Positional war has been running at front since November 2022 - SBU Colonel Kostenko

He said this on the Espreso TV channel.

"Many people in our country thought that a counteroffensive was a victory and did not perceive it differently. But now the main task is to defend what we already have, what we did not allow the enemy to capture, to secure it completely, to build positions so that the enemy would break their teeth against them. And then to launch counterattacks and use the additional resources we have to regain our territories, which is why the counteroffensive has stopped now, we have seen that there are no fortifications, we need to build them. The situation is very difficult now," the military emphasized.

The SBU colonel noted that the counteroffensive of the Defense Forces has strategic and tactical tasks.

"The strategic goal is to reach the Sea of Azov, but the maps of those who set such goals do not even show this front line and movements. If we are talking tactically, then active actions are underway, but if we are talking strategically about a counteroffensive, then I want to tell you, and many people are surprised when I say that we have been in a positional war since November 11, 2022. Strategically, as Zaluzhnyi recently wrote, we have been in this position for a year. Now the positional war can either continue, or the enemy can push us back if we do not take action," Kostenko emphasized.

The deputy said that Ukraine must do everything to strengthen our territories or accept the fact that we are in a positional war: "We tried to do something, but it didn't work. There is no one to blame here, we are facing an enemy that outnumbers us several times, and we have no air support and long-range missiles."

Background

In an article for The Economist published on November 1, Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi noted that Russia's war against Ukraine could enter a new dangerous stage and named priority areas whose development would help prevent this.

Later, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy responded to Zaluzhnyi's article and said that Ukraine was not in a stalemate.

Experts from the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW) analyzed Zaluzhnyi's article on positional warfare in Ukraine. They believe that the article "Modern Positional Warfare and How to Win It" reveals his ideas on the changes that Ukraine should make to overcome the current positional stage of the war more clearly than the interview with The Economist.