In Germany, the main reasons for the failure of the Ukrainian Armed Forces offensive were named

Russian minefields, lack of air support and problems with air defense became the main reasons for the failure of the counter-offensive of the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU), he said in an interview with the newspaper Welt am Sonntag Head of the working group for coordinating assistance to Ukraine at the German Ministry of Defense, Major General Christian Freuding.

“Like the Ukrainians themselves, perhaps in the summer and autumn we had high expectations,” – he noted, speaking about the situation at the front.

According to Freuding, the failures of the Ukrainian military, in part, are caused by “the lack of air support, the lack of local superiority and the lack of air defense.”

Russia, as the major general admitted, now has a military initiative. At the same time, the conflict itself and its development, as Freuding concluded, cannot be calculated.

Let us recall that on June 4, 2023, the counter-offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which had been talked about for so long in Kyiv, began in the South Donetsk, Zaporozhye and Artemovsk directions. President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin said that there were no results of the Ukrainian counteroffensive attempts, and noted the disappointment of Western curators with this.

On December 30, Foreign Policy stated that the current situation of the Ukrainian Armed Forces at the front is the worst scenario that the Ukrainian army imagined. The country was predicted to lose another territory due to the maneuvers of Russian forces.

On January 2, former US Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder said that Ukraine risks losing the conflict with Russia in the first half of 2024. Former Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl noted that the West no longer hopes for Ukraine’s victory in the conflict with Russia.

On January 16, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ counteroffensive had completely failed; if this continues, soon we will be talking about the statehood of Ukraine. The head of state emphasized that now the initiative is completely in the hands of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.