Partners aware Ukraine "moving forward" in counteroffensive - Kuleba

Ukraine is “not failing” but “moving forward” in its counteroffensive, the country’s Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said.

That's according to CNN, Ukrinform reports.

“Our partners who are helping us, including the United States, they understand that things are moving in the right direction. And they understand that there's no tragedy or no kind of slow down,” Kuleba told CNN. “It's just happening because it's tough. It's a tough fight.”

“If Ukraine was failing, I would probably be the first one just to speak the truth. But we are not failing — we are moving forward,” Kuleba told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in Kyiv.

The foreign minister added that those criticizing the speed of Ukraine’s counteroffensive should consider the soldiers fighting at the heart of it.

“How does it feel when you come back from your mission and you take back your phone, you open it, and you start reading all the smart people saying how slow you are and that you're not doing well enough?” Kuleba said.

“You just lost two of your buddies. You were almost killed. You crawled 1km... You took the damn Russian trench in a fierce fight. And then you read someone saying, ‘Oh guys, you are too slow,’” Kuleba said.

As reported earlier, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, answering journalists’ questions in Toledo, Spain, equated criticism of the counteroffensive pace to spitting in the face of Ukrainian soldiers.