General Valery Zaluzhny, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), has conceded Ukraine’s long-anticipated counter-offensive has “most likely” failed, with his men having advanced only a little over ten miles in months.
“Just like in the First World War we have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate,” he said, adding there “will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough.”
The Ukrainian commander claimed to have witnessed a recent Russian attack near Avdiivka, or Avdeyevka, which resulted in “140 Russian machines ablaze… within four hours of coming within firing range of our artillery,” with straggling war machines hunted down by drones.
Ukrainian forces, Zaluzhny intimated, face a similar onslaught when they attempt to advance: “The simple fact is that we see everything the enemy is doing and they see everything we are doing. In order for us to break this deadlock we need something new,” he said, suggesting a wonder weapon on the level of the invention of gunpowder would be needed to “break this deadlock”.
Western weapons due to arrive in Ukraine next year, such as F-16 warplanes, do not fit the bill, he said, as they will be unable to overcome Russian air defenses.
Zaluzhny said an “attritional trench war” could “wear down the Ukrainian state,” and aides to President Volodymyr Zelensky have already expressed concern over the average age of a Ukrainian soldier having risen to 43 – especially as these middle-aged fighters “aren’t that healthy”.
While Russia likely faces similar issues, it has a clear natural advantage in any war of attrition, with its population standing at over 144 million even before Crimea and other Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine are taken into account.
