Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an interview with the US channel CBS News that Ukraine is not ready to repel another major Russian offensive, which is expected in late May or June. Komersant ukrainskyi asked Volodymyr Fesenko, political scientist and director of the Penta Centre for Political Studies, what Zelenskyy’s statement means and when to expect the Russian offensive.
In an interview with CBS News, Zelenskyy said that the most dangerous situation is in eastern Ukraine, but that the Defence Forces have stabilised it “as much as possible” given the shortage of weapons.
“We are starting to prepare brigades for important actions. We have stabilised the situation. It is better than it was two or three months ago. We share information with our partners and say that Russia will be preparing counter-offensive actions and it could be the end of May or June,”
– Zelenskyy said.
The President noted that Ukraine needs help to prepare for Russia’s offensive.
“We need not only to prepare, we need not only to stabilise the situation, because our partners are sometimes really happy that we have stabilised the situation, they hold their fists for us and say: “Okay, you have the power”. No, I’m saying that we need help now to prepare the appropriate brigades that will have to fight for our land, especially at the moment of counter-offensive actions that Russia wants to launch,”
– he said.
According to Zelenskyy, the question now is what Ukraine needs to avoid losing territory now.
“If we are not talking about a counter-offensive, but about stabilisation, which I said to keep it, then No. 1 is air defence and artillery. This is what we need,”
– he said.
According to the President, it is necessary to take into account not only the number of shells received from partners, but also their characteristics.
“In Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Lysychansk, Soledar, etc., it is very difficult to fight the enemy whose artillery shell can fire for 20+ kilometres, while yours hits up to 20 km. In other words, to defend, you need to have parity, and to attack, you need to have more power. Today we are fighting for parity on the diplomatic front,”
– Zelenskyy said.
Volodymyr Fesenko told Kommersant Ukrainsky that one should not take a publication in any Western publication as the truth in the last resort.
“There are a lot of lies, distortions and a damaged phone. It’s like with Scholz, who seems to be talking about peace talks. If you read it, he says that we are talking about consultations related to the Global Peace Summit, meetings of political advisers, preparations for this particular peace summit, which will not be attended by Russia,”
– he said.
The political analyst explained why such publications appear.
“Each publication has its own purpose. The CBS article, for example, I think that Zelenskyy was actually saying that he meant a meeting with Biden. This is a warning to the Ukrainian side. As for the offensive: a large-scale and large-scale Russian offensive can only take place in the summer if there is a massive mobilisation in Russia in the next month. Unfortunately, there is such a risk,”
– Fesenko believes.
According to him, if mass mobilisation is carried out in April, then there is a risk that in the summer there may be an attempt to launch a major offensive at least on Kharkiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia. And if there is a very large mobilisation, there may be an attack on Kyiv.
“And of course, with such an offensive… let’s just say that we will not be able to stop it on our own. We need the support of our partners, and Zelensky said so. And the way it is presented… is perceived ambiguously. In many Western publications, the situation is deliberately, overly dramatised. The goal is simply to encourage Western elites to increase their assistance to Ukraine. But the very dramatisation, especially in Ukraine, creates the impression that everything is lost, that we are ready to be betrayed. We are not,”
– said the political scientist.
He emphasised that the goal is to give a “magic pendulum” to the US congressmen in one place so that they finally decide to support Ukraine
Fesenko stressed that if Russia goes for mass mobilisation, we will have no choice but to carry out the same mobilisation on the territory of Ukraine.
“And we will see it. They can mobilise, the question is what kind of mobilisation? 300 or 400 thousand, or a million? This is a risk, and in terms of increasing internal tension, a risk to imbalance the situation with labour resources within Russia. There is a risk. If Russia goes for mass mobilisation, we will have no choice but to carry out the same mobilisation on the territory of Ukraine, whether someone likes it or not,”
– the political scientist concluded.