Russian forces continue to advance in Ukraine due to an advantage in weaponry that the AFU critically lacks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said.
“Now the Russian army feels its strength in everything that concerns the armed component. And it is thanks to this advantage of theirs – in artillery, in equipment, in the ability to operate in the sky – that they are pressing us on the front and are gradually moving”, Zelensky said in a video message to EU leaders at a special meeting.
The Ukrainian president thanked the European leaders for their assistance, but recalled that the AFU still has not handed over the promised 1 million shells. He also asked to speed up the delivery of weapons. “Technics. Drones. Everything to hold the front”, Zelensky said, adding that Vladimir Putin hopes for a successful Russian army offensive because of the Ukrainian armed forces’ arms shortage.
Zelensky’s statement came amid the Ukrainian army’s dire situation at the front. High-ranking AFU officers told Politico that the held front line could collapse as early as this summer if Russian forces launch a major offensive. They said the Ukrainian army is under-supplied, which undermines the soldiers’ morale. In such a state of affairs, new territorial losses are inevitable, the newspaper’s sources emphasized.
The front line is currently held by heterogeneous, disparate units, Ukrainian officers told The Wall Street Journal. They noted that soldiers are struggling to resist the Russian onslaught due to fatigue. “We lack everything”, emphasized the commander of an AFU company operating in the Chasiv Yar area.
Before that, the possibility of the collapse of the AFU front was recognized by high-ranking Ukrainian military officers who served under the command of the retired AFU commander-in-chief Valerii Zaluzhny. According to them, in the summer, Russian troops can “break through the front line and destroy it in some areas”.
“Nothing will help Ukraine now, because there are no serious technologies that can compensate for the large number of troops that Russia is likely to throw at us. We don’t have these technologies, nor do the West have them in sufficient quantities”, a senior officer said. He noted that the front rests solely on the persistence and resilience of the Ukrainian military, but the AFU cannot rely on this as a strategy.
