The head of Ukraine’s armed forces said that he thinks Russia will attack Kyiv again in the first few months of 2023.
Recently, most of the fighting has been in the east and south, but General Valeriy Zaluzhny told a British weekly that the capital would once again be a target.
In an interview on December 3 that was released on Thursday, he said that making reserves and getting ready for a war that could happen in February, at best in March, and at worst at the end of January is a “very important strategic task.”
In the interview, he said, “The Russians are getting ready to send another 200,000 troops. I have no doubt they will try again to take Kyiv.”
“We have done all the math. We know how many tanks, how much artillery, and so on we need.”
At the end of February, Moscow sent its troops into Ukraine to quickly take over Kyiv.
In a win for the Ukrainian army, the invaders were stopped a few hundred kilometres from the capital. At the end of March and the beginning of April, they left the area.
The general said that one of his current problems was “to hold this (front)line,” which runs from south to east, and “not lose any more ground” after pushing the Russians out of the Kharkiv region in the northeast in September and Kherson in the south last month.
Zaluzhny says that after a series of humiliating battlefield losses in October, the Russians have been bombing energy infrastructure because “they need time to gather resources” for a big offensive in the coming months.
“I’m not an energy expert, but it seems to me that we’re on the edge,” he said, adding that missile and drone strikes could “possibly” destroy the power grid.
Waves of attacks on the power network that have already happened have left millions of Ukrainians in the cold and dark of winter.
“I know I can beat this enemy,” said the general. “But I need something.
“I need 300 tanks, 600–700 infantry fighting vehicles (ifvs), and 500 howitzers,” he said.
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