The Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrsky has questions about the quality of the third line of fortifications, which are building by Regional Military Administrations (RMAs).
He said this at a meeting with journalists on June 21, but did not specify which areas he was talking about.
"On the front line, soldiers dig in and equip their positions with sapper shovels virtually on their own. The 1st line is prepared by the troops directly during the fighting. The 2nd line is prepared, as a rule, by the engineering units of the Armed Forces and the State Special Transport Service together with civilian organizations. And the 3rd line, the capital one, is built by regional military administrations. There are many questions, whether it is of high quality or not," he noted.
At the same time, Syrsky noted that with the development of technology, approaches to the construction of fortifications are also changing. Thus, at the beginning of the full-scale Russian aggression, huge strongholds and battalion defense areas were built.
"As the experience of Bakhmut has shown, in this form they have lost their relevance. The armed forces moved to company strongholds, then to platoon strongholds. Now we see that the most effective position is a maximum of one detachment. And these are mainly groups of trenches, even so-called foxholes, which make it impossible for the enemy to use strike drones. After all, now a drone, especially on fiber optics, can penetrate any gap," he noted.
Therefore, according to Syrsky, all shelters and fortifications must have anti-drone protection, and communication corridors must be closed to protect soldiers and pilots of unmanned systems from being hit.
"I want to emphasize that any fortification is truly effective only when it is occupied by our troops. If there are no servicemen in the fortification or their number is insufficient — for example, when a normal stronghold is built, but two or three soldiers remain in it — of course, this fortification does not play its role," he noted.
For more news and in-depth stories from Ukraine, please follow us on X.