The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, believes that delays in supplying Ukraine with weapons by its allies, although disappointing, are not the main reason for its precarious situation. The primary cause is that this war cannot be won with the weaponry of the past generation and outdated methods, he stated in an interview with The Economist. Otherwise, Ukraine will simply run out of soldiers.
“These [methods] will inevitably lead to delays and, consequently, to defeat… We need to harness the power embedded in new technologies,” he emphasized.
Regarding the sufficiency of Western-supplied weaponry to support Ukraine but not enough to secure victory, General Zaluzhnyi does not complain: “They are not obliged to give us anything, and we are grateful for what we have. I am just stating the facts”.
“The decisive factor in who will win will be technologies,” he asserts. The publication writes that Zaluzhnyi recently spoke with the former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, became “inspired” by this and “emphasized the crucial role of drones and electronic warfare (EW).”
However, according to the general’s assessment, there are no indications of an imminent revolutionary breakthrough in UAVs or EW, plus technology has its limitations.
Even during World War I, the appearance of tanks in 1917 was insufficient to break the battlefield deadlock. It required a collection of technologies and over ten years of tactical innovation to execute the German blitzkrieg in May 1940, the publication reminds.
“The simple fact is that we see everything the enemy does, and they see everything we do. To break this deadlock, we need something new, such as gunpowder invented by the Chinese and which we still use to kill each other,” the general said.
Currently, Ukraine is entangled in a prolonged war in which Russia has the upper hand, Zaluzhnyi notes, but Ukraine has no other choice but to maintain the initiative by continuing its advance, even if it moves only a few meters per day.
As of now, General Zaluzhnyi says there are “enough” soldiers in Ukraine, but the longer the war persists, the more challenging it will become for the defenders, and “we need to search for this solution, we need to find this gunpowder, swiftly master it, and utilize it for the fastest victory.”
“Otherwise, sooner or later, we’ll find that we simply don’t have enough people to fight,” the commander warned.