Washington has seen "notable progress" in Ukraine's counteroffensive on the southern front line in Zaporizhzhia Oblast over the past 72 hours, the White House said on Sept. 1, Reuters reported.
"And they have achieved some success against that second line of Russian defenses," U.S. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters.
According to Reuters, Kirby emphasized that it's up to Kyiv to decide how to take advantage of its success.
"That is not to say… that they aren't mindful that they've still got some tough fighting ahead of them as they try to push further south" or that Russia could launch a counterattack, the official said on a conference call.
Asami Terajima
On the same day, Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told CNN that Ukrainian forces are "not failing" but "moving forward" in their counteroffensive.
Speaking with CNN's Christiane Amanpour, Kuleba advised critics of the pace of Ukraine's summer counteroffensive to consider soldiers who make the push happen.
"How does it feel when you come back from your mission, and you take back your phone, open it, and start reading all the smart people saying how slow you are and that you're not doing well enough?" Kuleba said, as cited by CNN.
Martin Fornusek
"You just lost two of your buddies. You were almost killed. You crawled one kilometer on your belly, demining the field. You sacrificed yourself, taking the damn Russian trench in a fierce fight. And then you read someone saying, 'Oh guys, you're too slow'?"
"Our partners who are helping us, including the United States, understand that things are moving in the right direction. And they understand that there's no tragedy or no kind of slow down," the foreign minister added. "It's just happening because it's tough. It's a tough fight."
Earlier, the Institute for the Study of War wrote that Ukrainian troops continued counteroffensive operations near Bakhmut in Donetsk Oblast and western Zaporizhzhia Oblast and had advanced in both sectors of the front.
On Aug. 4, Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said that the Ukrainian military had penetrated Russia's first line of defense, moving to the "intermediate one" in some areas on the southern front line.
