Ukraine said on Wednesday that the counter-offensive it launched to recover the territories occupied by Russia is expected to be “long and difficult” and insisted on the need to obtain new Western tanks and F-16 fighters.
The operation launched by kyiv at the beginning of June to reconquer the territories occupied by Moscow in the south and east of the territory made little progress. “Without any doubt, this operation will be quite difficult, long and will take a long time,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mikhailo Podoliak told AFP.
According to him, the main brake on the advance of the Ukrainian forces is “the depth of the minefields” laid for months by the Russian army and which measure from “four to sixteen kilometers”. Ukrainian troops also suffer from “arms supply problems”, the adviser admitted, despite the efforts made by kyiv’s allies. “The (Western) military and industrial complexes were not prepared for this kind of war,” Podoliak opined.
Ukrainian President’s adviser Volodymyr Zelensky also stated that Ukraine needs “200 to 300 additional armored vehicles, mostly tanks”, “60 to 80 F-16s” and “5 to 10 additional air defense systems”which are American Patriot or its French equivalent SAMP/T.
“We need shells,” Podoliak stressed, detailing that the Ukrainian forces use between “4,500 and 6,000 high-caliber shells a day.”