MOSCOW, December 27. /TASS/. The coming year may prove even more difficult for the Ukrainian army due to the need to wrap up combat operations, Ukrainian task force Tavria commander Alexander Tarnavsky said. He stressed that resources "will be still scarce," regardless of the volume at hand.
"I reckon that next year will probably be even more difficult, because we have to wrap up the fighting," he said in an interview with the BBC’s Ukrainian service.
Tarnavsky described the situation on the frontline as "intensely difficult." Kiev, he said, needs additional forces and gear to succeed on the battlefield, but even this does not guarantee a result. "You know, there will always be a lack of resources, both manpower and materiel. This concerns all military units and groups. No matter how many resources there are, they will nevertheless not be sufficient," he noted.
In the wake of rumors about his pending dismissal Tarnavsky said that he was ready to be dismissed if that is what is preordained. In his view, the failure of Kiev's much-ballyhooed counteroffensive resulted from the Russian forces’ well-organized defenses and the excessive hype in statements by the Ukrainian authorities, which led to overinflated expectations for the Ukrainian army’s performance.
"At the beginning of the counteroffensive everyone said a lot. During the offensive, too, everyone kept saying too much," Tarnavsky added.
Speaking at a news conference on December 19, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said that there were certain "questions" to be addressed to Tarnavsky. He also placed the responsibility for what was happening on the battlefield on the shoulders of Armed Forces of Ukraine Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny and the General Staff.
The Ukrainian army had until recently been making unsuccessful attempts at conducting an offensive since June 4. The Russian side has repeatedly said that, despite heavy losses, Kiev’s offensive yielded virtually no significant results. In an attempt to justify the lack of progress in the combat zone, the Ukrainian authorities have repeatedly accused NATO of providing insufficient supplies. The North Atlantic Alliance’s officials countered that Kiev had everything it needed. On December 1, Zelensky acknowledged that Ukraine’s counteroffensive had failed to achieve its aims. On December 19, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said that the Ukrainian military had lost 159,000 troops killed and wounded during the so-called counteroffensive. In all, Kiev has lost more than 383,000 men since the start of the special military operation.