Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Warsaw, Poland, on April 5, 2023.
Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy admitted that Ukraine began its counteroffensive too late.
The late start gave Russia ample time to plant land mines on Ukrainian soil, Zelenskyy told CNN.
“Look, we waited too long, it’s true,” Zelenskyy said. “We gave a lot of time for Russians.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that Kyiv started its counteroffensive against Russia too late in the war, giving Moscow ample time to plant countless land mines on Ukrainian soil.
“Look, we waited too long, it’s true,” Zelenskyy told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria of Ukraine’s counteroffensive in a new interview that aired on Sunday.
Zelenskyy said that the progress of his country’s much-anticipated counteroffensive against Russian forces “depends on many directions, on many cases and issues,” but admitted, “We gave a lot of time for Russians.”
“We gave a lot of time” for the Russians “to prepare to mine,” Zelenskyy said. “To put the mines on the fields” across a “big territory.”
In June, Ukraine launched its counteroffensive to reclaim Russian-occupied territory in the east and south of the country, but it’s been largely slow-moving.
Zelenskyy told CNN the counteroffensive was delayed as the Eastern European country waited for more deliveries of Western weaponry.
The Ukrainian president said that he was “thankful” to Western allies like the United States and the European Union for their ongoing military assistance to Ukraine and added that he was “thankful very much” to President Joe Biden and the US Congress.
“But we have to understand, cause we waited too long, they put mines,” Zelenskyy said, referring to Russian forces.
Russian troops put up strong defenses protected by miles of minefields as Moscow waited for Ukraine’s counteroffensive to begin. Russia’s tough defenses along a 600-mile front line in Ukraine include not only land mines, but mazes of extensive trenches, barbed wire, and anti-tank ditches.
Moscow’s use of land mines has left Ukraine as the most mined country in the world, with an area roughly the size of Florida now riddled with mines, shells, and bombs, The Washington Post has reported.
Zelenskyy told CNN that “a lot of different people” have said that Ukraine’s counteroffensive has been too slow, but the Ukrainian leader explained, “It’s still on the way.”
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told NBC News last week that Ukrainian troops were making “very tangible progress” over the last couple of weeks.
“The Russians had a lot of time in this case to prepare for the counteroffensive. They put tens of thousands of mines in places, other defensive fortifications,” Blinken said. “The Ukrainians are working and going through it, but at the end of the day, they have a determination, they have a desire that will outmatch whatever the Russians put into this.”