We Didn’t Have Enough Men or Equipment and This Gave Russia Time to Dig in, Says Zelensky

Breitbart /USA

BY Oliver JJ Lane

  The world wondered why the long-discussed Ukrainian Spring offensive didn’t arrive until Summer, and now we know why, as Ukrainian President Zelensky says he simply didn’t have the men or the equipment to launch it any earlier.

The Ukrainian counteroffensive didn’t start when expected because “frankly, we didn’t have enough munitions, armaments, not enough brigades properly trained in these weapons” to do so, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the Aspen Security Forum on Friday.

This delay gave Russian forces more time to dig in, he said, which further slowed progress once things actually started. He said it “provided Russia with time to mine all of our land and provide several lines of defence. They had more than they needed, so they built more of those lines and really they have a lot of mines in our fields. Because of this we had a slower rate of our counteroffensive actions.”

While Zelensky showed some restraint in not pointing a finger of accusation on why the Ukrainian armed forces didn’t have as much equipment as it would like for the counteroffensive, members of his government have been less shy on that matter in the recent past, including a top General who said the situation “pisses me off”. General Zaluzhny blamed the slow pace of the counteroffensive progress on a lack of military equipment donated by the West.

Zelensky also retrod past comments, where he previously defended the speed of progress and said he would not speed things up to please foreign observers, that it was best to persecute the war at the speed his own military intelligence called for, and said he would not “literally throw people under tanks”.