Moscow [Russia], June 29 : The much-anticipated peace talks between Russia and Ukraine blew up as the former attempted to gnaw on more of Ukraine's eastern regions on Sunday, CNN reported.
"I consider the Russian and Ukrainian peoples to be one people," CNN quoted Russian President Vladimir Putin as saying. "In this sense, all of Ukraine is ours."
Even so, the Ukrainians have launched counterattacks in some areas and are rapidly developing a domestic weapons industry. And Russia's wartime economy is facing stronger headwinds.
Russian troops are trying to advance in multiple areas of the 1,200-kilometer (746-mile) frontline. Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said this week there are now 111,000 Russian troops in one part of the frontline alone - near the flashpoint city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk, where there are at least 50 clashes every day. That compares to about 70,000 Russian troops in the area last December, according to the Ukrainian General Staff.
Oleksandr Stanislavovych Syrskyi, a Ukrainian military officer claimed that the Russian infiltration of the northern region of Sumy had been halted. The Institute for the Study of War - a Washington-based think-tank, says Ukrainian forces have regained some territory in Sumy and the pace of Russian advances there has slowed.
"We can say that the wave of attempts at a 'summer offensive' launched by the enemy from Russian territory is fizzling out," Syrskyi claimed.
DeepState, a Ukrainian open-source analyst, asserted that Ukrainian "defenses continue to collapse rapidly, and the enemy is making significant advances ... with constant assaults" in that area.
The Kremlin has long insisted its campaign will continue until it holds all of the eastern Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, as per CNN.
At the current rate of progress that would take many years. But with the Trump administration apparently less committed to driving ceasefire negotiations, the conflict seems likely to drag on through the end of the year and into 2026.
The three-dimensional battlefield is now an unlikely combination of ingenious drone-led special operations and very basic infantry assaults.
At one end of the spectrum, Ukraine's audacious attacks at the beginning of June on Russian strategic bombers used drones operated from trucks deep inside Russian territory - a mission that took out about a dozen aircraft used to launch missiles against Ukraine.
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