The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) are right to exercise caution in counterattacking the troops of the aggressor state Russia due to anti-personnel mines and other obstacles.
This was stated by the Chair of the Military Committee of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Admiral Rob Bauer, Reuters reports.
Bauer emphasized that a counteroffensive is a very difficult task, with Ukrainian forces facing defensive obstacles up to 30 kilometers deep in an attempt to break through Russian lines.
"We saw in Normandy during World War II that it took the Allies seven, eight, nine weeks to actually break through the German defense lines. So, it's not surprising that it's not happening quickly. Ukrainian forces were right to be careful to avoid significant losses when they investigated possible breakthroughs in the defense of the Russian Federation," the admiral said.
According to him, this type of operation is extremely difficult, so the Ukrainian troops "deserve praise." Ukrainian forces should not be pressured or criticized for not moving faster, Bauer stressed, because "this is a very, very difficult time for them," as quoted by Reuters.
As the Ukrainian News agency earlier reported, on June 30, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, expressed his disappointment with statements that Ukraine's long-awaited counteroffensive in the east and south of the country allegedly began more slowly than expected.
On June 27, the representative of the National Security Council of the White House, John Kirby, said that the Russians had prepared well for the defense, so the Ukrainian Armed Forces are counterattacking more slowly than Ukraine and its allies would like.
On June 21, President Volodymyr Zelenskyi said that progress on the battlefield is "slower than we would like," in particular due to the fact that the Russian occupiers were mining 200,000 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory.
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