News from Ukraine on June 22, 2023: russians were put on shameful list, counter-offensive will continue and Ukraine as a «super asset»

This is the most interesting news from Ukraine on June 22, 2023 by Hromadske Radio.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has announced that he has added the Russian armed forces to the global list of persistent violators contained in the report «Children and Armed Conflict». The Russians were put on the shameful list for killing and maiming children and attacking schools and hospitals in Ukraine. According to the UN, in 2022, Russia killed 136 children, injured 518 children, carried out 480 attacks on schools and hospitals, and used 91 children as human shields.

The counter-offensive of the Ukrainian Defence Forces will continue in the same way as in autumn, when at first it seemed that the process had slowed down, and then the Armed Forces began to advance rapidly. This was stated by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in an interview with the BBC.

«We assess the counter-offensive positively. It is not easy, because there are certain difficulties. Firstly, all our land is mined, even where we have de-occupied our territory – almost two hundred thousand square kilometres of our land are mined. Therefore, counter-offensive actions are not easy.

We would like to make bigger steps, they are a little bit smaller, but you know that he who fights will overcome, and he who knocks on the door will be opened. Therefore, in any case, we are confident in the success of counter-offensive actions,» Zelensky said. He recalled that in the autumn, the Armed Forces carried out «appropriate counter-offensive actions, and it seemed to be a slow process.»

During the war, Ukraine has become a «super asset» for the North Atlantic Alliance, and now it is NATO that needs Ukraine. This was stated by Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba. «If before the full-scale war, Ukraine needed NATO more to defend itself and strengthen itself, now NATO needs Ukraine… Now partners who are against our membership are thinking through the logic of the burden, as they did before the war. But the reality has changed: Ukraine is an asset.»