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KYIV, Ukraine – President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday that Ukraine needs more time to launch a counterattack against Russia because it does not yet have enough military equipment from its Western backers, even as Ukrainian officials have repeatedly described the attack as imminent.
In terms of personnel and motivation, Ukrainian forces are ready for the operation, Mr. Zelensky said in an interview broadcast by the BBC on Thursday, but are still waiting for some hardware promised from the West, specifically armored vehicles.
“We were able to move forward, and, I think we succeeded,” he said. “But we’re going to lose a lot of people. I’m the one that’s unacceptable. So we have to wait. We still need more time.”
Ukrainian military and political analysts say Mr. Zelensky is right about the ongoing shortfall ahead of an operation that Ukraine and its supporters hope will be a turning point in the war. But he also pointed to other possible motives behind his remarks: to force allies to increase shipments, reduce expectations for counterattacks, and confuse. Kremlin about Kyiv’s intentions.
For months, Ukraine’s political and military leaders have signaled they are preparing a major push to retake territory held by Russia since an invasion last year, though they have not said exactly when or where the blow will come. Some analysts predict that the counteroffensive will be focused on Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions in southern Ukraine, not on the eastern Donbas region, where the heaviest fighting has been going on for months.
One of Russia’s military leaders said Thursday that a Ukrainian counterattack was underway.
Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the head of Wagner’s private militia, said that’s what happened in Donbas and centered in the city of Bakhmut, where the mercenary has led a grueling attack that has claimed tens of thousands of lives. In an audio message posted on Telegram by the press service, he dismissed Mr. Zelensky’s comments as a hoax.
“The counterattack is being carried out quickly,” he said, adding that it would start in the Bakhmut region and then move to the Zaporizhzhia region. He said about the Ukrainians: “Those units that have undergone the necessary training, received weapons, equipment, tanks and so on – they have participated.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement it had rejected several Ukrainian “reconnaissance” operations in the east, but described the actions as routine and denied any breakthroughs.
Ukrainian forces have made gains around Bakhmut this week for the first time since March, commanders on both sides said, but it was unclear whether this represented an opportunistic, small-scale attack or the beginning of a larger one.
Mr Prigozhin has in the past preceded Russian officials in admitting what happened on the battlefield, but he has also made questionable claims during his campaign to raise more supplies from the heavily criticized Russian military command.
Russian military blogger Oleksandr Simonov, who often joins Wagner’s fighters in Ukraine, posted on Thursday that they had advanced further in the town of Bakhmut, but Ukrainian forces had forced the Russian army to retreat at two points north of the town. On Tuesday, the Russians gave up several square miles southwest of the city.
Whatever Mr. Zelensky’s intentions are, he is not ready, said Taras Chmut, who heads Come Back Alive, a charitable foundation that provides military supplies to Ukraine’s army. Despite tens of billions of dollars in weapons sent, with more on the way, the Ukrainian military is lacking materiel, including cannons, armored vehicles and air defense systems, he said.
“The amount collected in recent months is still not enough for a successful counteroffensive,” said Mr. Chmut, a former military officer. However, he added, “It is the decision of the senior military command whether to accept the risk.”
Maria Zolkina, head of regional security and conflict studies at the Kyiv-based Foundation for Democratic Initiatives, said Mr Zelensky’s interview “is part of a political statement to make Western partners speed up the supply.” He said he also wanted to dampen expectations that the attack “wasn’t as successful as we hoped.”
However, Ms. Zolkina added, “I will not rule out that this is an information trick because Ukraine is trying to hide its preparations.”
Shashank Joshi, defense editor at The Economist, put it more bluntly: “Of course this is what you’re going to say if the counterattack is going to start,” he wrote on Twitter,
Mrs. Zolkina said Kyiv is concerned that if the operation fails to deliver the main results, there may be pressure from some Western partners to negotiate an end to the war or receive reduced aid.
On Thursday, the UK’s defense secretary, Ben Wallace, told Parliament that the government would supply an air-launched cruise missile that could strike at a range of up to 155 miles. The Storm Shadow missile, with its 990-pound explosive warhead, would allow Ukraine to launch powerful strikes on targets in Crimea, a peninsula that Russia illegally seized in 2014.
“Ukraine has the right to be able to defend itself,” Mr. Wallace said. “The use of Storm Shadow will allow Ukraine to push back Russian forces based in Ukraine’s sovereign territory.”
The Biden administration has so far refused to send such long-range munitions to Ukraine, wary that it could provoke Russian escalation. But the war has eroded resistance from the White House, which has agreed to deliver advanced weapons that previously seemed off-limits, such as the Patriot air defense system and HIMARS rocket launchers.
Ben Hodges, a retired lieutenant general who is the commander in chief of the US Army in Europe and supports giving Ukraine long-range weapons, said on Twitter that British cruise missiles would threaten Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, based in Sevastopol, in Crimea. “This will give Ukraine the ability to make Crimea impenetrable to Russian forces,” he said.
Ukrainian leaders have insisted they want to seize Crimea, but now it may be more important as a staging and supply area for Russian operations in southern Ukraine.
If Mr. Zelensky’s comments about waiting to start the campaign were an attempt at misdirection, it would be appropriate for an information war that is already full of feints and surprises.
Last fall, the Ukrainian military announced it was planning a counterattack in the south, prompting Russia to move troops south, abandoning its defenses in the Kharkiv region in the northeast. Ukrainian military commandos then attacked there, but surprised the Russians – as well as many of their own troops – and recaptured large swathes of territory.
As of 10 weeks ago, Western arms deliveries fell short of what Ukraine needed for a counteroffensive, according to classified US military assessments from February and March.
But two weeks ago, NATO’s top military commander, General Christopher G. Cavoli of the US Army, said Ukraine had received 98 percent of the combat vehicles it needed to start the war.
Even so, Ukrainian officials regularly say they need better and better weapons. And in recent days, they tried to manage their own hopes and Western allies, saying that there may not be one conclusive war.
“It looks like we are in a Hollywood movie, where a big war for Middle-earth begins, and one war for Gondor will decide everything,” said Mykhailo Podolyak, the president’s adviser, making a reference to “The Lord of the Rings.” “It didn’t happen like that.”
“It’s not just a week or a month,” he said. “This is a question of many events, because one can be more successful, and the other, less successful.”
Carlotta Gall reported from Kiev, Shashank Bengali and Matthew Mpoke Bigg of London, and Lara Jakes from Rome. Oleksandr Chubko contributed reports from Kyiv, and Anatoly Kurmanaev from Berlin.
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