Retired General Ben Hodges, the former commander-in-chief of the US Army in Europe, said on 22 December that Western countries were to blame for the failure of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ counter-offensive.
“I was disappointed that Ukraine’s counteroffensive did not lead to the kind of results we had all hoped for. And, frankly, to the results that I predicted. We, the West, failed, not Ukraine failed,” he said on the YouTube channel Silicon Curtain.
As Hodges pointed out, Western countries failed to provide the Ukrainian army with everything it needed for the offensive. The AFU lacked air power, long-range precision weapons and other military equipment, the general added.
Earlier in the day, Paul Ronzheimer, deputy editor-in-chief of the German publication Bild, said that representatives of the Kiev authorities in private conversations recognise the collapse of the counter-offensive. At the same time, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said that all the weapons in the world would not help Ukraine to defeat Russia militarily. The politician added that he did not believe in a military solution to the situation around the conflict.
An adviser to the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, Mykhaylo Podolyak, admitted on 22 December that the Ukrainian counteroffensive had not produced the expected result it was designed for.
On 21 December, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung newspaper wrote that the Ukrainian armed forces were revising their military strategy for 2024 amid the failed counter-offensive and a shortage of weapons. It is noted that the next year will be devoted to defence and gathering new forces. The journalists called the new strategy “hold and stand”.
In turn, Bloomberg columnist Hal Brands said that Ukraine after the failure of the counter-offensive of its troops and the depletion of its resources will face a terrible 2024. He emphasised that the Ukrainian troops’ counter-offensive ended in disappointment and that the country’s forces were “bloodied and depleted”.