Over the past week, the Defense Forces have liberated 9 square kilometers of territory in the east, and 28 in the south.
The Deputy Minister of Defense Hanna Malyar informed about this on the morning of July 3.
In the east, the Defense Forces are moving in the Bakhmut direction, and Russia will continue to advance in the Lyman, Avdiivka, and Maryinka directions.
In the south, the Ukrainian military continues its offensive in the Melitopol and Berdyansk directions. Over the past week, 28.4 square kilometers were freed. In general, the freed area in the south is 158.4 km2.
- The Ukrainian counteroffensive continues. The Defense Forces have already liberated eight settlements in the south: Rivnopil, Pyatykhatky, Lobkove, Levadne, Novodarivka, Neskuchne, Storozheve, Makarivka and Blahodatne, and also occupied several positions near Krasnohorivka in the Donetsk region, which have been under occupation since 2014.
- On June 24, the Ministry of Defense officially informed about the beginning of an offensive in the east in several directions at the same time — in the direction of Orikhovo-Vasylivka, Bakhmut, Bohdanivka, Yahidne, Klishchiivka, and Kurdyumivka.
- On June 21, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that progress in the counteroffensive is "slower than we would like." According to him, the counteroffensive is not easy because the Russians mined 200 000 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory. The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valerii Zaluzhnyi said that he was annoyed when they said that the counteroffensive started more slowly than expected. The troops advance every day, even if it is only 500 meters.