The Ukrainian Armed Forces had been preparing for a military conflict with Russia for five months, starting from the autumn of 2021. This was stated by the new commander of the Ground Forces, Lieutenant General Alexander Pavlyuk, as reported by the Ukrainian publication “Strana.ua” on their Telegram channel.
Pavlyuk was appointed as the commander of the Joint Forces Operation of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in July 2021. According to him, after conducting an analysis, he already understood in the autumn that there was a “very high probability that a conflict would occur”.
The scale of the conflict was “difficult to comprehend at that time”, but it was obvious that it would involve the territories of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, said the Lieutenant General.
He claims that there were signs indicating that Russian troops would be deployed not only from the side of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, but also from other territories.
“Therefore, since the autumn, we started taking certain actions… Understanding that the balance of forces and means was not and would not be in our favor, but we had no other options – we had to stand our ground,” added Pavlyuk.
On February 11, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed several decrees on personnel changes in the country’s military leadership. Alexander Pavlyuk became the head of the Ground Forces, Igor Skybyuk became the commander of the Airborne Troops, and Igor Plakhuta became the commander of the Territorial Defense Forces.
Earlier, it became known how the shortage of ammunition is being compensated in Ukraine.
