Ukraine recap: Ukraine and allies maintain optimism despite slow progress on the battlefield

By Jonathan Este, Senior International Affairs Editor, Associate Editor

At a press conference after talks with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, this afternoon, Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg sounded like a man determined to take a “glass half full” attitude when he said that “every metre that Ukrainian forces regain is a metre that Russia loses”.

His statement, if a bit obvious, showed commendable optimism. Reports from the frontlines in Ukraine have been mixed over the past few months, with nothing like the lightning-fast territorial gains made by Ukraine in its late summer offensive last year, when it liberated vast swathes of territory…

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