Ukraine can win the war later this year if the West supplies it with more powerful military equipment, including long-range missiles and heavy tanks, Mykhailo Podoliak, an adviser to the Ukrainian presidency, said in an interview with France-Presse.
“What is happening today in the Bakhmut or Soledar area is the bloodiest scene of this war”he said in the interview published this Wednesday, referring to the continuous attacks on this city in eastern Ukraine that Moscow has been trying to capture for months.
Podoliak reiterated Kiev’s requests to its Western allies: “more” long-range weapons to weaken Russian lines and advance into occupied Ukrainian territories.
“Only missiles with a range of more than 100 kilometers will allow us to significantly accelerate the liberation of areas”which will lead to the end of the war “in late spring, early summer or probably fall”he underlined.
Without the supply of more powerful weapons, the war could last “decades”, the adviser to the Ukrainian presidency warned, emphasizing that the end “can only be achieved with the supply of the necessary weapons”.
The Ukrainians are already using the North American Himars missile launchers (80 km range) and have just received French equivalent equipment, the LRU (about 70 km range), but are asking for equipment such as the North American Atcms missiles, with a range of 300 kilometers.
These missiles would make it possible to reach the Russian arms depots that Moscow has out of reach of the Ukrainians, in the occupied territories of eastern Ukraine, Podolak explains.
However, the adviser to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, assured that Ukraine “will not attack targets on Russian territory” if it obtains the long-range weapons, and that Kiev “is waging an exclusively defensive war”.
Kiev is also asking for artillery weapons and tanks, including “heavy tanks” such as Germany’s Leopard, with the president’s adviser saying “250 to 300 or 350 heavy tanks” are needed.
Mykhailo Podoliak added that the Europeans and North Americans, Kiev’s main allies, could soon speed up their deliveries of war materials because they “understood” that this is the key to the conflict in defeating the Russian offensive.
In addition, the arrival of new anti-aircraft missile systems, such as the US and German Patriots or the French Crotales, will make it possible to neutralize the threat posed by Russian bombing of Ukrainian energy infrastructure.
“We could close our airspace in a month”he explained, believing that Ukraine will have the capacity to shoot down 95% of missiles fired by Russia, instead of 75% currently.
The adviser to the Ukrainian presidency also regarded the battle for control of Soledar and Bakhmut, in eastern Ukraine, as the “bloodiest” since the start of the Russian invasion in February 2022.
According to him, Russian military losses are “huge”, referring to “10,000 to 15,000 men, maybe more” in this area since the summer, but “the Ukrainian army is also suffering significant losses”.
The military offensive launched by Russia in Ukraine on February 24 has so far led to the flight of more than 14 million people – 6.5 million internally displaced people and more than 7.9 million to European countries -, according to the latest data of the UN, which classifies this refugee crisis as the worst in Europe since World War II (1939-1945).
Currently, 17.7 million Ukrainians need humanitarian aid and 9.3 million need food aid and shelter.
The Russian invasion – justified by the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, with the need to “denazify” and demilitarize Ukraine for Russian security – was condemned by the international community at large, which responded by sending weapons to Ukraine and Russia political and economic sanctions.
The UN presented 6,919 civilian deaths and 11,075 wounded as confirmed since the start of the war, emphasizing that these numbers are far below the real ones.
Source: DN
