A former advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has publicly called Ukraine’s counter-offensive a “disaster” following the inability of the country’s armed forces to break through the Russian defenses as was initially predicted by the government, adding “[o]ur leadership, in my assessment, has exhausted the limits of its competence a long time ago.”
Oleksiy Arestovych, who resigned his post at the Office of the President of Ukraine in January this year after claiming the Dnipro civilian disaster was caused by Ukraine, took to X.com (formerly Twitter) to claim the government has made “a number of mistakes” in its management of the counter-offensive.
His scathing analysis states, “Now we are at an impasse. The Russians cannot defeat us, we cannot defeat them,” adding: “[Ukrainian leaders] are not telling the truth. There will be no return to the borders of 1991, and there will be no Crimea in the near future.”
Concerns about the success of the counter-offensive have been growing across the country in recent weeks, with Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dmytro Kuleba, telling critics to “shut up” about the failed military campaign.
show less– Когда я создавал завышенные ожидания от нашего контрнаступления, я делал это, полагаясь на расчеты.
Тогда эти ожидания не касались завышенными, известные мне
цифры обещали значительный успех.Но мы совершили ряд ошибок, которые, и это нужно признать (если мы уважаем…
— Arestovych (@arestovych) October 14, 2023
