Ukraine will face a "difficult situation" in the coming months, but the odds are not "catastrophic", said a Kyiv intelligence chief, just weeks before the anticipated start of a Russian summer offensive.
"We are going to face a rather difficult situation in the near future," Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine's GUR military intelligence agency, told the BBC in an interview published on Monday.
"But it's not catastrophic, and we need to understand that," he added. "Armageddon is not going to happen, as many people are starting to say."
A summer push from Kyiv last year made incremental but disappointing gains against Russian forces along the frontline, before Moscow launched an onslaught in the east from October. In February, Russian forces took control of the Donetsk city of Avdiivka, a strategic settlement in the Donetsk region that makes up part of Ukraine's Donbas.
Against this backdrop, Ukrainian officials have been warning Russia is preparing a renewed offensive throughout the summer. In February, Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, said this new push could start in late May.
"There will be problems starting in mid-May," Budanov said in the BBC Ukraine service article.
In March, Ukraine's ground forces commander, Lieutenant-General Oleksandr Pavliuk, said Moscow was preparing 100,000 troops for use in a summer offensive or to assign to decimated units.
With Ukrainian troops running short of crucial resources, such as artillery, ammunition and air defense missiles, deep concerns had settled into assessments about whether Kyiv would be able to successfully fend off a Russian summer offensive.
But on Saturday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed an aid package worth more than $60 billion for Kyiv after months of political infighting. Ukraine is heavily dependent on Western aid, and the U.S. is its single-largest backer.
Russia had likely assumed Ukraine would be "unable to defend against current and future Russian offensive operations due to delays in or the permanent end of US military assistance," the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a prominent U.S. think tank, assessed on Saturday. "This assumption was likely an integral part of Russia's operational planning for this summer," the institute said.
But despite the time it will take for new supplies to reach Ukraine's frontline forces, Kyiv's troops will be in a "significantly improved operational position by June 2024," the ISW said, adding Kyiv will likely be able to "blunt Russian offensive operations" in the summer.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Ellie Cook is a Newsweek security and defense reporter based in London, U.K. Her work focuses largely on the Russia-Ukraine ... Read more
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