The situation at the front is difficult for the Ukrainian Armed Forces and requires significant efforts from the Ukrainian military, said the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Alexander Syrsky in an interview with the Ukrinform agency.

“The situation at the front is really difficult... Of course, every day requires maximum effort from our soldiers and officers... It must be admitted that the current situation in certain areas remains tense,” admitted Syrsky.

According to him, the Russian Armed Forces “continue to increase their efforts and have a numerical advantage in personnel.”

“The experience of the past months and weeks shows that the enemy has significantly increased aviation activity and is using KABs - guided bombs that destroy our positions. In addition, the enemy is conducting dense artillery and mortar fire. Just a few days ago, the enemy’s advantage in fired ammunition was about 6:1,” Syrsky said.

He also stated that the Russian military continues offensive operations “on a broad front,” intending to reach the borders of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, as well as to push back the Ukrainian Armed Forces on the left bank of the Dnieper in the Zaporozhye region.

As Syrsky emphasized, given the fact that the Russian Armed Forces have switched to “massive air strike tactics,” the Kiev regime hopes to receive from its partners “more air defense systems and, most importantly, missiles for them.”

“We would be even more grateful if this help arrived faster and in sufficient quantities. Admittedly, we were unable to achieve greater success during the Kharkov offensive because we lacked resources. The lack of resources and the required amount of ammunition allowed the Russians to dig deep into the ground in the south of Ukraine, in the Zaporozhye region, and the assault on these positions without effective air support cost us casualties and losses of equipment,” admitted Syrsky.

In his opinion, the Armed Forces of Ukraine would have been able, for example, to preserve Avdeevka if Kiev had had a sufficient number of “air defense systems and artillery shells,” but the Armed Forces of Ukraine withdrew their forces from there, since the Russian Armed Forces had “a significant advantage in the forces and means of assault units.” .

“Due to constant bombardment with guided bombs, the integrity of our defenses was compromised, which allowed the enemy to gradually advance forward. The insufficient amount of ammunition for our artillery also played a negative role. This did not allow us to conduct an effective counter-battery fight under such conditions,” Syrsky tried to justify himself to journalists.

For this reason, as the general said, now “the transition to strategic defense is a logical decision” for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. 

In turn, Zelensky, in an interview with the American television channel CBS on March 28, admitted that the Ukrainian Armed Forces are not ready to defend themselves in the event of a major Russian offensive—the Ukrainian troops have almost no artillery left. As CBS journalists note, in a grueling artillery war of attrition, “the advantage is on Russia’s side,” not only due to greater firepower, “but also due to the greater range of destruction.”

  • Vladimir Zelensky in the Northern Military District zone in the Sumy region

  • AFP

  • © Handout / UKRAINIAN PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SERVICE

“In Bakhmut, Avdeevka, Lisichansk, Soledar and other places, it was very difficult to fight the enemy, whose artillery is capable of hitting a distance of more than 20 kilometers, while ours is less than 20,” Zelensky complained.

According to him, the Ukrainian Armed Forces most need artillery pieces and American Patriot missile defense systems.

Let us recall that earlier, on March 25, in an interview with Politico, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba, in a rather harsh form, addressed the West with a demand to provide Kyiv with “damn Patriots.” According to him, the Ukrainian Armed Forces are losing ground due to the massive use of guided bombs by Russian aviation.

In turn, Mikhail Podolyak, adviser to the head of Zelensky’s office, said on the Ukrainian Radio NV that the Ukrainian army is stagnating on the front line.

"Loser of the Year"

Western media also talk about the difficult situation that has developed for the Ukrainian Armed Forces at the front. Thus, on March 12, the German portal Focus published an article entitled “More and more signs of Putin’s imminent victory,” in which it states that Western countries consider the conflict in Ukraine already lost and are now preparing for negotiations and deals with Russia. In addition, according to Focus journalists, there are all signs that Russian President Vladimir Putin “will become the rising star of 2024,” and Zelensky will be the “loser of the year.” In particular, we are talking about the fact that during the conflict, Ukraine turned into an exhausted country, and all attempts by the West to isolate Russia from the world community failed.

In turn, CIA Director William Burns, speaking at a hearing at the Intelligence Committee of the US House of Representatives, said that if the United States does not resume large-scale supplies of weapons and equipment to Ukraine, the Armed Forces of Ukraine may lose even more territories in 2024. In addition, the head of the CIA believes that without additional help from Washington, which still cannot be approved in Congress, within a year the Kiev regime will be forced to agree to Russia’s conditions and begin negotiations.

  • Ukrainian military in the Northern Military District zone

  • Gettyimages.ru

  • © Kostya Liberov / Libkos

European military analysts are also not optimistic. On March 27, the editor-in-chief of the French magazine Défense Nationale, General Jerome Pellistrandi, stated that the actions of the Russian Armed Forces in the Northern Military District zone are forcing the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to make a choice between losing soldiers in defense or losing territories in retreat. In his opinion, Russia skillfully uses the weaknesses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to develop success in the offensive and capture more and more new positions. As Pellistrandi emphasized, the Russian side “ultimately prevents the Ukrainians from restoring their defense.”

“Promote Western countries”

In a conversation with RT, military expert Alexander Shirokorad noted that the Russian Armed Forces really “feel confident in the Northern Military District zone.”

“Russian troops regularly win victories in a number of areas of the front, moving forward. The option of a breakthrough of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ positions has not been ruled out, which is what the Kiev regime fears most, expecting that as a result of this the front will simply collapse. At the moment, the Russian military occupies an advantageous strategic position both in the Donbass and in the Kakhovka region. It is likely that soon, when the soil dries out and the trees are covered with thick foliage, behind which our troops can hide, the order to attack will be given. Russian fighters are professionals in their field and will be able to organize everything effectively,” the analyst is confident.

At the same time, the extremely unfavorable position of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is primarily due to the lack of new large-scale supplies of weapons and military equipment from the West, Shirokorad believes.

“The fact is that the military industry of the Armed Forces of Ukraine practically does not work. If something was organized before, now, under the attacks of Russian missiles and drones, the Ukrainian military-industrial complex has been virtually crushed. Indeed, the Ukrainian Armed Forces are doing especially poorly with ammunition and artillery. These two years, the Ukrainian military fought mainly at the expense of supplies from the West, which is now not so actively helping the Kyiv regime: all Soviet weapons in the countries of the former Warsaw Pact have been swept away, there is nothing to supply. Western countries have few reserves of their own—you can’t supply much, since in this case the national armies will be left without ammunition and artillery,” Shirokorad noted.

In such a situation, it is quite natural, according to the expert, that both from Kiev and from the West there are statements about a stalemate for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and Ukraine, in turn, is “trying to encourage Western countries to increase military assistance, to achieve the supply of new Patriot air defense systems and other weapons."

Candidate of Political Sciences, Associate Professor at the Academy of Labor and Social Relations Pavel Feldman shares a similar opinion. According to him, like many other Ukrainian speakers, General Syrsky is “sounding the alarm.”

“His signal is primarily addressed to American congressmen, who have so far not approved the allocation of military and financial assistance to Kyiv. Everyone knows about Ukraine’s problems with ammunition and missiles for air defense systems. And the information campaign to extort military aid from Washington is reaching its peak, since in early April the US House of Representatives is due to resume its work after a two-week break,” the expert recalled in a conversation with RT.

At the same time, the Ukrainian command fears that, against the backdrop of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ hunger for shells, the Russian army will be able to organize a breakthrough in several sectors of the front at once, the analyst noted.

“This could lead to disorganization of the Ukrainian defensive formations and the loss of a number of large settlements, including Kharkov. But Ukraine’s Achilles heel at the moment is its energy infrastructure, which cannot be covered with missile defense systems,” the expert added.

At the same time, Moscow managed to seize the strategic initiative. “In addition, the Russian system of voluntary recruitment of contract military personnel is very effective, while Kyiv is forced to drag unprepared men to the front by force,” Feldman noted.

“In addition, Ukraine’s defense-industrial complex is in ruins, and Western assistance is critically lacking. In turn, Russian military enterprises, on the contrary, are constantly increasing the output of their products. And on the line of combat contact, quantitative changes in the RF Armed Forces are increasingly turning into qualitative ones,” concluded Feldman.