MOSCOW, August 3. /TASS/. Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council Secretary Alexey Danilov has said that the Ukrainian serrvicemen have no schedule for a counteroffensive and no one but Kiev has the right to set it.

"First of all, no one can set deadlines for us except us. Second of all, there is no schedule," the Ukrainian news agency TSN quoted Danilov as saying.

According to him, those who talk about deadlines do not understand what fighting is. "It so happened that there was an overheated situation regarding the events on the front line," he pointed out. Danilov also noted that the fighting is "complex, difficult and depends on many factors."

Ukrainian authorities usually try to come up with different reasons to explain the lack of progress in the counteroffensive that the West expects from Kiev. For example, Defense Minister Alexey Reznikov admitted in an interview with CNN that the counteroffensive was behind schedule, citing a lack of ammunition and air defense systems. Air Force spokesman Yury Ignat pointed to Russian forces' superiority in electronic warfare, listing it as one of the reasons for the counteroffensive's delay.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the Ukrainian army has been unsuccessfully trying to launch a counteroffensive since June 4. Russian President Vladimir Putin pointed out that the Ukrainian troops have not succeeded in any direction. On July 23, at a meeting with his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko in St. Petersburg, he said that Kiev's counteroffensive had failed.