Ukraine soldiers launch scathing attack on Zelensky | World | News
Ukrainian soldiers are deeply critical of the way in which last year’s counteroffensive was conducted, the Daily Express has been told – while its army has been slammed for being “stuck in its Soviet ways”.
Last summer, Ukraine launched its much anticipated counterattack against Vladimir Putin’s Russian army.
Expectations were high that Kyiv would be able to build on the success of its autumn 2022 counteroffensive in the north east and south near Kherson.
Those attacks were carried out between the end of August and beginning of October 2022, and resulted in substantial territorial gains for Ukraine‘s army.
A total of 1,170 square kilometres (about 451 square miles) of land was reclaimed by Kyiv, leaving the Russians in disarray.
However the summer 2023 offensive failed to achieve any substantial breakthroughs, as Ukrainian forces were confounded by formidable Russian defensive fortifications, built over the winter of 2022/23.
These included concrete reinforced interlocking trenches, dragon’s teeth anti-tank barriers and extensive minefields.
In total Ukraine‘s army managed to reclaim only around 200 square miles of territory at a cost of thousands of dead and wounded, as well as billions in Western military aid.
Now, a source with close links to the Ukrainian military has told the Daily Express that soldiers involved in last years military campaign said they were “not properly briefed”, were “badly led” and “ill-prepared for the counteroffensive” in a damning assessment of their army high command.
Ukraine‘s military was criticised at the time of the offensive by US officials for allocating too many troops to the wrong places along the frontline.
Instead of concentrating units on its strategically most important axises in the south, Ukraine‘s high command spread its forces too thin along the 600 mile frontline.
The main objective had been to cut off Russian supply lines in southern Ukraine by severing the so-called land bridge between Russia and the occupied Crimean Peninsula.
Western military experts have expressed concerns that Ukraine‘s army has not learned the lessons of its failed summer 2023 offensive.
Glen Grant, a former Lieutenant Colonel in the British Army said Ukraine‘s military high command appeared to be stuck in its “Soviet” ways and continues to order its soldiers to do “stupid things”.
He said: “My worry is that whatever’s happening, the Russians are learning and they’re learning quickly. I believe apart from the frontline soldiers, the Ukrainian system is still not learning.
“It’s still thinking in Soviet fashion, Soviet structures, Soviet methods of fighting. It just is not developing. The frontline boys are, because they have to stay alive, and then they get told to do stupid things.”
The Ukrainian army has belatedly started to dig fortified defences, as it moves into containment mode.
The country’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said more than 30bn hryvnia (about £607 million) has been allocated to building fortifications this year.
But construction only began ramping up in February, around the time Colonel General Oleksandr Syrsky was appointed as new commander-in-chief and announced that Ukraine had moved from offensive actions to “active defence”.
Valentine Badrak, a military analyst at the Army, Conversion and Disarmament Research Center, told the Financial Times that the order to build stronger fences should have come in late 2022 as Russia intensified its attacks on the eastern city of Bakhmut.
He added Ukraine‘s military leadership had wrongly anticipated a continual supply of Western arms, allowing it to remain on the offensive and therefore had given no consideration to building fortifications behind the frontline.