Slowed down by the lack of weapons
Selenskyj wanted to start a counter-offensive “much earlier”.
7/6/2023 4:01 am
Western observers had been waiting for the start of the Ukrainian counter-offensive for weeks, and it has been underway since early June. President Selenskyj says in an interview that he would have preferred to give his troops the go sooner.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would have preferred a “much earlier” start of the counteroffensive to liberate the Russian-held areas in his country. He told the US and European partners “that we would like to start our counter-offensive earlier and that we need all the weapons and material for it. Why? Simply because it will be slower if we start later,” Zelensky said CNN in an interviewwhich the US broadcaster broadcast in full.
According to the broadcaster, the conversation was recorded on Sunday in Odessa. Zelenskyi stressed the importance of longer-range ATACMS-type missiles, which Ukraine is asking the US for, and which could attack Russian targets far behind the front lines. The missiles would help Ukraine move faster, Zelenskyy said.
He also pointed to shortages in equipping his troops with artillery. “In some directions we can’t even think about starting it (the counter-offensive) because we don’t have the right weapons,” Zelenskyy said.
Once again, the president of the attacked country made it clear what a reconquest of the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, would mean for Ukraine. “We cannot imagine Ukraine without Crimea,” said Zelenskyy. “And as long as Crimea is under Russian occupation, it only means one thing: the war isn’t over.”
Thoughts of personal risk would paralyze
According to his own statements, Selenskyj usually ignores the danger to his own life in the Russian war of aggression. “You can lock yourself in a cage like an animal and chain yourself and keep thinking that you’re about to be killed,” he said in a CNN interview. But that is not an option for him. If he kept thinking about it, he would isolate himself – like Russian President Vladimir Putin, who doesn’t leave his “bunker”. “If I self-isolate, I will no longer understand what is going on around me in the country,” said Zelenskyy. “I would lose connection with society. And if I lose that connection, I would lose society.”