The war in Ukraine risks setting into a prolonged stage of static, attritional fighting — but according to the country’s commander-in-chief, it doesn’t have to be that way. The warning is from General Valery Zaluzhnyi, who reckons that “just like in the first world war we have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate.”

This comes amid a largely stalled counteroffensive and a trickle of reports that call into question’s President Zelensky’s overall approach to what has essentially become a deadlocked battle. 

General Zaluzhnyi made the remarks in a lengthy article published in the Economist. He did so at a time when the world’s attention has been diverted by war in the Middle East and as Ukraine fatigue sets in on the Continent. The latter development was thrown into sharp relief, albeit inadvertently, by Prime Minister Meloni’s admission that “there is a lot of tiredness” over Ukraine and that “the moment is approaching when everyone will understand that we need a way out.”

Any army chief worth his salt knows that in matters of combat there is seldom if ever any easy way out, and General Zaluzhnyi has some sensible prescriptions to get the counteroffensive ball rolling again. Otherwise, he stated, Russia will be allowed “to rebuild its military power, eventually threatening Ukraine’s armed forces and the state itself.”

In his view of “modern positional warfare and how to win it,” there are a number of things that Ukraine needs to address.

He singled out Russia’s air power advantage as a factor that made advancing harder and called for Kyiv to conduct widespread drone strikes to overload Russia’s air defenses. “Basic weapons, such as missiles and shells, remain essential. But Ukraine’s armed forces need key military capabilities and technologies to break out of this kind of war. The most important one is air power,” he wrote.

The general said Ukraine must get better at destroying Russian artillery and devise better mine-breaching technology, saying Western supplies have proven insufficient faced with Russian minefields that stretch back more than a dozen miles in some areas.

He called it a priority for Ukraine to build up its reserve forces despite noting it had limited capacity to train them inside the country and highlighting gaps in legislation that allowed people to evade service.

“We are trying to fix these problems. We are introducing a unified register of draftees, and we must expand the category of citizens who can be called up for training or mobilization,” he wrote. 

He also noted a new “‘combat internship” that involves placing newly mobilized and trained personnel in experienced front-line units to better prepare them.

“Compared to Ukraine, the Russian Federation has almost three times more mobilization of human resources” General Zaluzhnyi wrote, adding that Russia “is trying in every possible way to reconstitute and increase its military power.”

This all comes almost five months into a major Ukrainian counteroffensive that has not made a serious breakthrough against heavily mined Russian defensive lines. Fighting is expected to slow as the weather worsens.

A common thread running through the general’s sober  assessment is something that will not be lost on anyone following the dramatic events in Israel since early October: Never underestimate your enemy. 

Russian troops have gone on the offensive in parts of the east and Kyiv fears Moscow plans to unleash a campaign of air strikes to cripple the power grid, plunging millions into cold and darkness in the depths of winter.

On Wednesday a Russian drone attack set the Kremenchuk oil refinery in central Ukraine ablaze and knocked out power supply in three villages, while battlefield reports said Ukrainian forces had repelled Russian attacks in frontline sectors in the east and northeast. The fire at the refinery, which Moscow has targeted many times before, was quickly extinguished.

The Ukrainian armed forces’ general staff said troops this week repelled eight Russian attacks near Kupyansk in the northeast, five near the shattered eastern town of Bakhmut, held by Russian forces, and five further south near Avdiivka, a focal point of Russian assaults since mid-October. An estimated 40,000 Russian troops are now massed outside the town, which is widely seen as a symbol of Ukrainian resistance. 

Russian forces have also been hammering away at the Kherson region, even though the eponymous city has been back under Ukrainian control since last year. A Ukrainian military spokeswoman in the south, Natalia Khomeniuk, said earlier this week that Russian forces dropped 20 aerial bombs in the Kherson region from positions they presently hold on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River.  Russian forces shell the river’s western bank almost daily.

Another military representative said that Russia carried out another missile attack on the central Poltava and southern Odessa regions later on Wednesday —  two of the missiles that fell near Odessa were successfully downed.

Overnight Thursday, Ukrainian air defenses destroyed 24 drones and one X-59 guided missile launched by Russian forces overnight. Russian forces had launched a total of 38 Shahed drones.

Authorities reported that drones strikes in Kharkiv,  Zaporizhzhia, and other regions. Meanwhile, more than a hundred settlements in eastern and southern Ukraine came under renewed Russian artillery fire. Russian attempts  to regain positions lost earlier near the town of Robotyne in Zaporizhzhia have been successfully repelled by Ukrainian forces.