‘Ukraine should change its strategy and transition from offense to defense on the front lines’ – Arestovych

Former advisor to the Office of the President, Alexey Arestovich, has called on Ukraine to “change its strategy” and transition from an offensive stance to a defensive one along the front lines.

According to him, in the current circumstances, there can be no talk of the borders of 1991 in the current state of affairs.

“To make this possible, we need to mobilize about five thousand people and send them into battle,” Arestovich writes.

However, in his opinion, there will be nothing to arm 30-40 new brigades with.

“Even if the West or Martians started supplying us with weapons massively right now, it would take a minimum of nine months just to prepare this half-million. Will Russia and its allies wait for these nine months? How many new lines of Surovikin will appear? How many Russians will be mobilized during this time?” he asks.

According to him, considering that these processes will not go smoothly in Russia, “the front will stabilize and halt.”

“Our current and prospective capabilities of our own defense industry do not allow us to produce armored vehicles and artillery, not even in the hundreds, let alone dozens per year. We have limits to mobilization, beyond which the economy will collapse. Russia’s limit is roughly four times higher,” Arestovich writes.

In his opinion, under such conditions, Ukraine has only two realistic strategies: either negotiations and a ceasefire or a prolonged continuation of the war. The latter is possible if Ukraine can establish the production of weapons for defensive operations and achieve parity with Russia in long-range capabilities.

“Since I am pessimistic about our ability to solve the above tasks, it’s time to lower our expectations and plans. If we don’t want negotiations (and we clearly don’t), we need to go into a long defense mode with the main task being to beat the Russian army at a faster pace than they can replenish,” Arestovich states.

But he questions whether Ukrainian society is ready for extraordinary efforts to implement this plan.

“Blood, sweat, tears, hard work – all of that. For years.”