BERLIN — The scenes are jubilant ones: Ukrainian troops raise their blue-and-yellow banners in towns and villages that Russian troops controlled for nearly seven months. Elderly residents emerge from sheds and cellars, nearly bowling over young soldiers with headlong hugs. Abandoned Russian tanks and armored vehicles lie marooned in fields and streams.
Ukraine’s stunning battlefield successes of recent days in the country’s northeast are raising hopes inside and outside the country that the tide of war may be turning. Ukraine says it has liberated more than 1,200 square miles of territory since the start of September, including the seizure of 20 settlements in one 24-hour span.
Western military analysts cautioned that Ukrainian forces’ lightning offensive in the province of Kharkiv — resulting in Russia’s biggest military setback since its failure to capture the Ukrainian capital in the war’s earliest weeks — might not translate into durable gains there or elsewhere.
