Ukraine is “able and willing” to reclaim some of its territory after Russia reportedly lost more than 10 per cent of its combat force, according to US intelligence.
It comes after the Ukrainian military said on Tuesday it had retaken the strategically significant suburb of Makariv, north of Kyiv, and repelled an attack on the coastal city of Mykolaiv, just east of Odesa on the Black Sea.
Russian soldiers are reportedly being removed from the frontlines because of low morale and even frostbite, an unnamed Pentagon official has said. “They’re struggling on many fronts,” the official said of the Russians. “We’re starting to see indications” that Ukraine is “now able and willing to take back territory”, The Washington Post quoted the official as saying.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky told the Italian parliament on Tuesday that his country was on the “brink of surviving” the war, before claiming Russian president Vladimir Putin wanted to “break through” to the rest of Europe.
