(HorizonPost.com) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last week offered a candid assessment of the summer’s counteroffensive against Russia but insisted that his country is not prepared to stop fighting.
In an interview with the Associated Press last Thursday, Zelensky admitted that the counteroffensive did not achieve the results Ukraine had expected. He said Ukraine was “losing people” and failed to get “all the weapons we wanted.”
While admitting that he couldn’t be “satisfied” with the results of the counteroffensive, Zelensky said he “also can’t complain too much.”
He explained that while there wasn’t “enough power” to achieve the results desired, that didn’t mean that Ukraine would have to “give up” or surrender. Zelensky told the Associated Press that Ukraine is “confident in our actions” and would continue to “fight for what is ours.”
With the onset of winter, “a new phase” of the war begins, Zelensky said.
In the months before last winter, Russian strikes targeted energy infrastructure to deprive civilian populations of heat and electricity. Zelensky told the Associated Press that the same will likely happen this year.
He said Ukraine is preparing for another Russian campaign that will target the country’s infrastructure to cause misery for the Ukrainian people as winter persists, adding that this is what makes fighting in winter so difficult.
Zelensky suggested that the lack of significant gains during the summer counteroffensive, despite the billions in aid from the West, has led to flagging support for the war.
He also suggested that support for Israel in its war against Hamas could be overshadowing the war in Ukraine. He said already, Ukraine has seen the “consequences” of the international community’s attention shifting away from Ukraine toward the conflict in the Middle East, adding “Only the blind don’t recognize this.”
Zelensky told the Associated Press that the Ukrainian people know that they will “need to fight for attention” and “must not allow” the international community to “forget about the war here.”
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