“We’re taking everything back, including Crimea” Massive explosion in Ukraine – Russia is losing ground

The head of the Ukrainian army is sure that his forces will liberate all areas occupied by Russia: “Without a doubt, we will take back everything, the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk and also the Crimean peninsula,” Valeriy Zalushnyi told filmmaker Dmitry Komarov in an interview for Ukrainian television.

“We know what to do and we are already doing it,” said the commander-in-chief, who has been in office since July 2021. “Victory is won when all occupied territories are liberated. And while the war is still going on, we must create a state-of-the-art, combat-ready army that will make it impossible for Russia to repeat what is happening now. ” Zalushny accused the Russian army of genocide in Ukraine.

“Russia’s strategic goal is the destruction of the Ukrainian state,” said the general, who is considered one of the architects of Ukraine’s defense strategy. “Russians come to Ukraine with the intention of killing Ukrainians, very deliberately. At its core, this war for us is about this: If we don’t destroy the enemy now, we will be destroyed.” The Russian army must be stripped of its enormous destructive potential as soon as possible.

In the interview published on YouTube on Friday, Zalushnyj did not comment on the Ukrainians’ long-awaited counter-offensive — and whether it may have already begun. For the first time, the 49-year-old gave details about his army’s preparations for the Russian invasion last year: “For the Ukrainian army, this war started in the summer of 2014,” explains Zalushnyj, referring to the Russian invasion of Crimea. and Eastern Ukraine Year. “As of February 24, 2024, from the point of view of the military, only its size has changed.”

Before the invasion, the Ukrainians would have carefully analyzed how to fight against a superior opponent who was attacking from almost all directions simultaneously. Under cover of night, the army repeatedly trained to move anti-aircraft units back and forth across the country to protect against Russian attacks. “These eight years of war have hardened us and taught us how to fight. The Russians did not expect that.” On the day of the invasion, according to Zalushny, there were no more large orders.

“I called the commanders of the individual areas and said, ‘Here we go’. Most of the time the answer was just ‘I understand’ and in some cases they had already taken the necessary steps. inflicting damage, even if it meant giving up ground, and it worked,” says Zalushnyj, referring to the massive Russian military column that rolled towards Kiev in the spring of 2022 – and then had to retreat under constant attacks from the Ukrainians.

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Before the invasion last year, he could not have imagined that the Russians would turn entire cities in Ukraine into “stone deserts”, while they had already done so in Syria and Chechnya. The scale of the war is comparable to that of the First and Second World Wars in terms of the length of the front and the consumption of ammunition, says Zalushny: “It is unbelievable that something like this can happen in the 21st century, when science has come this far and we all remember what our grandparents went through during World War II. And yet they come here and deliberately kill Ukrainians.”

Zalushnyj is regarded as a determined reformer who wants to rid the Ukrainian military of the Soviet legacy and introduce the troops to NATO standards and methods. He has been stationed in disputed eastern Ukraine since the Russian invasion in 2014, where he gained front-line combat experience. In 2017, he was promoted to major general. As head of combat training, Zalushny has been organizing exercises with British and American soldiers since 2015. Zalushnyj is married and has two children. My family has hardly seen me since 2014.

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