U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Ukrainians have “already taken back about 50%” of the territory Russia seized since the invasion as the embattled country continues its counteroffensive.
Asked to weigh into reports that Ukraine was facing a tough time in its stepped-up fight to oust Russian invaders, Blinken told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that the Kremlin has failed in its goal.
“They’ve already lost,” Blinken said in an interview that aired on Sunday. “The objective was to erase Ukraine from the map, to eliminate its independence, its sovereignty, to subsume it into Russia.”
While Blinken acknowledged the fight is “tough” for Ukrainians, he also pointed to the strength of their resistance.
“It’s already taken back about 50% of what was initially seized,” he said. “Now they’re in a very hard fight to take back, to take back more. These are still relatively early days of the counteroffensive.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking alongside his ally Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, on Sunday said Ukraine’s counteroffensive “has failed.”
International help for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s forces has been helpful, Blinken said, but the most crucial factor in the counteroffensive may be the Ukrainians’ resolve.
“Unlike the Russians, Ukrainians are fighting for their land, for their future, for their country, for their freedom,” he said. “I think that is the decisive element, and that’s going to play out. But it will not play out over the next week or two. We’re still looking I think at several months.”
In a separate interview, Zelenskyy told Zakaria he would have preferred to begin the counteroffensive earlier, but his forces didn’t have the necessary weapons.
“We did have plans to start it in spring,” he said. “But we didn’t, because, frankly, we had not enough munitions and armaments, and not enough brigades properly trained in these weapons. Still more, that the training missions were held outside Ukraine.”
Asked about why the U.S. hasn’t delivered on Zelenskyy’s request for U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets, Blinken said the authorization process is ongoing. The most important thing is for Ukraine to use the fighters in a “smart way,” he said.
“It’s not just the equipment itself,” he said. “It’s the training, it’s the maintenance, it’s the ability to use it in combined arms operations. All of that takes time. If a decision were made to actually move forward on the F-16s tomorrow, it would be months and months before they were actually operational.”
The U.S. has previously said F-16s should arrive in Ukraine by the end of 2023, but National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby noted the fighter jets alone wouldn’t “be enough to turn the tide here.”
Meanwhile, Russia on Monday blamed Ukraine for a drone attack near the Defense Ministry’s main headquarters in Moscow, according to The Associated Press. Ukraine accused Russia of attacking port infrastructure in southern Ukraine, injuring seven people and destroying a grain hangar, AP reported.