Ukrainian President Volodmir Zelenski spoke for the first time today of the “counter-offensive actions” launched by his forces, although without revealing the scope or details of the situation, a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin also mentioned the start of these operations that Kiev has been preparing for months to recover occupied territories.
“Counteroffensive and defensive actions are being carried out in Ukraine, which I am not going to talk about in detail,” Zelensky said at a joint press conference with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who arrived in Kiev by surprise today.
“You have to trust our military and I trust them,” he said, quoted by the AFP news agency.
Putin affirmed yesterday that the counteroffensive that Ukraine has been preparing for months “began”, but indicated that “up to now” all the advances of the Kiev forces have failed.
“We can fully affirm that this offensive has begun,” Putin declared in a video broadcast on the Telegram messaging network by a Russian public television journalist.
“All the counter-offensive attempts made so far have failed, but the offensive potential of the Kiev troops is still maintained,” the president told reporters, the Sputnik news agency quoted him as saying.
The spokesman for the Eastern Command of the Ukrainian army, Serguii Cherevati, reported on television today that Ukrainian troops managed to advance 1,400 meters around the town of Bakhmut after Russia claimed his capture in May, the AFP news agency reported.
The situation in the south of the country, meanwhile, was affected by the floods caused by the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, of which kyiv and Moscow blame each other.
However, the authorities of both countries agreed today that the water level of the Dnieper river, flooded by the attack, is already beginning to drop.
The authorities designated by the Kremlin estimate that the water level in the town of Nova Kajovka, on the western bank of the Dnieper and the population under Russian control most affected by the destruction of the dam, will recover its usual level by the end of the week that comes.
The water level in the city has dropped three meters in the last few hours, up to seven meters high, partly thanks to pumping operations, according to the governor of the part of the Kherson region under Russian control, Vladimir Saldo.
The leader added that, according to the preliminary calculations of the Russian hydroelectric company RusHydro, “the channel of the Dnieper will return to its usual course, below the hydroelectric plant”, around June 16, according to the message published on his Telegram account. .
For his part, the head of the Military Administration of Ukraine in Kherson, Oleksandr Prokudin, also indicated that the water is descending in the part of the region under his country’s control, although he warned that the danger has not yet ended.
Source: Ambito
