Ukrainian Defense Ministry adviser Yuriy Sak claims the solution to the conflict with Russia will be military, removing the prospect of negotiations with the Russian president, whom he likens to a lunatic like Hitler.
“We only believe in a military solution. This is the war that Ukraine will completely win on the battlefield,” the defense ministry adviser says in an interview with Lusa, hoping that this could happen as early as 2023, with he any possibility of negotiations with Moscow.
Since the Russian invasion, on February 24 last year, “the first attempts to negotiate with the aggressor were futile,” said Yuriy Sak, because of the profile of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, “a madman who must be stopped and behind the jailed and tried for the war crimes he committed”.
After defeating Russia on the battlefield, the adviser admits that there is a process of negotiations, regarding reparations for the damage done in Ukraine and the establishment of an international war crimes tribunal.
Despite the difficulty of predicting what will happen in 2023, Sak hopes that, with prompt international support, this will be the year this war will end.
“We will do everything on our side and I assure you that the whole world must be interested in stopping this war in 2023 and ensuring that Russia is a terrorist state and an aggressor state, with full responsibility for the war crimes it has committed. …for the nuclear blackmail it carried out and the risk of the global food crisis it created”to maintain.
Ukrainian officials expect “a full-scale offensive” from Russia any minute now, and also expect to receive the heavy tanks the Allies promised last week before it happens. According to the military adviser, it is uncertain about the number of tanks to be received and the place where the attacks will take place, although he has information about large troop concentrations in the Donbass region, in eastern Ukraine. “So maybe that’s the direction they’re trying to push us again.”
Therefore, he continues, Ukrainian forces are being reinforced not only in Donbass, but also in the north, near the border with Belarus and even in the south, where they recaptured territory late last year.
But the Ukrainian army also plans new attacks, without details: “We always prepare a counterattack every day,” he said, rejecting the word counteroffensive, because this is “a defensive war, the aim of which is to defeat the enemy.” expel” from Ukraine and without any intention to attack Russian territory.
“We don’t need Russian terror,” he declared, likening it to a virus: “We, as the international community, have experience in isolating covid-affected areas and so Russia will have to be isolated in a similar way for a long period. so that the virus does not spread”.
Almost a year after the start of the war, Yuriy Sak points out that “Ukraine is still standing,” when on February 24, 2022, “Many people around the world, including the Allies, did not believe they could withstand seven days, some given 72 hours”.
Contrary to expectations, it succeeded not only in resisting but also in retaking occupied territory, with examples from the Kiev region, Chernihiv in the north, then Kharkiv in the east and more recently Kherson in the south. “Eleven months after this aggression, we are here and Ukraine is showing the world that the Ukrainian army and the Ukrainian people are heroic and resilient and that we are fighting for global values.”
The military adviser insists on an idea always repeated by Kiev that Ukraine is not fighting for its future alone. “It is now very clear to everyone that this war will determine the future of all of us, the European continent, the global international community, the world order,” he defended, highlighting the atrocities committed by Russia.
“Almost no war crime has been committed in Ukraine to this day,” Sak said, comparing Putin to Adolf Hitler and describing the Russian military as a group of “murderers, mass murderers, looters and rapists” representing a “terrorist” . state that kills innocent people”
Sak points out that Russia “also has no regard for the lives of its own people”, pointing out that “the Ukrainian army kills about 800 Russian soldiers on average every day”, who are used as cannon fodder: “It is a slaughterhouse that is badly equipped , usually poorly trained”.
On the side of the Kiev Armed Forces, Sak does not give figures, he only referred that “it is a war and of course there are casualties”, recalling, however, statements by the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky that on average for every 10 Russian soldiers killed, there is a lost Ukrainian.
That is why, according to the military adviser, Moscow is preparing a mobilization of between one million and one and a half million soldiers, “using its meat shredder tactics”, adding that “Russia is a big country with many unemployed people and alcoholics, and many in prisons”, leading to “the quality of the army being very, very questionable”, and warning that “nobody wants to see this army of looters and rapists walking around Europe”.
On the Ukrainian side, about a million people are involved in the war and there is room for reinforcements.
“We are doing well for now,” he stated, concluding: “We hope we can wrap this up soon so that all the people can go home and start rebuilding our country.”
Source: DN
