Ukraine acknowledges not advancing as quickly as desired against Russia
Despite the West's all-out military support for Ukraine, the latter has acknowledged that its forces are not advancing as fast as it is desired by the country against Russia.
"Today, it's advancing not so quickly," Andriy Yermak, head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, told reporters on Friday.
Yermak was describing the efficacy of a June 4-present counteroffensive that the ex-Soviet republic has been waging against Russia.
"If we are going to see that something is going wrong, we'll say so. No one is going to embellish," he said.
Moscow says it started the war in order to defend the pro-Russian population in the eastern Ukrainian regions of Luhansk and Donetsk against persecution by Kiev, and also to "de-Nazify" its neighbor.
Russia holds that the West's anti-Russian agendas, including its eagerness for inclusion of Ukraine in NATO -- and, therefore, the Western military alliance's expansion right up to Russia's borders -- forced Moscow to launch the war on Kiev.
Ever since the beginning of the war, Western countries, led by the United States, have been pumping Ukraine full of tens of billions of dollars worth of advanced weapons, a step that Moscow says would only prolong the hostilities.
Yermak, meanwhile, insisted that Kiev would not negotiate until Russia withdrew its troops from Ukraine.
"Even thinking about these talks is only possible after Russian troops leave our territory," he said.
The Ukrainian official's remarks came while several regions of Ukraine are now part of Russia, having voted in favor of joining the Russian Federation following the start of the conflict.
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