We Didn’t Have Enough Men or Equipment and This Gave Russia Time to Dig in, Says Zelensky

DONETSK OBLAST, UKRAINE - JULY 22: A Ukrainian soldier carries shells to their front line
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Oliver JJ Lane

The world wondered why the long-discussed Ukrainian Spring offensive didn’t arrive until Summer, and now we know why, as Ukrainian President Zelensky says he simply didn’t have the men or the equipment to launch it any earlier.

The Ukrainian counteroffensive didn’t start when expected because “frankly, we didn’t have enough munitions, armaments, not enough brigades properly trained in these weapons” to do so, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the Aspen Security Forum on Friday.

This delay gave Russian forces more time to dig in, he said, which further slowed progress once things actually started. He said it “provided Russia with time to mine all of our land and provide several lines of defence. They had more than they needed, so they built more of those lines and really they have a lot of mines in our fields. Because of this we had a slower rate of our counteroffensive actions.”

While Zelensky showed some restraint in not pointing a finger of accusation on why the Ukrainian armed forces didn’t have as much equipment as it would like for the counteroffensive, members of his government have been less shy on that matter in the recent past, including a top General who said the situation “pisses me off”. General Zaluzhny blamed the slow pace of the counteroffensive progress on a lack of military equipment donated by the West.

Zelensky also retrod past comments, where he previously defended the speed of progress and said he would not speed things up to please foreign observers, that it was best to persecute the war at the speed his own military intelligence called for, and said he would not “literally throw people under tanks”.

Concluding the point, Zelensky said “some of our residential areas have been liberated already so I do believe in our victory”. Not long after Zelensky spoke, the degree to which Ukraine had found success in that endeavour was reflected upon by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who took a charitable view.

Speaking to CNN Blinken said: “It’s already taken back around 50 per cent of what was initially seized. Now they’re in a very hard fight to take back more. These are still early days of the count offensive, it is tough, and the Russians have put in strong defences.”

The 50-per-cent claim is based on the maximum, and brief, areas that suffered incursions in the very first weeks of the war last year, including the doomed attempt to take the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, which was successfully beaten back. In fact, the amount of land retaken during the counteroffensive so far, while important, has not yet been considerable.

The first villages retaken were announced last month, with the amount of land de-occupied measured in the tens of square miles per week. But in encouraging news, Ukraine retook territory that Russia had occupied continually since 2014 in late June, a clear sign of real counteroffensive progress into areas which Russian forces have had nearly a decade to entrench.

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