Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russian forces are suffering heavy losses and the notion that Moscow is winning the nearly two-year-old war is only a “feeling,” not based on reality.
“Thousands, thousands of killed Russian soldiers, nobody even took them away,” he told The Economist in an interview published on Monday, referring to fighting around the besieged eastern town of Avdiivka which he visited last week.
He provided no evidence to back up his assertion, but Western military analysts agree that Russia is paying a heavy price in men and equipment for relatively minor gains in eastern and southern Ukraine.
Photo: Ukrainian Presidential Press Service via Reuters
There was no response to a request for comment from Russian officials on Zelenskiy’s remarks.
Russian officials have said Western estimates of the Russian death toll are vastly exaggerated and almost always underestimate Ukrainian losses.
Russian President Vladimir Putin last month said that Russia’s position was improving and it would not stop what he calls the “special military operation” until its objectives, including Ukraine’s “denazification, demilitarization and its neutral status”, had been achieved.
Russian officials have dismissed as a failure a Ukrainian counteroffensive launched in the middle of last year in the east and south.
Zelenskiy acknowledged that the counteroffensive backed by advanced Western weapons might not have succeeded “as the world wanted. Maybe not everything is as fast as someone imagined.”
In contrast, he hailed the “huge result” of Ukrainian forces breaking through a Russian Black Sea blockade, enabling grain exports by way of a new route along its southern coast.
If Ukraine lost the war, he said, Russia would be encouraged to advance against other nations because “Putin feels weakness like an animal, because he is an animal. He senses blood, he senses his strength.”
With support for Ukraine facing obstacles in the US and EU, more needed to be done to persuade the world that defending Ukraine meant defending the world, Zelenskiy said.
“Maybe something is missing. Or maybe someone is missing,” he told the magazine. “Someone who can talk about Ukraine as a defense of all of us.”
Zelenskiy acknowledged that “mobilization of Ukrainian society and of the world” that was so strong at the start of Russia’s invasion is not there anymore.
Ukraine saw tens of thousands of men volunteer to fight in the first months of Russia’s invasion, but that enthusiasm has waned 22 months later.
“That needs to change,” he said. “Mobilization is not just a matter of soldiers going to the front. It is about all of us. It is the mobilization of all efforts. This is the only way to protect our state and de-occupy our land.”
Zelenskiy has embarked on a flurry of international trips trying to shore up Western support. At home, he has repeatedly urged Ukrainians to do their duty.
“Victory is not received or granted, it is gained,” Zelenskiy said in his New Year’s message to Ukrainians. “And to this end, today we have to live by the rule: You either work or you fight.”
A draft law that proposes lowering the mobilization age to 25 from 27 has sparked controversy.
Russia has said it is ready for peace talks if Ukraine takes account of “new realities,” suggesting an acknowledgement that Russia controls about 17.5 percent of Ukrainian territory.
Zelenskiy rejected any notion that Moscow was interested in talks, pointing to its repeated waves of aerial strikes.
Russia would only agree to a pause in fighting if it needed a break to replenish its army, he said.
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