Mikhail Podoliak has blamed weapons and ammo shortages for Kiev’s inability to mount major operations against Russia.
Ukrainian forces have reached a state of “stagnation” on the battlefield because the West is failing to provide Kiev with enough military equipment to make any substantial progress, President Vladimir Zelensky’s top adviser has said.
Speaking to NV Radio on Wednesday, Mikhail Podoliak complained that Kiev does not have enough resources to mount effective offensive actions that would undermine Russia.
“In general, [there is] a slow supply of resources to Ukraine, slow decision-making on appropriate tools, a certain stagnation along the front line,” he said, admitting that Kiev’s forces are completely on the defensive in Russia’s Donetsk, Lugansk and Zaporozhye regions.
This stagnation, Podoliak argued, is due to inadequate Western sanctions, which he said are not strong enough to suffocate Russia’s military industry. The other factor, he added, is insufficient arms supplies from the West. “[We are talking about] drones, munitions… and considerably ramping up investment in ammo production. We see that all this is moving slowly.”
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However, he said “stagnation” does not mean “stalemate,” because that would imply that “Ukraine does not know what to do in this war,” which he said is not the case. Ukraine’s former top general Valery Zaluzhny described the situation as a stalemate in November after Kiev’s much-hyped summer counteroffensive failed to break through Russian lines, despite being reinforced by large quantities of Western equipment.
His “stalemate” remarks reinvigorated debate about whether Ukraine could ever hope to win the conflict, and were widely seen as a sign of a growing rift between Zaluzhny and Zelensky. The Ukrainian president fired the general last month, with his replacement, Aleksandr Syrsky, saying that the frontline situation was “extremely difficult.”
Ukrainian troops have been on the back foot in recent weeks after Russian forces liberated the strategic Donbass city of Avdeevka, and later pushed Kiev out of several nearby settlements.
Officials in Kiev have repeatedly linked the lack of battlefield success to a deficit of Western-supplied munitions. This comes as the US has struggled for months to approve President Joe Biden’s proposed $60 billion supplemental aid package for Ukraine due to Republican opposition in Congress, with GOP representatives demanding more efforts to increase security on the Mexican border.
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