Zelenskiy Girds Northern Ukraine As Kyiv Claims New Hold On 'Strategic Initiative'

Ukraine's president said on June 30 that he ordered his generals to gird the northern border after the leader of an abortive mutiny in Russia was said to have arrived in Belarus, while a senior defense official claimed Ukrainian troops have wrested the "strategic initiative" from Russia in the 15-month full-scale fight.

In Washington, U.S. Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Ukrainian counteroffensive is making steady progress, although perhaps not as rapidly as many in the West had anticipated.

"That it's going slower than people had predicted doesn't surprise me," Miley told the National Press. "It is advancing steadily, deliberately, working its way through very difficult minefields, et cetera…Slow advances, very deliberate."

He also said it was "too early" to determine whether Russian President Vladimir Putin had been weakened by the aborted armed march on Moscow by the Wagner mercenary group last weekend.

"I don't think we have conclusive evidence either way yet," Milley said. "Too early to tell."

General Valery Zaluzhny, commander-in-chief of Ukraine's armed forces, said Ukraine is being limited in its counteroffensive by a lack of weapons, including fighter jets, and the slow delivery of promised firepower from the West.

"Without being fully supplied, these [counteroffensive] plans are not feasible at all," he told The Washington Post in an interview published on June 30. "But they are being carried out. Yes, maybe not as fast as the participants in the show, the observers, would like, but that is their problem."

Milley said the delivery of ATACMS long-range missiles and F-16s fighter jets to Ukraine remains under consideration but that no decisions have been made.

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Earlier, Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar suggested in televised comments that Ukrainian fighters were advancing in all directions around the long-contested city of Bakhmut, in the eastern region of Donetsk.

Speaking hours after the Ukrainian General Staff boasted of "success" in the east and south of the country, Maylar described Kyiv's forces as having "seized the strategic initiative."

Meanwhile, concerns persisted over the possibility of battles threatening catastrophe at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, which is located in Russian-controlled territory in southern Ukraine.

Reports of heavy fighting followed a message of support from EU leaders gathered for a two-day summit in Brussels in which the bloc's 27 members vowed "sustainable military support to Ukraine for as long as it takes."

The Ukrainian General Staff said early on June 30 that Russia's "main efforts" continued to focus on the areas around Lyman, Bakhmut, and Mariyinka, where "heavy fighting continues."

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Kyiv said "tough battles" were continuing but its troops continued to pressure Russian forces on the flanks of the embattled city of Bakhmut.

It said Ukrainian forces were "having success [and] getting stronger," and "pushing [Russians] out of previously captured positions." It said Russian resistance was continuing, though.

Later reports from Ukraine's military cited "partial success" to the south.

RFE/RL cannot confirm battlefield claims in areas of the heaviest fighting.

Russian drone and missile strikes were reported in a number of areas overnight.

In the afternoon, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he had ordered his military commanders to buttress Ukraine's northern military sector following reports that Wagner mercenary group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin had been exiled to Belarus.

Prigozhin's paid soldiers have played a key role in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

But Prigozhin led thousands of them toward Moscow in an apparent mutiny targeting Russia's military leadership on June 24 in what most regard as the most brazen challenge to President Vladimir Putin's rule in two decades.

Belarusian leader Aleksandr Lukashenka reportedly brokered a deal with Prigozhin at the height of the crisis to end the insurrection and allow Prigozhin and his Wagner troops some kind of haven in Belarus.

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Lukashenka has allowed Russian troops to operate the war effort from Belarusian territory since the earliest hours of the invasion.

Zelenskiy said his decision to further fortify the border area near Belarus followed a report from Ukrainian security and intelligence forces on the latest developments in Belarus.

Back in Ukraine, Anatoly Kurtev, secretary of the Zaporizhzhya city council near Europe's largest nuclear plant, and the military said no civilians were injured and there was no major damage from a nighttime Russian attack there.

"The night was restless again, but as of this morning the situation in Zaporizhzhya is stable," Kurtev said via Telegram.

The governor of the Zaporizhzhya region had announced on June 29 that authorities were conducting rapid-response drills in the area around the nuclear plant to hone coordination efforts in the event of an "emergency situation."

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Kyiv recently accused Russia of planning a "terrorist" attack at the facility, which it has controlled since early in the invasion.

Russia's UN ambassador, Vasily Nebenzya, said on June 29 that he had written to the UN Security Council and to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to assure them that "We do not intend to blow up this NPP [nuclear power plant], we have no intention of doing so."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on June 30 accused the West of acting "schizophrenically" with respect to the conflict, according to Reuters, saying it wanted to freeze the conflict to gain more time to pour more weapons into Ukraine.

With reporting by Reuters