Ukraine already admits that the armed conflict is at a stalemate having become a war of positions after 617 days of fighting and almost five months of counteroffensive, something that Russia denies with the argument that it will continue pushing on the fronts until all its objectives are achieved.
War “It is now gradually turning into a war of position.s (…)”, wrote the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Valeri Zaluzhni, in an extensive article published together with an interview in the British weekly The Economist.
According to the general, this began to manifest itself last summer.
This situation, he said, leads to the prolongation of the war and “entails significant risks for both the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the State as a whole.”
The war “is now gradually turning into a war of positions
A stalemate that benefits Russia
“In addition, it is beneficial for the enemy, which is trying by all means to reconstitute and increase its military power,” he warned.
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) warned that now is not the time for the West to reduce its aid to Ukraine, because it would cause a delay in the arrival of weapons to the front and hinder Ukrainian strategy, as happened last year. when Western resistance to sending modern weaponry requested by Kiev delayed the first counteroffensive to autumn.
Zaluzhni even compared the current situation to the trench warfare of the First World War.
“As in World War I, we have reached a level of technology that places us at a stalemate,” he said.
He admits that the troops he leads have only advanced 17 kilometers since they launched the counteroffensive on June 4 in the eastern region of Donetsk and the southern province of Zaporizhzhiaboth illegally annexed by Russia in 2022, but remember that the Russians tried for ten months to take the city of Bakhmut in order to control an area of 36 square kilometers.
Zaluzhni admits that he has underestimated Russia by believing that he could stop the enemy army only by “bleeding it dry.”
“It was my mistake. Russia has lost at least 150,000 soldiers. In any other country these types of losses would have stopped the war“But not in Russia, where life is worthless and where President Vladimir Putin is guided by the two world wars, in which the country lost tens of millions of people, he said.
Ukraine’s offensive plans were based on an advance of 30 kilometers a day, also surpassing the extensive Russian defensive lines, which, in the case of the minefields, reach a depth of between 15 and 20 kilometers in important sectors of the front.
He sarcastically said that according to NATO manuals and their calculations, “four months (of counteroffensive) would have been enough to reach Crimea, fight in Crimea, return from Crimea and go back and forth again” from the annexed Ukrainian peninsula.
He saw clearly that a great technological leap would be necessary to break the current stalemate in a book by a Soviet major general from 1941 and in his recent visit to the Avdivka front, currently the hottest spot on the Eastern Front.
“On our monitors the day I was there, we saw 140 burning Russian vehicles destroyed within four hours of being within range of our artillery,” he said. He added that the Ukrainian military faces the same difficulties when trying to advance.
“The simple fact is that we see everything the enemy does and they see everything we do. To get out of this dead end we need something new, like gunpowder, which the Chinese invented and which we still use to kill each other” , he emphasized.
Russia sees no stagnation
To break the deadlock, for the Ukrainian general it is necessary to gain air superiority; cross mine barriers at depth; increase the effectiveness of counter-battery warfare and electronic warfare; and create and prepare the necessary reserves.
The Kremlin for its part today rejected Zaluzhni’s analysis: “no, (the conflict) is not at a stalemate. Russia continues to carry out its special military operation. All established objectives must be achieved,” said presidential spokesman Dmitri Peskov.
In Moscow’s view, kyiv must understand that it cannot beat Russia on the battlefield.
“The sooner the kyiv regime understands this, the more prospects there will be (for a solution),” Peskov concluded.
EFE
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