Moscow (Reuters) -the front lines in Ukraine have reached an impasse, as a parity in equipment, training and morality between Russian and Ukrainian forces that block the momentum on both sides, said nationalist Russian senator Dmitry Rogozin in an interview.
“(The map of the front lines) moves with enormous difficulty, at a colossal price that our army pays to move,” said Rogozin, who fought in Ukraine, the Bloknot Media Outlet published in an interview on the Russian social media site Vkontakte on September 19.
“Nevertheless, we are moving, our pressure is certain. Victory will be ours, the question is exactly for what price. And the price will be very large.”
The slow advance of Russia is tactical, said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday, a day after US President Donald Trump said that Russia fought “aimless” in Ukraine.
In a striking rhetorical shift in favor of Ukraine, Trump said that a “real military power” would have won the war in less than a week and Russia described as a “paper tiger”. Trump, who sometimes repeated Russia's views on the conflict, said he believed that Ukraine could recapture all the country occupied by Russia.
In his comments, Rogozin said that it was very difficult to continue in Ukraine, because attack groups consist of three to four middle -aged men, who are weighed by armor and weapons and surrounded by mines and with drones that buzz overhead.
“It is impossible to get up from a chair, let alone somewhere to attack,” he said, adding that military equipment would be burned on both sides within 20 kilometers from the contact line.
“There are only bare fields, no forest tires, a hare appears and I can see it,” he said, referring to drone images he had seen around Stepnohirsk, in the Zaporizhzhia region, on his command post.
“How is it possible to move and get through it? And all equipment will be blown up because the roads are mined by us and by them.”
(Reporting by Reuters, Writing by Robert HarveyDiting by Gareth Jones)
