The Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian army, Valery Zaluzhny, said on Thursday he expected a new Russian attack on kyiv in the very first months of 2023, while the fighting has been concentrated for several months in the East and the South. from Ukraine.
A thesis partly shared by the Ukrainian Minister of Defense, Oleksii Reznikov, by the chief of the ground forces Oleksandr Syrskyi and Volodymyr Zelensky, according to “The Guardian”.
A deliberate communication policy to “highlight the persistent threat Russia poses to Ukraine” to Westerners?
asks the British daily.
“A very important strategic task for us is to create reserves and prepare for war, which can take place in February, at best in March, and in the worst case at the end of January,” Valery Zaloujny said in an interview. in the British weekly "The Economist".
"I have no doubt that they will try again to take kyiv," he said.
Current "Holding the Front Line"
The commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army affirmed, in this interview, "to have made all the calculations: how many tanks, artillery we need and so on" to repel this possible offensive.
At the end of February, the Russian army had launched the invasion of Ukraine, with the objective of quickly taking kyiv by its troops launched in particular from neighboring Belarus, to the north.
The Russian forces had been kept a few tens of kilometers from the Ukrainian capital, before withdrawing completely from the region at the end of March-beginning of April, a victory for the Ukrainian army.
For Valéry Zaloujny, another current "problem" for his army is to "hold the current front line", which extends from South to East, "and not lose any more ground", after having chased the Russians in September from the Kharkiv region (north-east) and Kherson in early November (south).
“Gathering their human and military resources”
According to the head of the Ukrainian army, the Russians have also been bombing the country's energy infrastructure since October after a series of humiliating setbacks because "they need time" to "assemble their human and military resources" in order to a new major offensive in the coming months.
The national energy network is "on a wire", he also noted to "The Economist", judging "possible" that it will be completely out of use by new Russian missile and drone strikes.
These strikes cause major power outages across the country on a daily basis, leaving several million Ukrainians in the cold and in the dark, in the middle of winter.
“I have the impression that we are on the edge of the abyss (…).
Without water, light and heat, can we prepare our reserves for new battles?”
worries Valéry Zaloujny.
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While Russia mobilized some 300,000 reserve soldiers in the fall, the Ukrainian Minister of Defense, Oleksii Reznikov estimates in "The Guardian" that if half of them, summarily trained, quickly reinforced the ranks on the battlefield, the remaining 150,000 receive far more in-depth training for future offensives on "different sides".
As it takes about three months of training, "this means that they are trying to launch the next wave of the offensive probably in February, like last year", continues the minister who does not mention however that kyiv would be the target .
“We estimate that Russia has a reserve of 1.2 to 1.5 million people,” added the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, distilling the fear of countless battles.