Ukrainian sniper Olen Bilozerska compared the early days of fighting the Russian army to being on a "safari," and insisted Ukraine would eventually win the war despite the tactics employed by the Russian forces.
"In the first days of the war, it was like a safari, enemy vehicles moving in dense columns were destroyed by ambushes on roads passing through the forests," Bilozerska told The New Voice of Ukraine. "The surviving personnel fled into the woods, where they were caught by the territorial defense or simply local hunters."
She believes that Ukraine will eventually win the war against Russia and noted that the last two months since the war began have revealed, in her opinion, that the Russians are easier to defeat than expected. Russia's military has likely lost one-third of the ground combat force it initially committed to fighting in Ukraine at the outset of the conflict in February, the United Kingdom's Ministry of Defence assessed in a Sunday report.
Bilozerska said that she had been fighting to defend Ukraine since 2014 when Russia invaded and annexed the Crimean Peninsula. The elite sniper also spoke about the strengths and weaknesses of the Russian military.
"The enemy (Russia) primarily resorts to 'pressing-out by firing' tactics, using a large number of artillery pieces and a larger number of shells. The enemy's task is to 'grind' our positions and then try to occupy them. [This is] nothing new, these are classic tactics since the First World War," she explained to The New Voice of Ukraine.
"Strengths, they have mechanisms to influence personnel to achieve their goals at any cost," Bilozerska said. "Soldiers are simply treated as cannon fodder, and they are forced to accept it as their due. The weakness is the absolute lack of initiative on the part of sergeants and junior officers. As a result, an inability to make autonomous decisions."
She added: "No one knows when the war will end. In my opinion, it will last at least another year. And it will end, of course, with our victory, the restoration of control over Ukrainian territories within internationally recognized borders, i.e, with Donbas and Crimea."
The U.K. Ministry of Defence said in a Twitter thread on Sunday that "Russian forces are increasingly constrained by degraded enabling capabilities, continued low morale and reduced combat effectiveness. Many of these capabilities cannot be quickly replaced or reconstituted, and are likely to continue to hinder Russian operations in Ukraine."
Despite the losses and setbacks obvious to military analysts and international journalists on the ground, Russia continues to insist that it's achieving its objectives and that it will not give up on its goal to take control of the Eastern European country.
"We say firmly and clearly and are unequivocally confident, at least, Russian diplomats who work here, there won't ever be any capitulation," Anatoly Antonov, the Kremlin's ambassador to the United States told Soloviev Live, Russia's state-run TASS news agency reported on Saturday.
"We are confident that all the goals set by the supreme commander-in-chief before our armed forces will be completely attained. We will never give up, won't back up," he said.
Newsweek reached out to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for comment.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Gerrard Kaonga is a Newsweek U.S. News Reporter and is based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on U.S. ... Read more
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