‘There will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough,’ says Valery Zaluzhny.

Russia’s war with Ukraine has become totally bogged down in the trenches, according to Ukraine’s top general.

And the prospect of a long war gives Vladimir Putin and Russia an advantage, Ukraine’s Army Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny said in a sobering interview with the Economist published Wednesday night.

In the five months since Ukraine launched an eagerly awaited counteroffensive, its troops have advanced only 17 kilometers through heavily fortified and mined Russian defense lines.

The counteroffensive has already disappointed many Ukrainian partners, some of whom are now demanding an end to military aid with the war deadlocked. However, the West’s cautious provision of weapons to Ukraine has allowed the Russians to mobilize thousands and fortify positions in occupied Ukraine, according to Zaluzhny.

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    And the prospect of a long war gives Vladimir Putin and Russia an advantage, Ukraine’s Army Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny said in a sobering interview with the Economist published Wednesday night.

    In the five months since Ukraine launched an eagerly awaited counteroffensive, its troops have advanced only 17 kilometers through heavily fortified and mined Russian defense lines.

    Zaluzhny acknowledged a mistake in thinking Russia would halt the full-scale invasion after it lost more than 150,000 soldiers killed on the battlefield.

    “The American taxpayers have become weary of funding a never-ending stalemate in Ukraine with no vision of victory,” reads a recently published letter to Biden, signed by seven Republican members of the U.S. Congress.

    According to an accompanying essay he wrote, the key to Ukraine’s possible path out of the current positional warfare is to: gain air superiority; breach mine barriers in depth; increase the effectiveness of counter-battery; create and train the necessary reserves; and build up electronic warfare capabilities.

    In short, Zaluzhny said that combining old methods of war with superiority in technological warfare might let Ukraine fight to its strengths of flexibility and nimbleness.


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