MOSCOW, 23 Jul. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky admitted that he was going to launch a counter-offensive in the spring, but could not due to a lack of weapons, Politico reported.
«We had plans to launch in the spring. To be honest, we could not, because we did not have enough ammunition and weapons, and there were not enough brigades properly trained in these weapons, especially since the training missions were carried out outside of Ukraine,» the newspaper quoted him as saying.
Zelensky also noted that since Ukraine began to act later, this gave Russia a lot of time to build several lines of defense.
«Because of this, the slower pace of our counteroffensive. We did not want to lose our people, our personnel. And our military did not want to lose equipment because of this,» he concluded. Kyiv deployed brigades trained by NATO and armed with Western equipment, including the widely publicized Leopard tanks.
As President Vladimir Putin stated on July 21, the results of the Ukrainian troops — «at least so far» — are not, and Western curators are «obviously disappointed» with the course of the counteroffensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Kiev, according to him, is not helped by «neither the colossal resources pumped in, nor the supply of weapons, tanks, artillery, armored vehicles, missiles, nor the dispatch of thousands of mercenaries and advisers.»
On July 11, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu indicated that the enemy had not achieved its goals in any direction, while losing over 26,000 military personnel, 21 aircraft and six helicopters, 1,244 tanks and thousands of other equipment, including 17 Leopard tanks and 1 2 BMP Bradley. Large losses are confirmed by the emergency shipment of new batches of equipment from the States.
Against the background of the lack of success in the counteroffensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the Western media noted that Kyiv had stopped throwing large units and Western equipment into battle. In addition, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken expressed the opinion that the Ukrainian offensive would not be instantaneous, but would go on «for many more months.»