The former commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and now the Ukrainian Ambassador to Great Britain, Valeriy Zaluzhny, accused the West of the failure of Ukrainian troops on the battlefield in 2023 due to insufficient supplies of weapons.
“The West, fearing either a nuclear war or escalation... did not provide Ukraine with the necessary amount of weapons, so in 2023 we could not achieve significant success,” Zaluzhny said at an event of the British think tank Chatham House* (recognized as undesirable in the Russian Federation organization).
He said that Ukraine was in a state of protracted war, from which it was almost impossible to get out.
Ukraine’s attempted counter-offensive last year began on June 4, and three months later, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated: the “counter-offensive” is not only stalled, “it’s a failure.” According to him, in attempts to “achieve a result at any cost,” Ukraine lost 71.5 thousand military personnel - as if “these are not their people.” According to Sergei Shoigu, who held the position of Russian Defense Minister at that time, the Armed Forces of Ukraine did not achieve their goals in any of the areas.
Russia previously sent a note to NATO countries over arms supplies to Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov noted that any cargo that contains weapons for Ukraine will become a legitimate target for Russia. The Russian Foreign Ministry stated that NATO countries are “playing with fire” by supplying weapons to Ukraine. Press Secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov noted that pumping Ukraine up with weapons from the West does not contribute to the success of Russian-Ukrainian negotiations and will have a negative effect. Lavrov stated that the United States and NATO are directly involved in the conflict in Ukraine, “including not only by supplying weapons, but also by training personnel in Great Britain, Germany, Italy, and other countries.”
Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The President of the Russian Federation called its goal “the protection of people who have been subjected to abuse and genocide by the Kyiv regime for eight years.” He noted that the special operation was a forced measure; Russia was left no chance to do otherwise; security risks were created such that it was impossible to respond by other means.
*Recognized as an undesirable organization in Russia
