Top Ukrainian General to U.S.: Keep Your Tactical Advice, We're Fighting Russia
Ukraine evidently remembers the outcomes of the U.S. military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan
Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s top general, reportedly told U.S. officials who offered advice on how to conduct the counteroffensive that they don’t know what they’re talking about when it comes to fighting a military power like Russia, according to a new report.
“You don’t understand the nature of this conflict,” Zaluzhny told these officials, according to The Wall Street Journal. “This is not counterinsurgency. This is Kursk.”
He was evidently referring to WWII’s full-scale Battle of Kursk between the Soviet Union and Germany.
The Trends Journal has called for Kyiv to negotiate for a peaceful settlement before Russia invaded Ukraine, not because we agree with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade, but because Ukraine has no chance of winning against a superior Russian military and it would be in the best interest of its government to get along with their superpower neighbor.
After selling the public for well over a year that Ukraine would win, over the past few weeks the West’s narrative of their Spring counteroffensive — which was supposed to prove to the West that it is not throwing good money at a bad war effort—has changed.
The Washington Post reported last week that it is now clear that Ukraine will fail to achieve one of its top objectives, which is to retake the pivotal city of Melitopol. The paper, citing a classified forecast, reported that “Kyiv won’t fulfill its principal objective of severing Russia’s land bridge to Crimea in this year’s push.”
The Russian army may have constructed the greatest fortification in military history. Ukrainian troops face anti-tank ditches, “dragon’s teeth” and anti-vehicle barricades, Business Insider reported. Once they get through the minefields, they are greeted by trench labyrinths and then Moscow’s layered defensive lines.
The Journal’s report said American officials believe that Ukraine has the weapons and equipment it needs to succeed.
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“We built up this mountain of steel for the counteroffensive. We can’t do that again,” one former U.S. official said. “It doesn’t exist.”
Mark F. Cancian, a senior adviser with the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, noted that the Biden administration is set to ask Congress for another $24 billion in aid for Ukraine.
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“Militaries in active combat require a constant flow of weapons, munitions, and supplies. Without outside military aid, Ukrainian resistance would collapse in two or three weeks,” Cancian wrote.
“What is new is the disappointing results of the Ukrainian counteroffensive so far. Although the counteroffensive began two months ago, Ukrainian forces are still chewing their way through the Russian defensive lines. Even President Zelensky has acknowledged the disappointment. Frustration is building. The great fear is a ‘forever war,’ a conflict that goes on indefinitely at a great human and fiscal cost but without a clear outcome. “
Zaluzhny, the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, said in an interview with the Washington Post in July that it “pisses him off” when he hears the West complaining that the counteroffensive is moving slower than hoped.
“It’s not a show the whole world is watching and betting on or anything. Every day, every meter is given by blood,” he said.