Lured best troops into trap…

An ongoing counteroffensive has reclaimed “more than a thousand square kilometers” from invading Russian forces over the last week, according to an update from Ukraine’s president released hours after a visit from Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
“Within the ongoing defense operations, our heroes have already liberated dozens of settlements,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his latest update. “And today this movement continued, there are new results. In total, more than a thousand square kilometers of our territory have been liberated since September 1.”
Blinken vouched for the “clear and real progress” that Ukrainian forces have made without corroborating the specific amount of land that Zelensky touted. But his arrival evinced the growing optimism in Western circles about Ukraine’s battlefield prospects amid a multipronged operation in both the prized southern region of Kherson and the city of Kharkiv farther north.
“It’s very early, but we’re seeing clear and real progress on the ground, particularly in the area around Kherson but also some interesting developments in the Donbas in the east,” Blinken told reporters in Kyiv. “But again, early days.”
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