Ukraine needs leap in military technology to beat Russia, top general says

Ukraine’s top general has said it needs more advanced technology to break a stalemate in the war with Russia, as Moscow claimed Kyiv’s military had no chance of victory and accused it of risking disaster by launching drones near Europe’s biggest nuclear power station.

Valery Zaluzhnyi, commander of Ukraine’s armed forces, said his country’s struggle with Moscow’s invasion force had entered a phase of static and attritional “positional warfare”, which would allow Russia to hold territory seized during 20 months of all-out war while using its vast resources to replenish its reserves of troops and military hardware.

“This will benefit Russia, allowing it to rebuild its military power, eventually threatening Ukraine’s armed forces and the state itself,” he wrote in the Economist. “Just like in the first World War we have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate… Just like then, the level of our technological development today has put both us and our enemies in a stupor.”

Ukraine needs modern fighter jets, better drones and electronic warfare systems, more advanced ways of clearing minefields and other technological upgrades – as well as a constant supply of “basic weapons” such as ammunition and missiles – to overcome Russia’s much larger forces and military-industrial base, he said.

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Without such a step change, Gen Zaluzhnyi warned, “there will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough”.

Ukraine must also expand its own troop reserves, he added, while realising that the Kremlin would not be deterred by huge losses in its own army: “That was my mistake. Russia has lost at least 150,000 dead. In any other country such casualties would have stopped the war.”

Neither Ukraine nor Russia releases credible figures for their own losses in a war that western states say has killed or injured hundreds of thousands of soldiers and displaced millions of Ukrainian civilians.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed Gen Zaluzhnyi’s assessment of what Moscow calls a “special military operation” to eliminate supposed threats to Russia emanating from Ukraine and its western allies.

“No, it has not reached a stalemate. Russia is consistently carrying out the special military operation. All the set goals should be fulfilled,” he said.

“The Kyiv regime should have realised long ago that it is absurd to even talk about any prospects of … victory on the battlefield. And the sooner the Kyiv regime itself realises this, the sooner some prospects will open up.”

Russia’s defence ministry claimed to have shot down nine Ukrainian drones close to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest such facility in Europe, which Moscow’s military has controlled since shortly after its full invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Ukraine says the only danger to the plant comes from Russia’s occupation of the six-reactor complex. Both countries have accused each other of launching drone attacks close to other’s nuclear power stations in recent weeks.

Heavy fighting continued in several parts of eastern and southeastern Ukraine, and Kyiv said its military had repelled a Russian attack on the town of Vuhledar in the partly occupied Donetsk region.

(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2023