Zelensky Delays Ukraine Counter Offensive: 'We Will Lose A Lot of People'

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said "We need to wait" before his forces launch their counteroffensive, suggesting that such an operation now would result in heavy losses.

Much hinges on the expected Ukrainian counterattack, which would be a test for Ukraine to prove that Western-supplied advanced weapons, including tanks and air defenses, can be used to make significant battlefield gains.

Zelensky said that in terms of motivation, personnel numbers and mentality, "we're ready," but that "in terms of equipment, not everything has arrived yet."

"We are still expecting some things," he said in an interview in Kyiv for Eurovision News that was broadcast by the BBC. "They will reinforce our counteroffensive and most importantly they will protect our people. We are expecting armored vehicles, they arrive in batches."

Combat brigades, some of which were trained by NATO members, are "ready" for the long-awaited counteroffensive, he said.

"We can advance with what we've got and I think we can be successful but we will lose a lot of people, I think that is unacceptable," he said. "We need to wait, we need a bit more time."

However, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who heads the Wagner Group of mercenaries fighting for Moscow in Bakhmut, reacted to the Ukrainian president's interview by saying, "Zelensky is lying. The counteroffensive is underway."

"The Armed Forces of Ukraine are trying to break through the flanks of Bakhmut," he said, which "they first need to break through" before heading to the Belgorod and Zaporizhzhia directions, he added in a statement on Telegram.

Adm. Bob Bauer, chair of the NATO Military Committee, told reporters in Brussels on Wednesday that Ukraine will have the edge in quality but "the Russians will have to focus on quantity," referring to Moscow's higher troop numbers and older equipment.

However, as Dale Buckner, CEO of international security firm Global Guardian, told Newsweek, "This war has proven that scale alone is not a factor the way it was in World War II. Technology, training, will and morale, which the Ukrainians have, all matter."

"The Russian army is incredibly large and has an enormous amount of equipment," he said. "That doesn't mean they're well trained, and it doesn't mean they can synchronize anything."

New York University professor and Kroll Institute senior advisor Joshua Tucker said that the main hallmark of a successful Ukrainian counteroffensive would be the taking of territory, although there is the question of whether it would involve an attempt to retake Crimea.

Zelensky has repeatedly said that the current war will not end until the peninsula seized by Russia in 2014 is returned to Ukrainian control.

"This would be the riskiest version of the counter-offensive, but also opens up the possibility of delivering the worst setback to Putin—indeed, it is hard to see how Putin recovers if he loses Crimea," Tucker told Newsweek.

He believed that a successful counteroffensive would mean Ukraine would agree to nothing less than regaining all its lost territory. If Ukraine is less successful with its counteroffensive, Kyiv might be more likely to think about negotiations, Tucker said.

"The Catch-22 here, though, is that at that point Russia might be tempted to try to push forward and seize more territory in a demoralized Ukraine," he said.

Update 05/11/23, 9 a.m. ET: This article was updated with information about Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin's response to Zelensky's interview.