There has so far been no reaction from Ukrainian official sources.<\/p>\n
The war has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and displaced millions, making it Europe\u2019s deadliest conflict since World War II.<\/p>\n
Slow advances<\/p>\n
Over the past few years, fighting on the front has come to a near standstill. Russia has made small territorial gains at a high cost.<\/p>\n
But Ukraine recently managed to push back in the southeast, and Russian advances have been slowing since late last year, according to the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW).<\/p>\n
Apart from Ukrainian counter-attacks, analysts attributed the slowdown to Russia being banned from using SpaceX\u2019s Starlink satellites and Moscow\u2019s own efforts to block the Telegram messaging app.<\/p>\n
The satellites and the messaging app were widely used by troops for communications, especially for co-ordinating drone attacks that have come to dominate the war.<\/p>\n
The situation is, however, unfavourable for Ukraine in the Donetsk region around the cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, according to the ISW.<\/p>\n
Russia wants Ukraine to pull troops from both cities without a fight as part of any peace accord.<\/p>\n
Ukraine has in recent days stepped up assaults on Russian energy targets, especially oil-exporting ports, after prices spiked on the back of the Middle East war.<\/p>\n
Several rounds of US-led talks have failed to bring the warring sides closer to an agreement, and US attention is now focused on Iran.<\/p>\n
The negotiations have become deadlocked, with Moscow demanding territorial and political concessions that Zelenskyy has ruled out as tantamount to capitulation.<\/p>\n
Moscow occupies just over 19% of Ukraine, the majority of which was seized during the first weeks of the conflict.<\/p>\n
– Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There has so far been no reaction from Ukrainian official sources. The war has cost hundreds of thousands…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18895,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[130],"tags":[14215,14212,2313,327,14216,2700,14213,349,334,11630,11914,330,14214,325,3221],"class_list":{"0":"post-18894","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-volodymyr-zelenskyy","8":"tag-announced","9":"tag-announces","10":"tag-ceasefire","11":"tag-easter","12":"tag-holidays","13":"tag-kremlin","14":"tag-orthodox","15":"tag-president","16":"tag-putin","17":"tag-russian","18":"tag-says","19":"tag-ukraine","20":"tag-vladimir","21":"tag-volodymyr-zelenskyy","22":"tag-with"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116376986110661926","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}