Situation at frontline with Russia not stalemate, says Ukraine’s Army chief

General Zaluzhnyi describes war with Russia as moving towards new stage of static and attritional fighting

The situation on the frontlines in Russia’s war with Ukraine has not hit a stalemate, Ukraine’s Army chief said on Monday.

This comes just a month after he said Russia and Ukraine were evenly matched in tactical and technological capabilities on the battlefield.

Asked if he thinks the battlefield situation between both sides is now a stalemate, General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi replied with a “no”, according to Ukraine’s RBC media.

“This is a war. I can’t say what I plan or what we should do. Otherwise, it will be a show, not a war – the cost of which is human lives. This cannot be discussed in any way,” he said on Monday.

There was a frontline stalemate between Russian and Ukrainian soldiers 21 months into the war, which he said could only be broken with a “massive technological leap”, Mr Zaluzhnyi said in an interview with The Economist last month. General Zaluzhnyi described the war with Russia as moving towards a new stage of static and attritional fighting.

“Just like in the First World War we have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate,” he had told the British news magazine, adding that there will be no “deep and beautiful breakthrough”.

The comments by the Ukrainian war chief were quickly rebuffed by president Volodymyr Zelensky who denied a stalemate in outright terms.

“Today time has passed and people are tired, but this is not a stalemate,” he said, adding that Russia controls the skies but Kyiv “cares about our military”. Mr Zelensky warned against any political rifts and called for national unity.

“We need to pull ourselves together, avoid unwinding and splitting up into disputes or other priorities,” the Ukrainian president had said, adding that the victory against Russia “will come if we all focus on it” and “not on politicking or searching for some personal interest” or “disagreements that will do nothing for the country, defence, and our advancement.”

On Monday, Mr Zaluzhnyi also bemoaned the sacking of military recruitment chiefs by his president. "These were professionals, they knew how to do this, and they are gone,” he said, amid fresh signs of tensions between the two leaders.

Russia is trying to capture land from Ukraine as fighting continues on the frontline with bad weather hitting operations.

The Institute for the Study of War said that a combination of artillery ammunition shortages and delays in the provision of western security assistance is likely causing Ukrainian forces to husband materiel and may delay future Ukrainian counter offensive operations.

It cited a Ukrainian Commander Brigadier General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi who said that Russian forces are also having issues with artillery ammunition, “although Ukrainian and Western officials have reportedly assessed that the Russian forces are currently conducting artillery fire at a rate five to seven times greater than the Ukrainian forces”.