Ukraine has six months to seize the battlefield initiative from Russia and strengthen its hand in peace talks, a senior commander told Reuters, predicting a “turning point” is coming after more than four years of war.
Russian forces have made significant gains since launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, but progress has slowed this year and Ukrainian troops are stepping up pressure on the battlefield to push them back.
Brigadier General Andriy Biletsky, who commands Ukraine’s Third Army Corps, one of Ukraine’s most respected fighting forces, told Reuters in an interview that he believed Russia’s military was exhausted and unable to achieve major breakthroughs.
If Ukraine’s military can build and maintain momentum for several months, he said, it could seize the initiative on the front line and force Russia to abandon its designs on the last part of the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine that it has not yet captured.
“I believe the next six to nine months are a turning point,” Biletsky said at an undisclosed underground location in the northeastern Kharkiv region.
“More precisely, I think the next six are the most important,” he said.
The issue of who controls Donetsk has been a major stumbling block in US-backed peace talks, which have stalled because Russia wants the entire region and Ukraine refuses to cede territory Moscow’s forces have been unable to conquer.
“We need to define directions where we can improve our position, take some strategic points, and then talk with the Russians from a position of strength — not weakness — about a really stable ceasefire,” said Biletsky, a right-wing political leader who founded the battle-hardened Azov Battalion and now commands thousands of troops.
“From a military perspective, it’s realistic.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story. Russian President Vladimir Putin has vowed victory in Ukraine and said this month he believes the war is nearing an end.
“It seems that four or five months into this year, it’s more likely that the Russians will be exhausted before the Ukrainian problems reach their peak,” he told Reuters.
On Monday, the US-based Institute for War Studies said Kiev’s forces are now “actively challenging the positional nature of warfare” and may soon be able to conduct limited mechanized attacks.
‘Fort Belt’
Russian troops are attacking the “Fortress Belt” of eastern Ukraine, where fighting is underway at its southern end, the strategic city of Kostiantynivka.
The cluster of heavily fortified cities forms the basis of Ukrainian defence. Capturing it would put Russia at risk to the rest of Donbass.
Biletsky, whose forces command one-tenth of the total front line, said his troops were holding firm around Sloviansk, the belt’s northern stronghold, and forcing the Russians to attack the city directly.
Such costly attacks have helped deplete Russian forces and caused heavy losses to field commanders, he said, which he described as the professional collapse of Moscow’s military.
“Staff shortages no longer allow them to proceed the way they did, for example, a year ago,” Biletsky said.
Biletsky said it was too early to draw conclusions from Kiev’s recent success, but Ukraine could take advantage of it by continuing medium-range attacks and moving “cautiously.”
Biletsky said Moscow is “losing badly” in battlefield communications because of Musk’s strictures on Starlink use.
But he described the sides as having commonalities in developing technology – Ukraine is leading in unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) and heavy bomber drones, and Russia is winning the race for fiber-optic drones that can’t be jammed.
A potential blueprint for a modern Ukrainian army, his corps has led efforts to transform training and integrate new technology such as UGVs as a key part of its battlefield strategy.
Biletsky’s units are leading the way in deploying covert kamikaze drones and robots armed with machine guns or rocket launchers to replace significant portions of infantry, he said, with a goal of 30% by 2027.
The next “revolution,” Biletsky said, will allow commanders to conduct more “creative” joint strike operations while preserving valuable troops.
“It will happen this year, and I think we’ll show how our corps is a shining example of that,” he said.
