Ukraine rounds up million-strong army
UKRAINE has claimed it is raising ‘a million strong’ fighting force to regain territory lost to Russia. A counter-offensive using Nato-supplied weapons would take the fight to Moscow’s troops in the south and east of the country, said defence minister Oleksii Reznikov.
The message was repeated by Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, who advised women and children to leave occupied territories as a ‘massive fight’ is looming.
The rise in rhetoric from Kyiv came as it emerged 12 Russian officers, including at least one general and one colonel, were killed when US-supplied missiles hit their post near Kherson in southern Ukraine. Experts cast doubt on Ukraine’s ability to launch a successful counter-attack with current resources, but the defence minister suggested it will happen soon.
Mr Reznikov said yesterday: ‘This is very necessary for our country. The president has given the order. We need, more quickly, to save the lives of our soldiers. Each day we are waiting for howitzers [from allies], we can lose 100 soldiers.
‘We have approximately 700,000 in the armed forces and when you add the national guard, police and border guards, we are around a million strong.’ Most of these forces are already involved in Ukraine’s bid to defend its small remaining territory in the eastern Donbas region, so could not be used in any counter-offensive there and elsewhere.
The country’s international allies and Nato military advisers have recommended it build up its arsenal of Westerndonated weapons. But expectations of a Ukrainian recovery were heightened when deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk urged citizens to evacuate ahead of offensives by the country’s troops.
She said: ‘There should not be women and children there and they should not become human shields. There will be a massive fight. Our forces are coming to de-occupy.’
Amassing more rocket systems, drones and missiles will be crucial. In recent days long-range rockets have destroyed multiple enemy ammunition stores and command and control centres. Even Russian state TV news broadcasts were forced to acknowledge the losses, with one saying Ukraine had ‘struck several times at our decision-making centres with results’.
Plans for the counter-attack emerged as the number of Ukrainians entering European Union countries was reported to have passed six million – although three million have returned home.