JRL NEWSWATCH: “Ukraine’s commander-in-chief on the breakthrough he needs to beat Russia” – The Economist
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“General Valery Zaluzhny admits the war is at a stalemate”
“Five months into its counter-offensive, Ukraine has managed to advance … just 17 kilometres. Russia fought for ten months around Bakhmut in the east ‘to take a town six by six kilometres.’ … Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, General Valery Zaluzhny, [said] … ‘Just like in the first world war we have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate,’ he says. The general concludes that it would take a massive technological leap to break the deadlock. … The course of the counter-offensive has undermined Western hopes that Ukraine could use it to demonstrate that the war is unwinnable, forcing … Putin, to negotiate. It has also undercut General Zaluzhny’s assumption that he could stop Russia by bleeding its troops. ‘That was my mistake. Russia has lost at least 150,000 dead. In any other country such casualties would have stopped the war.’ But not in Russia, where life is cheap and where [] Putin’s reference points are the first and second world wars, in which Russia lost tens of millions. …”