General Valery Zaluzhny: Russia and Ukraine have long been in a complete positional impasse

The former commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, AFU, and now the ambassador of Ukraine to the UK, Valery Zaluzhny, commented that the Ukrainian offensive in 2023 failed due to a lack of forces, and the Kursk operation did not bring operational success to the Ukrainian army. Zaluzhny commented on the Kursk operation and the 2023 counteroffensive in a satire for Dzerkalo Tyzhnia, Focus writes.

Zaluzhny's text generally concerns the role of innovations in the strategic planning of combat operations. At the same time, he assesses some events from the past, in particular the Ukrainian counteroffensive in 2023, when he was still the commander-in-chief. According to him, the stopping of this counteroffensive was due to the factor "insufficiency of forces and means of the groups conducting offensive actions".

"In order to break through such an enemy front, it was necessary to have a decisive advantage in forces and means precisely in the area of the breakthrough, as well as to have mobile reserves capable of quickly entering the formed breakthrough and exiting the operational space before the enemy's reserves arrived for the counteroffensive or a new line of defense was organized. Unfortunately, for objective and subjective reasons, we could no longer create such an advantage before the offensive itself".

"The deep rethinking of the results of the summer offensive (in 2023) was conditioned not only by the reaction to the attempt to turn such a heavy element of the war into a reality show, where first our plans in a strange way reached Russia, and then their course was commented on online by various predictors and prophets, who subsequently found themselves under sanctions or in limbo. Until now, I painfully feel the failure of these plans. But the most important thing is that it was extremely necessary to draw lessons and immediately change the strategy. A strategy that would make it possible to survive in a completely new war".

Zaluzhny writes that since 2022, the fighting on the front began to take on a positional character.

"Today, analyzing those days and studying my own materials, I confirm again and again that in fact the armed forces of both Russia and Ukraine have indeed reached a positional impasse, similar to the one that existed during the First World War. In fact, since the fall of 2022, it was in the Donetsk region that the fighting has gradually taken on a positional character".

At the same time, according to Zaluzhny, the Russians are managing to advance thanks to the tactics of pushing, in which, in particular, maneuvers such as encirclement are unlikely to be carried out. Separately, Zaluzhny gives the example of the Ukrainian operation in the Kursk region of the Russian Federation as an unsuccessful attempt to deliver a surprise strike.

"Of course, such actions (the Kursk operation), if justified primarily by human losses, with limited goals, can be carried out. However, practice has shown that in the end, an isolated tactical breakthrough on a narrow section of the front does not bring the necessary success to the attacking side. The defending troops managed to take advantage of both technological and tactical advantages and over time not only did not allow the tactical breakthrough to develop into an operational success, but also subsequently carried out a tactical advance themselves - also without operational success. The cost of such actions is unknown to me, but it is obvious that it was too high.

"Summing up the above, I will repeat that the basis of the positional impasse lies not only the impossibility of breaking through the defensive lines, but also, most importantly, the impossibility of fulfilling operational tasks, including entering the operational space".