“Every Ukrainian thinks about one thing every day: when the war will end,” said the head of the department, Mykhaylo Fedorov, in a statement published on the website of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. “We want peace more than anyone in the world,” he added.
According to Fedorov, peace in Ukraine will occur when “the sky is closed, the Russian army loses its offensive potential, and the Russian economy cannot withstand the load.” According to him, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy set a clear task for the team: simultaneously with diplomacy, strengthen the defense in such a way that the enemy is forced to peace.
On land, at sea and in cyberspace, the plan assumes that Russia will be exposed to such losses that it will be impossible to proceed further. According to the Ukrainian Ministry, Moscow now pays 156 fallen soldiers for every square kilometer conquered in Donbass. “Our goal is more than 200 occupiers killed per square kilometer. This is the level of losses at which progress is impossible,” the department said.
The Ministry of Defense stated that, for this purpose, it is working on the overall reform of the command system, the training of soldiers and the purchase of army equipment. He also wants to make more use of new technologies to increase the effectiveness of defense.
The plan primarily envisages the strengthening of air defense. “The goal is to protect civilians and infrastructure – to identify 100 percent of air threats in real time and intercept at least 95 percent of missiles and drones,” the ministry said, adding that air defense is being reorganized to ensure the protection of cities and systematically counter attacks by Russian attack drones.
According to the ministry, the key source of funding for Russian aggression is revenue from oil exports, especially through the so-called shadow fleet. Ukraine therefore wants to strengthen sanctions, coordinate actions with partners and develop a strategy against this mechanism. This presupposes the development of international partnerships, the achievement of technological superiority over Russia and the use of data analysis systems for military decisions, it said.
Diplomatic efforts to end the war intensified last January after the return of Donald Trump to the post of US president. The tripartite negotiations, which aim to find a way to end the war conflict, have so far been very tense and have not yet produced a more tangible result. Moscow’s territorial claims against Kyiv remain one of the disputed points.
War in Ukraine
On February 24, 2022, after four o’clock in the morning of our time, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that he had ordered a “special military operation” against Ukraine.
Western countries condemned the attack, a wave of solidarity arose and material and financial aid began to flow to Ukraine. At the same time, they imposed sanctions on Russia.
The invasion started a wave of millions of Ukrainian refugees who went mainly to Europe, including the Czech Republic. Thousands of young men later fled Russia for fear of mobilization.
The Washington Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated in January that up to 140,000 Ukrainian soldiers and at least 325,000 Russian soldiers have died in the war so far. Hundreds of thousands more were injured on both sides.
The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has confirmed the death of at least 15,000 civilians, including hundreds of children, since the beginning of the all-out Russian invasion. According to her, the vast majority of civilian victims were in areas attacked by the Russian army.
