White House says Ukrainian top general’s Economist peace underscores need for urgent aid

It is even more important for the United States to continue supporting Ukraine at this critical moment when Russia’s full-scale invasion is becoming ‘positional’ warfare of static and attritional fighting, White House national security council spokesman John Kirby said.

"I think it underscores how important it is that we continue to support Ukraine," Mr Kirby told a briefing on Thursday when asked to comment on a piece by Ukraine’s top commander, Valerii Zalyzhnyi, in the Economist earlier this week.

"I can’t stand here today and tell you that it’s going to lead to this particular weapons system or this new capability. We are evolving and have evolved what we’ve provided Ukraine as the war itself has evolved, and I suspect that that process will continue.

"It would be eminently easier for us to do that if Congress would pass the supplemental funding that supports Ukraine, because it’s not only about capabilities for Ukraine," the White House official added.

In his article, the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said that in order to turn the tide in the war with Ukraine, it is necessary to return from a positional to manoeuvrable type of warfare.

While Kyiv has managed to knock out enemy artillery with HIMARS systems, Russia has increased the density of fire with old howitzers and is intensively producing high-precision shells.

Mr Zalyzhnyi cautioned that Russia would have an advantage over Ukraine in terms of the number of weapons and manpower for a long time, and it was necessary for Kyiv and its allies to find a technological solution to this problem.