Zelensky shuts down his own commander’s war comments

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky has denied the war with Russia has reached a stalemate in a response to comments made by one of his own commanders.

“Time has passed, people are tired, but this is not a stalemate,” Zelensky told reporters during a joint press conference with European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Kyiv on Saturday.

Zelensky said international observers had referred to the situation in 2022 as a stalemate, but that Ukrainian forces managed with several “tricks, tactics [and] military operations” to liberate Kharkiv Oblast as part of a major counteroffensive.

His comments were prompted by an essay about the positional nature of warfare in Ukraine written by the country’s Commander-in-Chief, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said in a November 4 report.

While Zaluzhnyi did not explicitly state the war was in a stalemate in his essay or say that Ukraine would not be successful, he explained the current “positional character” of the war was due to the widespread use of mined areas by Russian and Ukrainian troops as well as the technological and tactical parity on the battlefield.

“Zaluzhnyi’s essay was all about how to restore maneuver to a positional war, not an argument that the war has reached a stalemate,” the ISW said.

He argued that Ukraine needed to develop new approaches, including technological and other changes, to avoid a trench war.

Zaluzhnyi said Russia could return to rapid maneuver warfare under the right circumstances with the materiel it has at its disposal; whereas Ukraine would have to rely on military resources from the West.

Newsweek has contacted Michael Clarke, a professor at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London and the Ministry of Defense for Ukraine for comment via email.

Zelensky’s remarks comes as Ukrainian forces on Saturday continued their offensive operations near Bakhmut and the Zaporizhzhia region in eastern Ukraine.

The Ukrainian General Staff said the country’s forces continued offensive operations in the region, while Russian military bloggers claimed Kyiv’s troops had advanced along the forest line of Klischchiivka, just southwest of Bakhmut, and were gaining a foothold in the area, the ISW said in its report.

Kyiv has also claimed Russian forces suffered high casualties and large equipment losses during their push to capture Avdiivka in the eastern Donetsk Oblast as part of an offensive launched in early October.

Earlier this week, Ukraine claimed Russia had reached a grim milestone of 300,000 personnel losses. Newsweek could not independently verify the figures.

Ukraine’s tally of Russian losses is higher than other estimates, with British defense officials claiming in October that Moscow had lost between 150,000 and 190,000 personnel.