Ukraine must innovate as war moves to static, attritional phase, says army chief

Ukraine’s war with Russia is moving towards a new stage of static and attritional fighting, a phase that could allow Moscow to rebuild its military power, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief has said.

In a 9-page long article for The Economist published on Wednesday (1 November), General Valery Zaluzhnyi said his army needed key new military capabilities and technological innovation to break out of the new phase of the war, now in its 21st month.

Using stark language, he described risks of prolonged, attritional fighting: “This will benefit Russia, allowing it to rebuild its military power, eventually threatening Ukraine’s armed forces and the state itself.”

“Compared to Ukraine, the russian federation has almost three times more mobilization human resources […] The transition of the war to a positional form leads to its prolongation and carries significant risks for both the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the state as a whole. In addition, it is beneficial to the enemy, who is trying in every possible way to reconstitute and increase its military power”, Zaluzhnyi writes.

Throughout his article, he never wrote “Russia” with a capital letter.

His article comes almost five months into a major Ukrainian counteroffensive that has not made a serious breakthrough against heavily mined Russian defensive lines. Fighting is expected to slow as the weather worsens.

Russian troops have gone on the offensive in parts of the east and Kyiv fears Moscow plans to unleash a campaign of air strikes to cripple the power grid, plunging millions into darkness in the depths of winter.

“Just like in the First World War we have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate,” Zaluzhnyi was quoted as saying in an interview published alongside his article.

The article singled out Russia’s air power advantage as a factor that made advancing harder and called for Kyiv to conduct massive drone strikes to overload Russia’s air defences.

“Basic weapons, such as missiles and shells, remain essential. But Ukraine’s armed forces need key military capabilities and technologies to break out of this kind of war. The most important one is air power,” he wrote.

He said Ukraine must get better at destroying Russian artillery and devise better mine-breaching technology, saying Western supplies have proven insufficient faced with Russian minefields that stretched back 20 km in some areas.

He called it a priority for Ukraine to build up its reserve forces despite noting it had limited capacity to train them inside the country and highlighting gaps in legislation that allowed people to evade service.

“We are trying to fix these problems. We are introducing a unified register of draftees, and we must expand the category of citizens who can be called up for training or mobilisation,” he wrote.

“We are also introducing a ‘combat internship’, which involves placing newly mobilised and trained personnel in experienced front-line units to prepare them,” he said.

Russian drone hits oil refinery

A Russian drone attack set ablaze the Kremenchuk oil refinery in central Ukraine and knocked out power supply in three villages, while battlefield reports said Ukrainian forces had repelled Russian attacks in frontline sectors in the east and northeast.

The fire at the Kremenchuk refinery, which Moscow has targeted many times and the Kyiv government says is not operational, was quickly put out, said Filip Pronin, head of Poltava region’s military administration. The extent of the damage was not clear.

Ukraine’s Air Force said air defences shot down 18 of 20 drones and a missile fired by Russia overnight before they reached their targets in an attack that sought to strike military and critical infrastructure.

“The focus of the attack was Poltava region, it was attacked in several waves,” Air Force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat told national television.

The General Staff of the Ukrainian armed forces said troops had repelled eight Russian attacks near Kupiansk in the northeast, five near the shattered eastern town of Bakhmut, held by Russian forces, and five further south near Avdiivka, a focal point of Russian assaults since mid-October.

A video posted by the Ukrainian military showed its forces destroying a Russian flamethrower system near Avdiivka, an attack it said could be observed for dozens of kilometres.

Military analyst Oleksandr Kovalenko, in an article posted online, said some 40,000 Russian troops were now massed outside Avdiivka, widely viewed as a symbol of Ukrainian resistance.

“Despite its losses, the Russian command still intends to capture Avdiivka, which is now a political, rather than a tactical, aim,” Kovalenko wrote.

Natalia Khomeniuk, a military spokesperson in the south, said Russian forces had dropped 20 aerial bombs in Kherson region from positions they now hold on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River after abandoning the region’s main town last year. Russian forces shell the river’s western bank almost daily.

In Poltava region, three villages lost electricity after power lines and an unnamed infrastructure facility were damaged, the Energy Ministry said on Telegram.

Railway power lines were damaged by falling debris in central Kirovohrad region, but the damage was quickly repaired, Governor Andriy Raikovych said.

The Ukrainian military said Russia carried out another missile attack on Poltava region and southern Odesa region later on Wednesday, and two of the missiles in Odesa region were downed.

Reuters could not independently verify the reports. Russia made no immediate comment on the Ukrainian reports.

The Russian Defence Ministry’s accounts said its forces had hit Ukrainian troops and equipment in villages south of Bakhmut.

(With additional reporting by Georgi Gotev)

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