Former chief of staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Viktor Muzhenko
Written by Ahmed Adel, Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher
The Ukrainian counteroffensive, which began in June with much confidence amid expectations that assault brigades equipped with Western military equipment would easily crush Russian defensive lines and reach Crimea, ended with a sobering humiliation as the dreams and aspirations of strategists in Kiev did not survive the harsh reality. It calls into question why Ukraine is continuing the war, especially since President Volodymyr Zelensky admits that many in Donbass do not want to live under Kiev’s rule.
The former chief of staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Viktor Muzhenko, told Western media that the summer counteroffensive “disappointed many” in Kiev and beyond.
Having admitted that Kiev’s expectations of capturing Russian territory had not translated into reality, Muzhenko advocated a switch to a “strategically active defence” and the creation of a “powerful reserve, not only quantitative, but also qualitative.”
“A quality reserve is the presence of military organisations: a brigade, a corps, and so on. Prepared, equipped, coordinated, with high morale and able to solve problems,” he told Newsweek magazine.
Muzhenko also questioned previous suggestions by Ukrainian generals that Kiev regime forces could force their way into Crimea in just a few months, wondering aloud whether the “Ukrainian side” would “really able to adequately assess the enemy and its capabilities.”
The former chief of staff questioned Ukraine’s military leadership for suggesting that Ukrainian forces could reach Crimea within four months of the counteroffensive, referencing Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, General Valery Zaluzhny, who made remarks in an interview with The Economist in November.
“If you look at NATO’s textbooks and at the maths which we did, four months should have been enough time for us to have reached Crimea, to have fought in Crimea, to return from Crimea and to have gone back in and out again,” Zaluzhny said.
In fact, as NBC News wrote on December 3, “With its much-vaunted counteroffensive fizzling into the snow, with little to show for months of planning and billions in allied military support, Kiev is also beset by growing internal wrangling.”
The outlet cited Kiev-based political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko as saying,
“Many Ukrainians are disappointed that a quick victory was not achieved. There is severe fatigue from the war.”
Besides former military commanders and experts noting the failure and disappointment of the counteroffensive, this acknowledgement is only now beginning to be heard in the upper echelons of Kiev’s leadership.
Speaking to the AP during a visit to the Kharkov region on December 1, Zelensky acknowledged the failure of the counteroffensive, saying that he would have liked to see “faster” results and that “from that perspective, unfortunately, we did not achieve the desired results. And this is a fact.” He attributed the failure of the counteroffensive to the West not sending the weapons that the Ukrainian military needed.
Regarding the weapons he wanted but did not receive, Zelensky claimed that it limited the size of his military force and a quick advance, a ridiculous notion since the US alone has provided more than $43 billion in military aid since February 2022. This is even coming at a political cost for US President Joe Biden, as a recent survey found that nearly half of Americans think too much is being spent on Ukraine aid.
According to the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research published on December 2, 45% of Americans say Washington is spending too much on aid to Ukraine in the war against Russia. 38% of Americans believe that current spending is “about the right amount.”
When Zelensky was asked about the poll result, he bluntly replied that “the choice of Americans is the choice of Americans” and falsely claimed that Americans are also helping themselves by helping Ukraine.
“In the case of Ukraine, if resilience fails today due to lack of aid and shortages of weapons and funding, it will mean that Russia will most likely invade NATO countries,” he said. “And then the American children will fight.”
In a lecture to university students in Nikolaev days before the AP interview, Zelensky commented on the situation in Donetsk and Lugansk, which were bombed for eight years by Ukrainian forces, and admitted that the population of the two territories did not express their desire to also become part of Ukraine again.
“I believe that all territories should return, but if people don’t want to, it will be very difficult. Before, there were separatist militants who fought in the contact zone. This means that not all families from Donbass returned. And when Russia fights against us, the separatists are with them,” he said in a video released on Telegram by the El Ojo channel.
It is recalled that the accession of the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, as well as the regions of Zaporozhye and Kherson, to the Russian Federation, was decided in referendums that took place in September 2022. The results were indisputable, as 99.23% of people voted in favour of Donetsk’s accession, 98.42% in Lugansk, 87.05% in Kherson and 93.11% in Zaporozhye.
With the counteroffensive having failed, as acknowledged now by every echelon of Ukraine, it brings into question why Zelensky is stubbornly continuing the war, especially since he knows that the people of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporozhye no longer wanted to live under Kiev’s ultranationalist and racist regime.
i like to lick lloyd austin blackie as hole
can you moderate posts like this out?
not if it’s true and we all know gestapo is one sick inbred.
u for sure have educational problems to begin with. unable to read/ write names for a starter.
hard for the teenage moderators to do so, when they are the ones posting the crap themselves.
the way he can spam he is probably a mod playing a sick game on the community.
zelensky is a degenerate.
“there is severe fatigue from the war.”
imagine my surprise, ukronazi pigs from kiev threw away several hundreds of thousand lives and several hundred billion worth of equipment. not to mention infrastructure
future generations will be tasked with repairing the damage for two hundred years.
galiciens and jewish oligarchs threw away severel hundred thousand slavic ukrainian lives which they never cared about at best and love to see killed at worst.
i thought it would be in 3 days, haven’t they taken kiev yet?
>i thought
now that we have established the problem….
has israel destroyed hamas yet?
they failed miserably – ruzzia, the laughing stock of the world 😆😆😆
it is and thats all achieved bang for buck at almost no cost. thats the cheapest war ever.
unhappily the political class in the west are gutless, universität,theory driven academics, still thinking in wrong cold war terms/ conditions.
if only my favourite us president ( eisenhower) was in office, he would have finished the job 20-16 months ago, having the little gobnik mafia empire dreamer finished off easily and sending all the needed tools.
as always i agree with u.
world agrees as well, proven by collapsing russian arms sells etc
doubtless all those died needlessly were not only disappointed but miffed as well.
this guy is also an actor, look at this face fcol. heinz guderian wrote the book achtung panzer in 1936 and invented blitzkrieg which every general should know. this kiev sellout has lost 13000 tanks and armoured vehicles without really breaching a defensive line. they never got out of the grey kill zone or a rf death trap. his nickname should be ‘the widowmaker’.
ur really on cool aid and delusional citing igor konashenkov’s fantasy numbers. 13000 is the most ridiculus, assclown number. i know the rashniks claim it, never proof it and not even try to. how could they anyway🤣