In an exclusive essay for CNN, submitted amidst a swirl of rumors surrounding his future, Zaluzhnyi also addressed the challenge of mass mobilization, a source of tension between himself and President Volodymyr Zelensky.
In that first essay, published in the Economist, Zaluzhnyi highlighted the importance of unmanned aerial vehicles and electronic warfare capabilities, as a priority for Ukraine, before concluding, “New innovative approaches can turn this war of position into one of maneuver.”
Zaluzhnyi’s characterization of the situation as a war of position – one defined by attrition and a lack of movement on the battlefield – amounted to a recognition that the Ukrainian counteroffensive, launched to great fanfare earlier in 2023, was effectively over.
But domestic problems are clearly a concern, as when Zaluzhnyi references the apparent reluctance of his political masters in Kyiv to get fully behind his call for greater mobilization for up to half a million draftees, an acknowledgment of Russia’s overwhelmingly superior troop numbers.
“We must acknowledge the significant advantage enjoyed by [Russia] in mobilizing human resources and how that compares with the inability of state institutions in Ukraine to improve the manpower levels of our armed forces without the use of unpopular measures,” he writes.
In a society possibly reluctant to put large numbers of young men and women directly in harm’s way, remote-controlled drones provide a more acceptable type of combat operation, as he acknowledges.
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