Full text of Valerii Zaluzhnyi's speech at the RUSI Land Warfare Conference 2024
"It is always difficult for a democratic army, an army of a free society, to fight with the army of a feudal lord. The enemy considers democracy to be our greatest weakness and tries hard to use it. Fakes, lies, devaluation of national interests, disbelief in the leadership – this is an incomplete list of tools that Russians have been using for more than ten years, and democratic societies have not yet found methods to counter.
As early as the 5th century BC, the well-known Chinese thinker Sun Tzu outlined the basic principles of war, which remain topical today, and will be relevant as long as people rule the war. However, these are just basic principles that need to be filled with weapons, forms and methods of their use, armies with their structures. It is in this sequence that the war changes.
Carefully analyzing our experience, supported by figures and facts, I understand that we are on the threshold of not only enormous work, but also the most important thing, facing a difficult choice. For us, Ukrainians, this is not only an investigation of the law of «challengeand-response» of the British historian Arnold Joseph Toynbee. Not only the very existence of Russia is already a threat. Today we already have a full-scale and bloody war, which has led us to a new challenge - physical survival.
It is the survival of a nation that is determined by its choice. How to respond to this challenge? How to survive in the conditions of ambiguity and contradiction of the surrounding world? Now, we must realize that it depends on us Ukrainians whether we will live and whether our children have a future.
Without a doubt, history today once again gives the Ukrainian people a chance. On a cold night on February 24, 2022, when the whole world was enjoying a peaceful life and basking in warm beds, Ukrainians reminded themselves whose blood flows in their veins and entered into a fierce battle with the eternal enemy. Through the lives of ordinary Ukrainians, we have won a chance for ourselves. A chance not just to continue the primordial struggle, but a chance to win. It cost us dearly – many lives of the best sons and daughters. It was only the starting point.
Very soon we realized that to withstand a blow, to give a worthy rebuff to the enemy – this is only the beginning of a more difficult stage of confrontation, which is to find your own special way of victory. It was the search for this special path that led us to an understanding of the already comprehensible contours of revolutionary changes, primarily in the military. Oddly enough, but quite logically, it is likely that these changes, which were invented on the battlefields of the Russian-Ukrainian war, will determine the outlines of wars and the art of war in the 21st century. And most importantly, they will become the foundation of the entire global security system of the future. Until recently, one could confidently say that unmanned systems are the main reason for changes in strategies, forms, and methods of application. But even today, it is probably necessary to introduce a broader concept – technology – into the concept of a new strategy for waging war.
The war that came to us in 2014 is completely different from the one that broke into our lives on February 24, 2022. Although it was based on the concepts of 2014, it was already different and quickly exhausted our forces in May 2022. It was the intensity of hostilities that forced us to restore the level of the beginning of 2022, and the need to survive on the battlefield led us to another war, which we faced in the summer of 2023. The belligerents stopped for some time in search of new weapons, and it would be appropriate to search for new forms of application of the latest technologies. It is the invention of new methods of use that would logically lead to changes in the structure of units, detachments and the Armed Forces as a whole.
It is this motion that is scientific and reasonable. The development of technologies affects the forms of their application, and only new forms of application affect the structure of fighting armies. This trend is inevitable and will continue.
Technologies – as a set of not only innovative solutions, but also a set of measures for the development, scientific support, training, development of doctrines that will change the situation on the battlefield in the conditions of the enemy's existing advantages in military potential and resources. Simply put, today we have already invented a way to fight and win against stronger armies in the 21st century. Obviously, it is the technology that should ensure the sustainability of the Ukrainian nation.
At the same time, I absolutely agree that the Russian-Ukrainian war is not yet a war of the future. It is only a war of transitional period. But it is our war that forms new rules. We, Ukrainians, with our blood and thirst for victory, are forming new patterns of a new war. A war that will be the war of the future.
We must admit that the thirst to survive on the battlefield is almost the main reason for finding ways to improve weapons. The combination of such factors as limited resources, lack of proper support, inability to focus on the production of traditional means of struggle has led to significant changes on the battlefield of the RussianUkrainian war. In fact, a new stage in the forms and methods of military operations has begun. We see how scientific and technological progress has set in motion the wheel of history and brought to the battlefield the technologies that are likely to be decisive in this war and, most importantly, will become the basis of global security of the future. Who will quickly master these technologies – the democratic world or the world of tyranny – will depend on us.
War is about resources and time. If we consider technologies as resources, then as of today, due to various reasons, neither Ukraine nor Russia will be able to master them on their own in the near future. This means that the only way out may be to increase the number of human resources involved in hostilities. At the same time, technologies will wait for the brave and able to master them. Whoever masters them will solve the issues of global security.
It is difficult to say how the situation will develop in the future. Only one thing is certain – tyrants will need war constantly for internal use as a tool for retaining power. The rest should build reliable protection against them.
Today, more than ever, it is in Ukraine that they find ways to survive and create technologies. But for obvious reasons, they cannot scale up. On the other hand, our partners have resources, but there is no applied and practical field to test them. Only together we will be able to effectively use the resource, because time no longer works for us.
«Following yesterday’s rules of war will not lead to today’s (or tomorrow’s) successes. It is the realization of this that can save many lives. We must begin to grapple with the consequences of the new rules of war.» I took this quote from retired American General Stanley McChrystal. And then he had these words: «if not, we will all be left behind».
But I would say more categorically: otherwise we will all die."
