Russian President Vladimir Putin called Ukraine's counteroffensive a "failure" on Monday, during a press conference held after talks with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan. "[The counteroffensive] is not a setback, it's a failure. We'll see what happens next. I hope it will [continue] exactly like this," Putin underlined.

Immediately after the joint conference, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu reiterated the same thing at another press briefing, saying that despite striking "furiously" in the past 10 days, Ukraine's counteroffensive has failed.

Earlier in the day Ukraine's Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov made his resignation official, by submitting a letter to the Chairman of the Parliament of Ukraine Ruslan Stefanchuk.