Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in an interview that aired Sunday attributed the delayed start of his nation’s counteroffensive against Russia to insufficient munitions and training earlier this year.
“We did have plans to start it in spring. But we didn’t, because, frankly, we had not enough munitions and armaments and not enough brigades properly trained in these weapons, still, more, that the training missions were held outside Ukraine. But, still, we started. And this is important,” Zelensky told CNN‘s Fareed Zakaria on “GPS” through a translator.
Ukraine launched a counteroffensive against Russia to take back occupied territory after months of preparation and some delay in the timeline. Although the counteroffensive started off strong, its pace has slowed as Ukraine has been going through munitions quickly.
Zelensky explained that the delay in the attack’s start gave Russia more time to lay mines in fields, which Ukrainian troops must take steps to avoid, slowing their advance.
“And because we started it a bit later on, it can be said, and it will be shared truth understood by all the experts that it provided Russia with time to mine all our lands and build several lines of defense. And, definitely, they had even more time than they needed. Because of that, they built more of those lines. And, really, they had a lot of mines in our fields. Because of that, a slower pace of our counteroffensive actions,” Zelensky said, through a translator. “We didn’t want to lose our people, our personnel. And our servicemen didn’t want to lose equipment because of that.”
“Yes, I do understand that it’s always better to see victory come sooner. This is what we also want. But the question is the price … of this victory. So, let us not throw people under tanks literally. Let us plan our counteroffensive as our analysts, our intelligence suggests. And some of our residential areas have been liberated already. So, I do believe in our victory,” he added.
TIL the counter-offensive has recaptured 50% of occupied territory, the counter-offensive has completely stalled because the Russian defense is formidable, and now the counter-offensive is delayed because not enough ammunition. Mostly I’ve learned to discount war reports as basically 90% wishful thinking/propaganda. Is Zelenskyy just drumming up support for more material support? Probably, but probably they have made some significant territorial gains, and they also have learned that as incompetent as the Russian Army is on offense, historically it has been just excellent on defense and culturally they don’t give up until they have nothing left or the state collapses.
If you look at liberated territory as your only measure of success, you’re going to end up in the “basically wishful thinking/propaganda” space. This war is more complex the more you zoom in. Reducing it to kilometers squared liberated is effectively boiling it down to single somewhat meaningless number. (It is not meaningless for people living under occupation, but it often does not show actual progress)
To provide some specific example, the fact that crimean bridge was damaged (again) did not directly liberate any area. Looking at this single number would make you think it had no impact whatsoever on the battlefield. Same for Antonovsky bridge during the Kherson counteroffensive. How many times have they bombed it (and then also the pontoon bridges russia built)? If you looked just at kilometers squared at the time, well it was kind of stalled or at best very slow progress.
You’re right about discounting war reports. Or at the very least understand that they are not going to reflect any sort of global status and are at best approximations of certain reality of the counteroffensive. If you try to amplify these to aproximate success rate or predict end result, you’re going to get more noise than useful signal.
Yeah, I was just repeating, almost verbatim, todays war news headlines, which were basically all contradictory. That was the point, I was rejecting all of them as superficial self serving bullshit.
My worry is starting to become that the counter-offensive is moving slowly enough that no break-through is achieved before things bog down with rain/mud once autumn and early winter start arriving. If that happens, Russian forces could get some breathing room before the ground freezes up again in winter, which would reduce the effects of the pressure Ukraine has been putting on them the past couple months.
