At the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Russia, the Commander-in-Chief of Ukrainian Armed Forces Valerii Zaluzhny "had two strategic goals": to protect Kyiv and "let the enemyʼs bleed."
He told “Time” magazine about this for the article "General Valerii Zaluzhny and the Ukrainian path of war."
According to him, the Armed Forces of Ukraine prioritized the defense of the capital, because the fall of Kyiv would be a turning point in the war.
"In all other directions, we needed to shed their blood, even if in some places we had to lose territory." That is, to allow the Russians to advance, and then to destroy their columns at the front and supply lines in the rear," stated Zaluzhny about the second goal.
Already on the sixth day of the war, the commander-in-chief realized that this strategy made sense, because the Russians had not been able to capture the airports around Kyiv and had advanced deep enough to begin stretching the supply lines, which left them unprotected.