Zaluzhny urged people not to assume that Russia has already lost the war: what is the main danger?
Valeriy Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom and former Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, has urged people not to jump to conclusions about Russia’s defeat in the war against Ukraine. In his view, such an assessment is dangerous and does not reflect the actual strategic situation.
He wrote about this in his column for Interfax-Ukraine.
Zaluzhny noted that an increasing number of Western analysts are speaking of Russia’s de facto defeat; however, he said, such conclusions are based on Ukraine’s isolated successes on the battlefield, rather than on a comprehensive analysis of the war.
He emphasised that advances in modern military technology have made large-scale breakthroughs on the front line extremely difficult. As a result, the war has entered a phase of attrition, in which neither side is currently capable of achieving a decisive military advantage.
According to Zaluzhny, Ukrainian long-range strikes on Russian territory are inflicting significant losses on the enemy, but they are costly, technologically complex and inevitably provoke a response from the Russian Federation. Therefore, such operations cannot, on their own, bring about a strategic turning point.
The former Commander-in-Chief believes that a situation close to strategic equilibrium has now emerged on the front line: Russia is unable to occupy the whole of Ukraine by military means, whilst Ukraine does not yet have the capacity to liberate all the temporarily occupied territories by force.
In Zaluzhny’s view, the decisive factor will not be any single military operation, but rather which country can withstand the economic, military and psychological strain of the war for longer, whilst maintaining international support.
He is convinced that this is precisely what will determine how and when the Russian-Ukrainian war will end.
It should be recalled that the media previously reported that, during a meeting with Zelenskyy, Zaluzhnyy confirmed he would stand for president.
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