Invasion of Ukraine: Kyiv army leader issues warning of fresh Russian assault on the city

According to an interview with The Economist published on Thursday, the head of Ukraine’s military forces anticipates a second Russian onslaught on Kyiv in the early months of 2023.

Recently, the battle has been largely confined to the east and south, but General Valeriy Zaluzhny warned the British weekly that the city would soon come under attack once more.

He stated in an interview from December 3 that building reserves and getting ready for the conflict, which may happen in February, at best in March, and at worst at the end of January, was a “very vital strategic task.”

“The Russians are assembling about 200,000 new soldiers. “I have no doubt that they’ll try Kyiv again,” he stated in the interview.

We have calculated how many tanks, pieces of artillery, and other resources we require.

Moscow moved troops into Ukraine at the end of February with the intention of quickly seizing Kyiv.

The invaders were successfully repelled by the Ukrainian army, who held them off many miles from the capital before they withdrew from the area at the end of March and the beginning of April.

After driving the Russians out of the Kherson region in the south last month and the Kharkiv region in the northeast in September, the general said one of his current challenges was “to hold this (front)line,” which runs south to east.

After a string of embarrassing defeats on the battlefield, the Russians have been bombarding Zaluzhny’s energy infrastructure since October because “they need time to gather supplies” for an extensive onslaught in the upcoming months.

He declared, “I am not an energy specialist but it seems to me we are on the borderline,” adding that missile and drone attacks may “perhaps” destroy the power grid.

Millions of Ukrainians have been left in the freezing cold and dark of winter as a result of the rounds of attacks that have already been launched on the power network.

The general said, “I know I can defeat this foe. “But I need resources.

“I need 500 Howitzers, 300 tanks, and 600-700 infantry fighting vehicles.”