
June 13 ------ In the first reported gains of its much-anticipated counteroffensive, Kyiv says its forces have reclaimed territory from Russia.
Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar on Monday posted a message on Telegram saying that Ukraine's flag was again flying over the village of Storozheve. Unverified videos showed troops hoisting the Ukrainian flag in the village of Blahodatne in the Donetsk region and their unit's flag in the adjacent village of Neskuchne. Ukraine also said its troops had made advances in Makarivka, but some prominent Russian military bloggers suggested that while Ukrainian forces took Blahodatne and Neskuchne, the fight for Makarivka was going on. Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry said it had repelled Ukrainian attacks around several villages in the southeast of the country, contradicting earlier claims from Kyiv that its forces had retaken the settlements.
President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday acknowledged that some counteroffensive actions had begun. While staying largely silent over the past week about the counteroffensive, Ukraine's military reported other battlefield successes on Monday. "Over the last week in the Bakhmut direction, the Russian invaders suffered significant losses," the general staff said in a daily update. Ukrainian pilots could begin training to fly US-manufactured F-16 fighter jets as soon as this summer, the Dutch defense minister said. "This summer is our ambition. And we'll see if that's realistic for the start of the training program," Dutch Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren told Reuters in an interview. She said the aim would be to have the training program fully operational within six months. Denmark, where there are flight simulators, is a possible location to host the program. A final decision has not yet been taken on a request from Kyiv to supply dozens of F-16s, Ollongren said. The US-backed training program will include Belgium and Luxembourg, while France and Britain have offered assistance, she said.
Several days after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine, the water levels of the Dnipro River in the flooded war zone of Kherson are subsiding, the authorities said. On Monday morning, the water level in the regional capital of Kherson was about 3.29 meters, Ukrainian military governor of the area, Oleksandr Prokudin, reported on Telegram. In the region, the average water level of the river is said to have dropped by 2 meters to about 3.6 meters, according to the local Ukrainian rescue staff on Telegram. According to the rescue staff, the Kakhovka reservoir has lost about 72% of its water since the dam's destruction. As a result of the dam destruction, the water rose by more than 10 meters in some areas, such as in the nearby town of Nova Kakhovka, Russian media reported.
Source: news.abs-cbn.com
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