War in Ukraine, commander’s admission: “Counteroffensive stalled”

The war in Ukraine has reached a “stalemate”, Kiev’s troops will not be able to break through the front. The Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU), Valeriy Zaluzhny, openly admitted this in an interview with the Economist, who also explained that “most likely, there will not be a profound and positive turning point.” After the first unsuccessful attempts at a counteroffensive by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Zaluzhny replaced several commanders and transferred military personnel from some front-line brigades, but this led to nothing. To unblock the situation at the front – reports the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army – Kiev needs “something new, like gunpowder, which the Chinese invented and which we still use. In other words, the active use of new technologies is necessary. The biggest risk of trench warfare is that it could drag on for years and exhaust the Ukrainian state.” The words sound like a surrender to Russia’s excessive military power, with Vladimir Putin’s soldiers not having been expelled as expected by weapons supplied by Western countries, now focused on the conflict in the Middle East over Gaza.