Ukrainian officials blame Russian air power, minefields, even bad weather for impeding its advances on the battlefield
FILE PHOTO. A Ukrainian tank rides along a road near Artyomovsk/Bakhmut in Russia’s Donetsk region. © AP / LIBKOS
Kiev’s Western backers are reportedly unhappy with the slow pace of its much-heralded counteroffensive and are demanding, allegedly, that the country’s forces hurry up and make significant battlefield gains, Politico reported on Monday.
Ukrainian officials, however, have insisted there is no purposeful delay on their part, the report says, and are instead blaming a number of factors for hindering their forces, stressing that they wish they could move faster. Those factors include the effectiveness of Russian aircraft, minefields and bad weather, according to Politico.
“We’re still moving forward in different parts of the front line,” Yuri Sak, an adviser to Ukrainian Defense Minister Aleksey Reznikov, told the outlet. “Earlier it was not possible to assess the solidity of the Russian defenses,” he added, noting that “only now that we are doing active probing operations, we get a better picture. The obtained information will be factored into the next stages of our offensive operations.”
Nevertheless, the report claims that Kiev’s allies in Washington and in Europe have continued to call on Ukrainian troops to act harder and faster, and have criticized Armed Forces of Ukraine for being “too cautious,” waiting for the perfect weather and other factors to align before striking Russian positions.
The outlet also noted that a number of analysts have been warning for quite some time that despite all the Western training provided to Ukrainian commanders, it remains unlikely that Kiev will start fighting like a NATO force and will continue to operate with a strategy of attrition without properly employing combined-arms operations, maneuver warfare and longer-range precision fires.
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That’s as Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba reiterated Kiev’s demands for more artillery systems and missiles to be pumped into its arsenal, during a meeting of top EU diplomats on Monday. He also insisted on speeding up the training of Ukrainian pilots on advanced fighter jets and called for more sanctions to be placed on Russia.
Politico’s report comes as Kiev and its Western backers have been assessing how to take advantage of the “window” of opportunity caused by the abandoned rebellion launched in Russia by Wagner PMC chief Evgeny Prigozhin over the weekend.
Officially, however, Washington has maintained silence on the Wagner mutiny. According to a report by Axios on Tuesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has reportedly demanded that his staff refrain from commenting on the incident and only say that the US is monitoring the situation.
