KIEV.- Ukraine He admitted this Thursday that the battle he is fighting with Russia it’s found at a standstill having become a war of positions after 617 days of fighting and almost five months of counteroffensivesomething that the Kremlin forces deny with the argument that they will continue pushing on the fronts until they achieve all their objectives.
“At the moment it is gradually turning into a war of position”wrote the commander in Head of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valeri Zaluzhniin an extensive article published along with an interview in the British weekly The Economist. According to the general, the situation of stagnation began to manifest itself last summer, which leads to the prolongation of the armed confrontation.
Zaluzhni even compared the current situation to the trench warfare of World War I, in which fighting was fought for months over just a few meters. “To the just like in World War Iwe have reached a level of technology that places us at a stalemate,” he stated.
The Kremlin, for its part, rejected Zaluzhni’s analysis. “No. [El conflicto] is not at a standstill. Russia continues to carry out its special military operation. All established objectives must be achieved,” said the president’s spokesman. Vladimir PutinDmitry Peskov.
In Moscow’s vision, kyiv must understand that it cannot beat Russia on the battlefield. “The sooner the kyiv regime understands this, the more prospects there will be [para una solución]”Peskov concluded.
The stalemate raised by Zaluzhni would be a point in Moscow’s favor, at a time when the war in the Middle East captured the attention of the international press. “It is beneficial for the enemy, who 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 Ukrainebecause it would cause a delay in the arrival of weapons to the front and hinder the Ukrainian strategy, as happened last year, when the Western resistance to sending modern weapons requested by kyiv delayed the first counteroffensive until the fall.
Zaluzhni admitted in the article that the troops he commands They have only advanced 17 kilometers since they launched the counteroffensive on June 4 in the eastern region of Donetsk and the southern province of Zaporizhiaboth illegally annexed by Russia in 2022, but recalled that the Russians tried for ten months to take the city of Bakhmut in order to control an area of 36 square kilometers.
Zaluzhni also acknowledged that underestimated Russia by believing that it could stop the enemy Army only by “bleeding it”.
