in Ukraine flooded 19,000 buildings in just four cities, a report says….
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Here’s the latest on the war and its impact across the globe.
- Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said it would be “very premature” to try to put an end date on the counteroffensive, noting that the battle will “likely take a considerable amount of time — and at high cost.” Austin noted that photographs of Western combat vehicles damaged in battle have cropped up but said Ukrainian forces are able to recover and repair the equipment.
- NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Thursday that financial and military aid is making a difference on the battlefield as Ukraine’s highly anticipated counteroffensive begins. He said “fierce fighting” is underway as the alliance moves to strengthen defense spending. Earlier this week, Stoltenberg met with President Biden in Washington to discuss the ongoing conflict.
- “A significant amount of forces and resources” have been concentrated in the east of the country, Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said on her Telegram channel. She cited progress on offensive fronts despite intensified Russian aerial bombardment and artillery and mortar attacks. “Our troops are dealing with strong enemy resistance and their superiority in numbers of men and weapons,” she wrote. But she claimed that Ukrainian forces are “gradually but surely moving forward and inflicting significant losses on the enemy.”
- Sweden has agreed to some form of fighter jet “testing” for Ukraine, said Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, as part of a program that committed several countries to training Ukrainian pilots on advanced fighter jets. Speaking in Brussels at a gathering of defense officials of countries supporting Ukraine, Reznikov expressed excitement about the “so-called bird coalition,” led by the Netherlands and Denmark. Sweden flies Swedish-made Gripen fighter jets, while the Netherlands and Denmark fly the U.S.-made F-16.
- Norway and Denmark have agreed to send an additional 9,000 artillery rounds to Ukraine, Norway’s Defense Ministry said in a statement Thursday. “Ukraine has an urgent need for artillery ammunition,” said Norwegian Defense Minister Bjorn Arild Gram. Both Scandinavian nations have previously sent artillery to support Kyiv. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tweeted his gratitude for the “new joint defense assistance package.”
- Ukrainian forces are making grinding advances in several directions in the early stages of their counteroffensive, according to officials. Maliar, the deputy defense minister, said troops have advanced between 200 and 500 meters around the long-contested eastern city of Bakhmut and from 300 to 350 meters in parts of the Zaporizhzhia region. “Our troops are moving in conditions of extremely fierce battles, aviation and artillery superiority of the enemy,” she wrote on Telegram. The Washington Post was unable to independently verify those claims.
- The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, Rafael Mariano Grossi, visited Europe’s largest nuclear power plant near the front lines in Zaporizhzhia on Thursday, Ukraine’s state energy company Energoatom said on Telegram. A planned visit a day earlier was delayed by heavy fighting in the area. The International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly warned of the potential for a radioactive disaster at the Zaporizhzhia plant because of increasing combat.
- More than 2 million Ukrainian children have been forced to flee since the war began, according to UNICEF. The conflict has internally displaced an additional 1 million, the U.N. children’s agency said in a statement ahead of World Refugee Day. It said it was struggling to keep pace with the rising numbers and that its capacity to respond is under “serious strain.”
- The Australian government passed legislation to curtail plans by Russia to build a new embassy in the capital, Canberra, near Parliament. “The government has received very clear security advice as to the risk presented by a new Russian presence so close to Parliament House,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said at a news conference Thursday. The site has been subject to long-running litigation. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov criticized the decision, calling it “Russophobic hysteria.”
- The United States has sent Air Force F-22 Raptors to the Middle East to counter what military officialsdescribed as increasingly “unsafe and unprofessional behavior” by Russian aircraft in the region. “Their regular violation of agreed upon airspace deconfliction measures increases the risk of escalation or miscalculation,” Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, commander of U.S. Central Command, said in a statement.
Zaporizhzhia steel plant refuses to bend to Russian attacks:Workers at a steel plant near the front lines of a counteroffensive in southeastern Ukraine aren’t cowed by the air raid sirens that regularly sound as they work with molten metal at temperatures up to 1,100 degrees Celsius, The Post’s Adam Taylor reports…..