Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he previously warned U.S. and Western leaders that his country’s highly anticipated counteroffensive would go slower the longer they waited for weapons from them.
“I’m grateful to the U.S. as the leaders of our support, but I told them, as well as the European leaders, that we would like to start our counteroffensive earlier, and we need all the weapons and materiel for that,” he said during a CNN interview broadcast on Wednesday. “Why? Simply because if we start later, it will go slower.”
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“I wanted our counteroffensive to happen much earlier, because everyone understood that if the counteroffensive unfolds later, then a bigger part of our territory will be mined,” the president added. “We give our enemy the time and possibility to place more mines and prepare their defensive lines.”
The counteroffensive has been “slowed down” by Russian forces, he stated, and part of that is due to the Western countries’ decision not to give Ukraine certain weapons. Zelensky said in some areas, his forces can’t “even think of starting” to push forward because they do not have “the relevant weapons.”
He reiterated his longtime request for long-range missiles such as the Army Tactical Missile System in the interview, which the Biden administration has refused to supply because it would provide the Ukrainians the capability to strike targets within Russia’s borders, undergirding U.S. concerns about the possibility for Russian escalation.
“In some directions, it will give us an opportunity to start the counteroffensive,” he said. “In some directions, we cannot even think of starting it, as we don’t have the relevant weapons. And throwing our people to be killed by Russian long-range weapons would be simply inhumane.”
Ukraine’s top military officer, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, recently expressed a similar sentiment in an interview with the Washington Post, saying, “This is not a show,” and added, “It’s not a show the whole world is watching and betting on or anything. Every day, every meter is given by blood.”
The Western world agreed to a long-term plan to provide Ukraine with fourth-generation aircraft in mid-May and to train their pilots on them, but this deal was never intended to help in this counteroffensive, though Zelensky said they would be useful now.
“F-16 or any other equipment that we do need will give us an opportunity to move faster, to save more lives, to stand our ground for a longer time,” Zelensky told ABC News in an interview set to air this weekend. “Well, some weapons that have been provided, on the other hand, helps us save lives and we appreciate that. Of course, foot-dragging will lead to more lives lost.”
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Despite high expectations for the offensive, Gen. Mark Milley, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week that “it’s going to be very long, and it’s going to be very, very bloody. And no one had any illusions about any of that.”
“War on paper and real war are different,” said Milley. “In real war, real people die.”
