Former Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and current Ambassador of Ukraine to Britain Valeriy Zaluzhny said that the Ukrainian counteroffensive of 2023, the plan for which he developed with the support of NATO partners, failed because President Volodymyr Zelensky and other officials did not allocate the necessary resources.
He said this in an interview with the Associated Press.
The media writes that the initial plan involved concentrating a sufficient number of forces into a "single fist" to liberate the partially occupied Zaporizhzhia region, where a strategically important nuclear power plant is located.
The next step was to advance troops south to the Azov Sea. This would cut off the land corridor that the Russian army was using to resupply Crimea. According to Zaluzhny, success required a significant, concentrated buildup of forces and tactical surprise.
Instead, according to the former commander-in-chief, the forces were dispersed along a wide front line, and this weakened their strike potential.
Two Western defense officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed to the AP that the operation had indeed deviated from the original plan.
- Zaluzhny was the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine from 2021 to 2024. In February 2024, he was dismissed from his post, and Oleksandr Syrsky was appointed the new Commander-in-Chief.
- In March of the same year, President Volodymyr Zelensky approved the candidacy of Valeriy Zaluzhny for the position of Ukraineʼs Ambassador to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. He officially began his duties as ambassador on July 11.
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