Ukraine war: Counteroffensive on track, Russia using Ukrainian prisoners, anti-war activist jailed

Ukraine's counteroffensive is still on track and will achieve its set goals by the end of the year, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Wednesday. 

"We have a plan. I can't share all the details but we have some slow steps forward on the south, also we have steps on the east," Zelenskyy said at a conference in New York. 

Zelenskyy's comments come after a high-ranking Ukrainian military officer claimed the frontline had reached a stalemate. e was a stalemate at the front lines. 

Commander-in-chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi called it a World War I-type slowdown, which the Ukrainian president publicly denounced. 

“Our military is coming up with different plans, with different operations in order to move forward faster and to strike the Russian Federation unexpectedly," Zelenskyy said in an interview earlier this month. 

Despite admitting Ukraine's "fatigue" in its fight against the Russian invasion, he has repeatedly pleaded for more military supplies from Western allies. 

“But bare-handed (this is) impossible to do without weapons, without the proper weapons,” he told NBC News on Sunday. 

Russia is sending Ukrainian prisoners of war to the front lines of their homeland to fight on Moscow's side in the war, according to the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.

The news agency said on Tuesday the soldiers swore allegiance to Russia when they joined the battalion, which entered service last month.

Video from RIA Novosti showed the Ukrainians swearing allegiance to Russia, holding rifles and dressed in military fatigues.

Euronews could not immediately confirm the authenticity of the report or videos. POWs could have been coerced into their actions.

Experts say such actions would be an apparent violation of the Geneva Conventions relating to