War

Oleksandr Syrskyi: Our goal is to form and prepare reserves for offensive actions

Oleksandr Syrskyi: Our goal is to form and prepare reserves for offensive actions
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By the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is General-Colonel Oleksandr Syrskyi for Ukrinform

"The situation on the front lines is indeed challenging. However, it's not different from what we face on the front lines. Undoubtedly, each day demands maximum effort from our soldiers and officers. But we are not only holding in defense; every day, we are advancing on various fronts. Recently, the number of positions we've regained exceeds the number lost. The enemy has failed to make significant advances on strategic fronts; any territorial gains they may have achieved hold tactical significance at best. We maintain control of this situation.

It's important to acknowledge that the current situation remains tense on certain fronts. Russian occupiers continue to escalate their efforts and outnumber us in personnel. They persistently disregard losses and continue to employ tactics of mass assaults. On some fronts, Ukrainian defense forces repel several dozen attacks daily.

The experience of past months and weeks indicates that the enemy has significantly increased aviation activity, deploying guided air bombs (KABs) that devastate our positions. Additionally, the enemy conducts intense artillery and mortar fire. Just a few days ago, the enemy had a significant advantage in ammunition deployed, with a ratio of about 6:1.

However, we've learned to fight not with the quantity of ammunition but with the skillful use of the weaponry we have. Furthermore, we maximize the advantage of unmanned aerial vehicles. Although the enemy strives to catch up with us in this effective type of weaponry.

The adversary continues offensive actions across a wide front, striving at all costs to reach the borders of Donetsk and Luhansk regions and to push us to the left bank of the Dnipro River in Zaporizhzhia region.

In certain sectors of the front, we've managed to equalize the situation concerning artillery, which has immediately impacted the overall situation. Our artillery units utilize precision ammunition to target enemy concentrations even tens of kilometers away from the front lines. The enemy sustains significant losses in both manpower and equipment daily, including artillery systems. They can never feel safe, even on the occupied territories of Ukraine. This is a crucial psychological factor. They will find no peace on our land. Never. And every occupier must realize this.

Certainly, these are statistics, but it's important to note: just from February to March of this year (as of March 26), the enemy has lost over 570 tanks, approximately 1430 combat armored vehicles, nearly 1680 artillery systems, and 64 air defense systems. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Defense Forces continue to control key heights and defense areas. Our goal is to prevent the loss of our territory, exhaust the enemy to the maximum extent, inflict the highest possible losses on them, and form and prepare reserves for offensive actions.

It's also significant that the enemy's activity in the air has been successfully reduced, clearly thanks to the skill of our air defense units. In just 10 days in February, they shot down 13 enemy aircraft, including two strategically important surveillance and command aircraft, the A50.

So, with the skill of our personnel, we're doing well. We hope to receive more air defense assets and, most importantly, missiles for them from our partners, especially considering that the enemy has shifted to the tactic of mass air strikes on both Ukrainian forces and civilian infrastructure, on peaceful cities in Ukraine. We are obligated to defend them.

We are also changing tactics at sea. Unmanned drone attacks on enemy ships are so effective that they allow us to speak about changes in the strategy of naval warfare overall. We systematically destroy the Russian Black Sea Fleet. And we will continue to do so. The recent strikes on several ships in Sevastopol are just another illustration of this."

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