Kiev did not have the manpower to push back the Russians, Petr Pavel has said
Ukraine’s much-hyped 2023 counteroffensive against the Russian troops was doomed from the start, Czech President Petr Pavel has said.
Pavel, the Czech Republic’s ex-top military commander, made his comments in an interview with European Pravda published on Saturday. He warned that, given the diminishing foreign aid and acute personnel shortages, Ukraine will not be able to win back any territory “without huge losses.”
“That is why my quite realistic assessment was that this conflict, without changing the [existing] parameters, will most probably end up with some compromise. And now we are heading to such a compromise,” he said.
Pavel went on to state that Kiev’s much-hyped 2023 counteroffensive was prone to failure.
“Even before Ukraine started its big counteroffensive two years ago, it was not well equipped to really succeed,” Pavel said. “For a successful offensive, the military theory says that you need a ratio of at least two – or preferably five – to one.”
At that time, the force ratio between Ukraine and Russia was still in favor of Russia. So it was quite obvious that the counteroffensive will not be as successful in liberating all of the territories.
The former general argued that Kiev and its Western backers need to come to terms with the prospect that “part of the territory of Ukraine is and will for some time be temporarily occupied by Russia.” He stressed, however, that the EU should not recognize Crimea or the Donbass regions as Russian territory.
According to Pavel, the EU must continue to support Ukraine to an extent that it would not lose more land and to “create conditions for a ceasefire and subsequent peace.”
In early June 2023, Ukraine launched its ill-fated push using newly formed brigades and Western-trained crews operating Challenger 2 and Leopard 2 tanks. The troops attacked the Russians on multiple sections of the front line but failed to penetrate through heavy fortifications and thick minefields, losing many men and pieces of Western-supplied armor. The Ukrainian army only managed to capture several small villages, all of which have since been recaptured by the Russians.
