Ukraine regains some ground from Russian troops, says Pentagon

Despite being under heavy bombardment by Russia for more than three weeks, the Ukrainian military has begun to change the pulse of the battlefield in some areas to regain ground against invading forces, the US Department of Defense said on Tuesday.

As Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told CNN, Ukraine's resistance, backed by millions of dollars in military aid by Western powers, has been unexpectedly fierce, and now Ukrainians are repositioning themselves “in some places and sometimes on the offensive.”

“They are pursuing Russians and taking them out of places where they had previously been,” he stressed, particularly in Mikolaiv, a city in the south of the country that defends access to the important port of Odessa. “We have seen this increase in recent days,” he said.

Moscow's indiscriminate military attacks have devastated several Ukrainian cities since it invaded its eastern European neighbor with tens of thousands of troops on February 24. The number of civilians is increasing and more than ten million people have fled their homes, according to various reports.

Many analysts still do not see a clear way out of the conflict.

Kirby assured, however, that he could not confirm reports from Ukrainian government officials that his troops had resumed at least one city and expected to take more in the coming days.

But it would be “consistent with the type of struggle and the types of capabilities that we have seen Ukrainians use,” he said.

As for the Russians, Kirby echoed what was said by Western analysts who have said that the invading forces have stagnated.

“They're running out of fuel. They're running out of food. They are not integrating their operations together as one would think a modern army would,” said Kirby, who considered that the Russians “are frustrated.”

In this regard, the official stressed that “they have been slowed down. And part of it... is because of his own ineptitude.”

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