First Deputy -Minister of Defense of Ukraine, Lt. Gen. Ivan Khavrylyuk, stressed that serious Western security assistance will be critical to Ukraine's ability to challenge and seize the initiative on the battlefield.
This is stated in the daily analysis of the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
Havrylyuk also disputed the notion that Russian forces would be able to sustain indefinitely the consistent gradual creeping advance that supports Russian President Vladimir Putin's theory of victory in winning the war of attrition in Ukraine.
Ukrainian forces are already attempting to contest the initiative on the battlefield with limited and localized counterattacks at the tactical level - underscoring that the current state of front-line fraying positional warfare is not infinitely stable.
Havrylyuk assessed that Russia will face medium- and long-term economic and equipment challenges that will hamper the Russian military's ability to indefinitely retain theater-wide initiative, maintain consistent offensive pressure, which leads to a gradual creeping advance, and to win the war of attrition.
Putin's theory of a slow and gradual victory in Ukraine is based mostly on the assumption of consistently high casualty numbers, as evidenced by reports of Russian losses accumulated during two recent offensives.
At the NATO summit in Washington on July 9-10, NATO allies reaffirmed their commitment to support Ukraine and announced new security assistance packages for the Ukrainian military effort.
Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev has confirmed that Russia will not accept or support any peace deal negotiated with Kiev short of the surrender of Ukraine, the destruction of the entire Ukrainian state and the full occupation of Ukraine.
Servicemen from a Russian motorized rifle regiment, which was previously involved in the execution of Ukrainian prisoners of war in late May 2024, reportedly executed two Ukrainian prisoners of war in the same area in western Zaporozhye Oblast in June 2024 .
Selected US military bases in Europe have placed on heightened alert levels in response to increased Russian diversionary and hybrid operations against NATO allies over the past few months.
Recently, Russian forces advanced in the Vovchansk area, near Kremen and near Toretsk.
On July 10, the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) said that the Russian military had trained the first batch of anti-drone instructors of the Moscow Military District (MVO) at the Alabino training ground in the Moscow Region.