Zaluzhny criticized the Kursk operation and evaluated why the counter -offensive failed in 2023

Former Commander -in -Chief of the Armed Forces, and now the Ambassador of Ukraine to Britain Valery Zaluzhny said that the Ukrainian offensive in 2023 had failed due to lack of forces, and Kursk operation did not bring prompt success to the Ukrainian army.

Source: The Zaluzhny article published in the Mirror of the Week

Details: The Text of Zaluzhny in general concerns the role of innovations in the strategic planning of hostilities. At the same time, he evaluated some events of the past, including the Ukrainian counter -offensive in 2023, when he was still in the post of commander -in -chief. According to him, the stupor of that counter -offensive was caused by a factor “insufficiency of the forces and means of groups that performed offensive“.

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Direct Language: “To break such a front of the enemy, it was necessary to have a decisive advantage in the forces and means on the breakthrough area, as well as to have mobile reserves that were able to quickly enter into the formed breakthrough and enter the operational space before the enemy reserves for the counter -offset or a new line of defense will be organized. Unfortunately, for objective and subjective reasons, we could no longer.

“The deep rethinking of the results of the summer offensive (in 2023-ed.) Was caused not only by the reaction to the attempt to transform such a difficult element of war into a reality show, where at first our plans were strangely reached by Russia, and then its course was commented in the online mode of various kinds and prophets. The failure of these plans I still hurt. However, the main thing – it was absolutely necessary to take lessons and immediately change the strategy. A strategy that would give you the opportunity to survive in a completely new war. ”

Details: Zaluzhny writes that since 2022 the fighting on the front began to gain positional.

Direct Language: “Today, analyzing those days and studying my own materials, I argue again and again that in fact the armed forces of both Russia and Ukraine have really entered a positional deadlock, similar to the fact that occurred in the First World War. In fact, since the fall of 2022, the fighting was gradually in the Donetsk direction.”

Details: At the same time, according to Zaluzhny, the Russians manage to move through the tactics of extrusion, in which in particular such maneuvers are hardly possible as the environment. Separately, Zaluzhny gives an example of Ukrainian operation in the Kursk region of the Russian Federation as an unsuccessful attempt to strike a sudden blow to the enemy.

Direct Language: “Of course, such actions (Kursk operation – ed.) If they are justified primarily by human losses, with limited purposes, it is possible. However, practice has shown that in the end an isolated tactical breakthrough on the narrow area of ​​the front does not bring the necessary success of the attacking side. The tactical breakthrough into operational success, but subsequently made tactical advancement – also without prompt success.

Summarizing the above, I repeat that at the heart of a positional deadlock is not only the impossibility of breakage of defense borders, The most important thing is the inability to complete operational tasks, including accessing the operational space“.

Prehistory:

• In 2024, President Volodymyr Zelensky stated that the plans of Ukrainian counter -offensive actions in the fall of 2023 “were on the Kremlin table before the counter -offensive actions began.”