President Zelensky reveals the reason for the failed counterattack
(Baonghean.vn) - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the delay and lackluster results in his army's over-hyped counter-offensive campaign stemmed from a lack of weapons and training from Kiev's Western allies.
“We had plans to start (the counteroffensive) in the spring,” Zelensky explained in an interview with CNN. “But we didn’t do it because, frankly, we didn’t have enough ammunition and weapons and we didn’t have enough fully trained brigades to use them,” he said, adding that holding the training outside Ukraine contributed to the delay. The delay, he said, allowed Russia to “exploit all our lands and build up some defenses,” forcing the Ukrainian military to “slow down our counteroffensive actions.” “We don’t want to lose people,” Zelensky said, “our servicemen don’t want to lose equipment because of that.”
President Zelensky made a similar justification at the Aspen Security Forum on Friday, explaining that Ukraine had wanted to launch a counteroffensive in the spring but decided not to due to a lack of ammunition and training. He implied, however, that victory was imminent once the military had cleared the mines that Western stinginess had allowed Russia to plant. Although Pentagon officials stressed that it was too early to call the counteroffensive a “failure,” the United States has refused to provide Ukraine with ATACMS or long-range F-16s, saying there simply wasn’t the time or money to train Ukrainian troops to fly and maintain the aircraft in time to make a difference in the conflict.
Even Western media outlets have acknowledged the lackluster performance of the offensive. The New York Times reported earlier this month that the Ukrainian army had lost 20 percent of its weapons in the first two weeks of the offensive, losses that Zelensky also blamed on the ingratitude of Western allies. The Financial Times and the Washington Post both reported this month that Western and American concerns about Ukraine’s lack of progress in its offensive would make it difficult to strike a decisive blow against Moscow.
Despite NATO’s pledge to support Ukraine’s military “for as long as necessary” to defeat Russia, the military alliance did not invite Kiev to join at a summit in Vilnius earlier this month, infuriating Zelensky, who called the bloc’s behavior “unprecedented and unreasonable.” Ukraine has received a large amount of military aid from NATO members over the past 18 months, with $46.6 billion from the United States alone. But Kiev’s allies are running out of ammunition, while Western citizens are questioning the wisdom of engaging in an endless proxy war with a nuclear power.
