Ukraine: According to a senior adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian military has launched two retaliatory strikes against Russian targets in eastern and southern Ukraine.

Adviser Oleksey Erestovich declined to elaborate on the location of the above retaliation, saying that ordinary employees should make that information public.

Erestovich said that Ukrainian troops were actually putting pressure on their Russian counterparts. The goal of the double counterattack, he said, was to build up Russian reserves and prevent Russian forces from consolidating one part of the front at the expense of another.

While Erestovich's claims could not be immediately confirmed, Russian state TV correspondents claimed that Tuesday's attack on the town of Balaklia in eastern Ukraine's Kharkiv region took back the surrounding area, including the village of Verbievka.

According to Oleh Zhdanov, a military analyst based in Kyiv, taking control of Balaklia could make it easier for Ukrainians to attempt to encircle Izium in whole or in part, a city with an important railway hub that Moscow used to supply its forces. uses.

On Wednesday morning, the Ukrainian military gave its regular status report and said its ground forces had attacked 13 "objects of concentration of Russian manpower" and seven Russian command points.

Another presidential adviser, Serhi Leshchenko, had earlier tweeted that the president would have "big news" regarding operations in the northeastern Kharkiv region. He was referring to the northeastern province surrounding the country's second largest city.

Zelensky met with his top military officials on Tuesday to discuss the situation. In his evening video address, he expressed his gratitude to all Ukrainian service members, but did not elaborate on the retaliation.

He said five Russian cruise missiles, most of them in the south, were shot down on Tuesday.

According to Mark Hartling, a retired former US commander of ground forces in Europe, the announcement of a simultaneous Ukrainian advance near Kharkiv was evidence that Russian forces were now having trouble re-supplying them along the length of the front.

This theater demonstrates the Russian Federation's inability to move troops between locations and within the range of their defensive "stance", as Hartling noted in a tweet in response to the Ukrainian offensive. "Ru is healing, suffering from loss of combat capabilities (people and equipment), and has poor leaders."

Ukrainians have also been attacking officials stationed by Moscow more frequently in Russian-held territories.

Pro-Russian local officials claimed that Artyom Bardin was attacked and seriously injured on Tuesday after his car was blown up outside the city administration building in Bardiansk, a port to the south. He blamed Kyiv for the attack.

The New York Times quoted US officials as saying that Russia was turning to North Korea to buy artillery shells because it was short of supplies. Moscow declined to respond to the report.

Europe "losing" the narrative war against China and Russia

More than 50,000 Russian soldiers have been lost in battle

US claims that Russia may employ criminals to help with the troop shortage