According to the Ukrainian military intelligence service, almost two months after the start of the Ukraine war, nothing has changed in the plans of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“The goal of the military aggression has remained the same: this is an operation to destroy the statehood of Ukraine,” intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov told Der Spiegel. According to Russia, Ukraine should “cease to exist as a state”.
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When asked why Russia decided to withdraw its troops from the region around the capital Kyiv, Budanov said: “They didn’t just retreat like that – we drove them out of the Kyiv region. It started when we took the city of Irpin This threatened to cut their forces in two in the Kiev region.”
Budanov said he was not surprised that the Russian plan to conquer Kyiv failed. Instead, he is amazed “how incompetent and negligent the Russian commanders approached the implementation of such a large operation. If they really believed that they would be able to finish it in three days – and according to our findings they were absolutely convinced of it – then the Russian leaders wonder how competent their generals are.”
Budanov also repeated the Ukrainian government’s demand for weapons from Germany: “We need artillery systems – the German army is particularly strong in them,” said the major general. “And unfortunately we need tanks, because we had very large losses of armored vehicles.”
The Ukrainian army wants to use the weapons to liberate the occupied territories, said Budanov. This includes the Crimean Peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014. Budanov doesn’t see a problem with training Ukrainian soldiers on the Leopard battle tank, for example: “We’ll learn that quickly. With all due respect, that’s not advanced mathematics.”
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In view of the “inhuman” situation in the heavily contested port city of Mariupol, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had already called for more support from the West on Sunday.
Either the “partners will immediately supply Ukraine with all the heavy weapons it needs,” or they will support him in negotiations to end the siege, Zelenskyy said in a video message. Selenskyj wants to “reduce the pressure on Mariupol and break the siege” with Western fighter jets.
In view of the feared large-scale Russian attack in the east of the country, Zelenskyj also announced tough resistance. “We will not give up our territory,” the Ukrainian president told US news channel CNN. The battle in the Donbass region could affect the course of the entire war. Ukraine must therefore assert itself. (AFP, dpa, tsp)