MOSCOW (Reuters) -The front lines in Ukraine have reached an impasse, as parity in equipment, training and morale between Russian and Ukrainian forces stalls momentum on both sides, nationalist Russian senator Dmitry Rogozin said in an interview.
“(The map of the front lines) is moving with enormous difficulty, at a colossal price, which our military is paying in order for it to move,” Rogozin, who has fought in Ukraine, told the Bloknot media outlet in an interview published on Russian social media site VKontakte on September 19.
“Nevertheless we are moving, our pressure is definitely there. Victory will be ours, the question is just at what price. And the price will be very big.”
Russia’s slow advance is tactical, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday, a day after U.S. President Donald Trump said Russia has been fighting “aimlessly” in Ukraine.
In a striking rhetorical shift in Ukraine’s favour, Trump said that a “real military power” would have won the war in less than a week, describing Russia as a “paper tiger”. Trump, who has sometimes echoed Russia’s views on the conflict, said he believed Ukraine could retake all the land occupied by Russia.
In his comments, Rogozin said it was very difficult to advance in Ukraine as assault groups consist of three-to-four middle-aged men, who are weighed down by armour and weaponry and surrounded by mines and with drones buzzing overhead.
“It’s impossible to get up from a chair, let alone go somewhere to attack,” he said, adding that any military equipment brought within 20 kilometres of the line of contact, on either side, would get burned.
“There are only bare fields, no forest belts, a hare appears and I can see it,” he said, referring to drone footage he had seen around Stepnohirsk, in Zaporizhzhia region, at his command post.
“How is it possible to move and get through? And all equipment will be blown up because the roads are mined by us and by them.”
(Reporting by Reuters, writing by Robert HarveyEditing by Gareth Jones)
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