![On the eastern front, a stunning week of Ukrainian success and Russian failures](https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/220911120842-03-balakliya-ukraine-super-tease.jpg)
On the eastern front, a stunning week of Ukrainian success and Russian failures
CNN
The last week has seen a stunning transformation of the battlefield in eastern Ukraine, as a swift armored offensive by Ukrainian forces rolled through lines of Russian defenses and recaptured more than 3,000 square kilometers of territory.
That is more territory than Russian forces have captured in all their operations in Ukraine since April.
As much as the offensive was brilliantly conceived and executed, it also succeeded because of Russian inadequacies. Throughout swathes of the Kharkiv region, Russian units were poorly organized and equipped -- and many offered little resistance.
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The CIA has sent the White House an unclassified email listing all new hires that have been with the agency for two years or less in an effort to comply with an executive order to downsize the federal workforce, according to three sources familiar with the matter – a deeply unorthodox move that could potentially expose the identities of those officers to foreign government hackers.
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