Five months into its counter-offensive, Ukraine has managed to advance by just 17 kilometers. Russia fought for ten months around Bakhmut in the east “to take a town six by six kilometers”. Sharing his first comprehensive assessment of the campaign with The Economist in an interview this week, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, General Valery Zaluzhny, says the battlefield reminds him of the great conflict of a century ago. “Just like in the first world war we have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate,” he says. The general concludes that it would take a massive technological leap to break the deadlock. “There will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough.”
The course of the counter-offensive has undermined Western hopes that Ukraine could use it to demonstrate that the war is unwinnable—and thus change Vladimir Putin’s calculations, forcing the Russian president to negotiate. It has also undercut General Zaluzhny’s assumption that he could stop Russia by bleeding its troops. “That was my mistake. Russia has lost at least 150,000 dead. In any other country such casualties would have stopped the war.” But not in Russia, where life is cheap and where Mr Putin’s reference points are in the first and second world wars in which Russia lost tens of millions.
Read it all (my emphasis).
🧵This week The Economist spoke to Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, on the state of the war. It’s a fascinating & important interview. “Just like in the first world war we have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate.” https://t.co/UZjnFqEOWQ
— Shashank Joshi (@shashj) November 1, 2023