Ukraine Aims to Conduct Counter-Offensive Actions in 2024, Top Commander Says

(Reuters) – The Ukrainian military will stabilize the battlefield situation shortly and aims to form units for counter-offensive actions later this year, a top military commander said on Wednesday.

Ukrainian forces experienced a setback following nine months of mostly stable front lines, when the eastern city of Avdiivka fell into Russian hands earlier in February after months of devastating attacks.

Ukrainian troops were forced to leave several settlements neighboring the city due to Russia’s continued offensive amid its own depleting stockpiles of munitions. Meanwhile, a vital aid package from the U.S. has been stalled by Republicans in Congress.

“We will stabilize the situation shortly,” Oleksandr Pavliuk, appointed as ground force commander during the recent top military reshuffle, said in televised comments, “and do everything possible to prepare the troops for more active actions, and to seize the initiative.”

He added that current work was aimed at withdrawing military units that lost their potential and restoring them to later form a force for counter-offensive actions this year.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that Russia would try to prepare a new offensive this spring or summer, but that Kyiv had a battlefield plan of its own.

(Reporting by Yuliia Dysa; Editing by Alexandra Hudson and Bill Berkrot)

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