Ukraine has freed 50% of territory from Russian control: US

Ukraine has freed more than half of its territory that was in Russian shackles since the war began last February, according to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. In a conversation with CNN on Sunday, Blinken noted that while about 50% of the territory has been reclaimed, the war-torn country still has a long way to go to attain victory on the battlefield. 

“It’s already taken back about 50% of what was initially seized. Now they’re in a very hard fight to take back more,” he stressed, adding that Ukraine's new counter-offensive is still in its initial stage, so it is not easy to strike down the strong fronts that Russia has put up.

Why has the counter-offensive been slow? 

“These are still relatively early days in the counter-offensive. It is tough, the Russians put in place strong defenses,” the top diplomat elucidated. Kyiv's new counter-operation has been underwhelming on the ground, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has attributed this to a dearth of weapons. 

On Sunday, he told the outlet that while the original plan was to launch the counteroffensive in spring, it was pushed to a later date because the Ukrainian military did not have "enough munitions and armaments and not enough brigades properly trained in these weapons." 

Will Ukraine receive F-16s? Blinken doesn't rule it out 

The embattled leader's desperate call for a larger arsenal comes after the United States approved the controversial plans to send cluster munitions earlier this month. But Blinken still empathises, admitting that if he “were in the shoes of our Ukrainian friends and partners, I’d probably be saying exactly the same thing."

“There are 50 some odd countries in this coalition in support of Ukraine. [US Secretary of Defense] Lloyd Austin has been leading this process on the military side. And different countries do different things at different times,” he added. During the interview, the official also hinted that Kyiv could receive US-made F-16 fighter jets at some point in the future, but the country has "got to be trained" for it first.