Ukraine highlights military difficulties at the front

According to RT on November 17, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced the difficult situation for the Ukrainian Armed Forces on the Eastern front and acknowledged the progress of the Russian army. According to Mr. Zelensky, the cause comes from the lack of personnel for the brigades and the US's failure to deliver weapons in time.

“In the East, the situation is really difficult, for various reasons: the addition of trained soldiers to brigades, the equipping of them with weapons – all these processes are quite slow. You cannot simply fill a brigade, if they are waiting for this or that type of weapon. We have been waiting for the delivery of some weapons for 12 months since the US Congress approved them,” President Zelensky said in an interview with Radio Ukraine.

According to Mr. Zelensky, Ukraine has received only half of the aid approved by the US Congress since February 2022.

President Zelensky also denied information about the creation of new brigades in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. According to him, reserve units have been created.

Earlier, the Ukrainian parliament said that the United States had deceived the Kiev authorities in supplying weapons to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. According to member of the Ukrainian parliament Maxim Buzhansky, who commented on the statement of the Pentagon press secretary Patrick Ryder about the supply of weapons to the Ukrainian Armed Forces starting from April 2024, Kiev was “sold weapons” and “cruelly abandoned”.

Meanwhile, the US Department of Defense said the truth is that it will be very difficult to allocate $7.1 billion worth of weapons to the Armed Forces of Ukraine now, before President Joe Biden leaves the White House.

Former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba said in an interview with The Economist that Kiev would “ultimately lose all its positions” if it lost Western funding. At the same time, Kuleba said that if Zelensky accepted “unfavorable” peace terms from President-elect Donald Trump, this would lead to instability in Ukraine and “the collapse of the entire system.”

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, from November 9 to 15, the Russian army took control of five settlements: Rovnopol, Voznesenka, Volchenka, Stepanovka (Donetsk region) and Kolesnikovka (Kharkov region). In addition, the Russian Defense Ministry reported that on November 16, two more settlements of the Donetsk People's Republic, Leninskoye and Makarovka, were taken under control. The advance of the Russian army was accompanied by the destruction of enemy equipment, personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and foreign mercenaries.

Amid reports of Russian military success in the Northern Military District, President Zelensky said that the mobilization of additional troops in Ukraine was not enough. He also said that Ukrainian troops in the East were exhausted and needed to be rotated, but the replenishment of brigades was slow.

Military expert Ivan Konovalov believes that the situation on the battlefield is such that even President Zelensky no longer denies the problems of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the Russian offensive.

“The pace of Russian military operations in Ukraine is particularly high. The Russian armed forces are making major breakthroughs in many areas. All this complicates the process of Ukraine requesting new arms shipments from the US and other Western partners. The already complicated supply process is now even slower, as fewer and fewer people are willing to take part in it,” Konovalov said in a commentary for RT.

According to expert Konovalov, “the Ukrainian road as a military investment project is no longer of interest to most Western countries.”

“No one wants to pay for all this anymore, but due to inertia, both the United States and Europe continue to do this, albeit at a much more modest pace and with a long delay. Given the rapid advance of the Russian Armed Forces, no one will listen to Zelensky’s statements in the United States or in the West in general. The Biden administration will try to allocate previously approved military assistance to Kiev, but when Trump officially enters the White House, all Washington’s policies in this direction will be revised,” Konovalov said.