Kyiv officials plan to resume peace talks with Russia in late August after counter-attacks were launched, officials say amid Ukraine’s efforts to fend off a Russian invasion.
Ukraine’s chief negotiator David Arakhamia said in an interview with US broadcaster Voice of America the country will be in a better position to negotiate.
He believes Ukraine will carry out an operation with counter-attacks in several places, he said without giving details.
Peace negotiations have stalled.
At the end of March, Ukraine proposed talks in Istanbul.
It was also prepared to give up ambitions for NATO membership in exchange for international security guarantees.
However, Russia is demanding the demilitarization of its neighbor and ceding territory, including the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
On Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy visited the frontline of the southern city of Mykolaiv.
A video on his Telegram channel shows Zelenskiy inspecting the war-damaged city and handing out medals to the region’s governor and the city’s mayor after receiving a briefing.
According to the video description, Zelenskiy discussed “the state of the economy, the recovery of water supplies, and the situation of agriculture”.
There is fighting along the provincial borders of Mykolaiv and Kherson.
This is not the first time Zelenskiy has visited the frontline of the war.
He had previously visited Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhya, and the Donbas region in the country’s east.
Meanwhile, according to British intelligence, civilians in the heavily disputed Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk are likely to be suspicious of using proposed humanitarian corridors to leave the region.
There are hardly any other ways to get out of the city than the humanitarian corridors unilaterally issued by Russia and its allies.
In its daily report, the British Ministry of Defense accused Russia of previously using such corridors in Ukraine and Syria to gain battlefield advantage and forcibly move people.
The British ministry warned that if civilians do not accept the offer to leave via a corridor, “Russia is likely to claim justification by making less distinction between them and any Ukrainian military targets in the area”.
Elsewhere, a Ukrainian military official said a Russian ship delivering weapons to the strategically important Snake Island was sunk after it was hit by Ukrainian missiles.
The tug of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, named Vasily Bech, was damaged by anti-ship missiles supplied to Ukraine by Denmark.
“It was later announced that it was sinking,” Odessa military governor Maksym Marchenko said in a video statement on his Telegram channel.
The claim could not be independently confirmed.
There was no comment from the Russian side.
The ship, equipped with a Tor air defense system, was hit by harpoon missiles and badly damaged on Friday.
Snake Island has been occupied by Russian troops since late February.