Page 9 - Defense Lines News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

There's a lot of reporting about the extensive mining operations that russia has conducted. >> yeah. we lost a lot of time. by "we," i mean both ukraine and its partners. we lost a lot of time preparing counteroffensive and making decisions on deliveries of weapons and delivering these weapons necessary for the counteroffensive because it allowed russia to physically reforce its defense lines, mine fields. i'm not complaining here. i'm just stating the reality because in the end it's us and our partners who are facing this, who are fighting against this new reality. but you have to understand ...

Talk with constantly discussing this situation. the russians have built three defense lines in some directions. i'm grateful to the u.s. as the leaders of our support, but i told them, as well as european leaders, that we would like to start our counteroffensive earlier. and we will need all the weapons and materials for that. why? simply because if we start later, it will go slower. and we will have losses of lives, because everything is heavily mined, and we will have to go through it all. the main thing which gives me a positive support is that we move forward. this is the main signal. when...

Forward. we have good relations with the cia chief, and we are talking. i told him about all of the important things related to the bald battlefield, which we need. >> do you feel -- i know you've talked about some frustration about the pace of the counteroffensive, how much pressure do you feel from the united states, from other allies, to try to give them dates or timelines of when gains may happen. >> reporter: our slowed down counteroffensive is happening due to certain difficulties in the battlefield. everything is heavily mined there. i wanted our counteroffensive happening much earlier,...

Did see is the going is very tough. we spoke to some units on the ground and all the ones we spoke to were in good spirits, but they do say the russian defenses are really tough and the russians are putting up a fight as well. the ukrainians right now, as they say, are sort of penetrating the early stages or the first stages of those defense lines but they haven't even reached the main defense lines of the spokesman shans so they understand there is going to be a tough battle ahead and one of the things they have said again and again is russian airpower is being discovered by russian drones bu...

Hitting civilian areas that are of course targeted, have been targeted by very high precision missiles. but on the ground it is a much bloodier and more brutal conflict. if we look at what is going on south of bakhmut, there have been now for nearly a week i'd say, incremental but significant gains by advancing ukrainian troops as they punch through the south of that very bitterly contested area. more significantly is what is going on on the southern front between zaporizhzhia which is ukrainian held and the city of donetsk which is russian held and occupied since 2014-2015. that is that the u...