Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said Ukraine needs more time before it can launch its much-anticipated counter-offensive against Russia, adding that some armoured vehicles promised by the west have yet to arrive.
The president said newly formed brigades were ready to attack. “We can go forward and be successful. But we’d lose a lot of people. I think that’s unacceptable. So we need to wait. We still need a bit more time.”
Zelenskiy’s comments in an interview with several media outlets including the BBC are the clearest sign yet that a major Ukrainian military push is unlikely to take place in the next few weeks.
Ukrainian commanders have said Kyiv still lacks vital weapons needed for a large-scale campaign to succeed. They include artillery systems with a range of 190 miles (300km), capable of hitting Russian ammunition stores and command centres.
They are increasingly concerned that if the counter-offensive makes only modest territorial gains, Ukraine’s western partners will put pressure on Kyiv to accept an unfavourable peace deal with Moscow.
Zelenskiy said Ukraine was not prepared to cede any land for “peace”. He stressed: “Everyone will have an idea. They can’t pressure Ukraine into surrendering territories. Why should any country of the world give [Vladimir] Putin its territory?”
He also dismissed Russian claims that Ukrainian operatives carried out a drone attack on the Kremlin last week. He described the incident as “very, very artificial” and said it had failed to convince the Russian public and “their own propagandists”.
After a retreat by Russian forces near the eastern city of Bakhmut, Zelenskiy said Moscow was beginning to experience armament shortages on the battlefield. He noted: “They still have a lot in their warehouses, but we already see that they’ve reduced shelling per day in some areas.”
On Thursday, Putin’s press spokesperson conceded that Russia’s months-long attempt to seize Bakhmut had not yet worked. “The special military operation continues. This is a very difficult operation, and, of course, certain goals have been achieved in a year,” Dmitry Peskov said.
Speaking to a Bosnian Serb TV channel, Peskov added: “We manage to beat up the Ukrainian military machine quite a bit. This work will continue.” Peskov said he had no doubt that Bakhmut “will be captured and will be kept under control”.
His comments follow the setback on Tuesday suffered by Russia’s 72nd independent motorised brigade. Col Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, who heads Ukraine’s ground forces, said Russian units in some parts of Bakhmut had abandoned their positions, running away from a counterattack. Ukraine’s army was able to advance by up to 2km on the city’s south-western outskirts, he said.
“It was the competent conduct of the defensive operation that exhausted the trained forces of the Wagner private military contractor and forced them to be replaced in certain directions by less well-prepared units of the Russian regular troops, which were defeated and retreated,” Syrskyi said.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner group, appeared to corroborate the Ukrainian claim in a characteristic video outburst. He said Wagner, which has led the Russian campaign to seize Bakhmut, had sustained huge casualties to take ground, which others then gave up. This week’s retreat was a fiasco, he suggested.
“Our army is fleeing. The 72nd brigade pissed away 3 sq km this morning, where I had lost around 500 men,” Prigozhin said, complaining his troops were receiving only 10% of the shells they needed.
In a statement later on social media, Prigozhin claimed Wagner forces had advanced 170 metres. Ukrainian troops, he said, were confined to an area of 2.25 sq km and were coming under pressure in western districts dotted with high-rise flats.
Prigozhin on Thursday said that Ukrainian operations were proving to be “unfortunately, partially successful”, in an audio message posted on his Telegram channel.
In a later message, Prigozhin said that the situation around Bakhmut flanks was “developing according to the worst of the predicted scenarios.”
He blamed regular the regular Russian army for “abandoning hundreds of meters … practically without a fight.”
Meanwhile, video footage has emerged on Telegram of a Russian soldier surrendering near Bakhmut after a Ukrainian aerial unit dropped him a note from the sky which read: “Follow the drone!”
The soldier – standing in an exposed trench – spots the drone above him. Sensing it is about to release a grenade, he lays down his weapon and frantically signals that he does not want to be attacked.
The drone unit from Ukraine’s 92nd separate mechanised brigade writes him a message in Russian, telling him to surrender. It drops the paper next to the soldier’s trench. He retrieves it, and indicates that if he gives up his own side will kill him.
A few seconds later he sets off anyway – ducking and running through a network of defensive positions. His fellow Russian servicemen open fire. Remarkably, he survives, reaches Ukrainian lines and is taken prisoner. The extraordinary episode happened on 9 May.
Yurii Fedorenko, the commander of the 92nd mechanised brigade’s drone company, said Russian troops tried to shoot their “own man” in the back. “We accompanied him all the way to Ukrainian positions. Captivity in Ukraine gives you more chances to survive than service in the Russian army,” he said.
The recent territorial gains by Ukraine come amid expectations that Kyiv’s counter-offensive will take place against Russian positions in the occupied south and east of the country. Nine newly formed brigades equipped with western tanks and armoured vehicles have been preparing.
Last autumn, Ukraine’s armed forces recaptured the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson and areas on the right bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson region, as well as most of Kharkiv region in the north-east, including the cities of Izium and Lyman. Since then, however, Kyiv has made few gains.
In Brussels, Nato’s top military official said the war would increasingly be a battle between large numbers of poorly trained Russian troops with outdated equipment and a smaller Ukrainian force with better western weapons and training. Adm Rob Bauer, a Dutch officer who is chair of Nato’s military committee, said Russia was deploying T-54 tanks – an old model designed in the years after the second world war.
