: Inside the Ukrainian Counterstrike That Turned the Tide of the War #WorldNEWS It would be easy to underestimate Valeriy Zaluzhny. When not in uniform, the general prefers T-shirts and shorts that

Inside the Ukrainian Counterstrike That Turned the Tide of the War #WorldNEWS
It would be easy to underestimate Valeriy Zaluzhny. When not in uniform, the general prefers T-shirts and shorts that match his easygoing sense of humor. When he first heard from aides to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in late July 2021 that he was being tapped to lead the country’s armed forces, his stunned response was, “What do you mean?” As it sank in that he would become commander in chief, he tells TIME in his first interview since the Russian invasion began, he felt as if he had been punched “not just below the belt but straight into a knockout. ” George Patton or Douglas MacArthur he is not.
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Yet when the history of the war in Ukraine is written, Zaluzhny is likely to occupy a prominent role. He was part of the Ukrainian brass who spent years transforming the country’s military from a clunky Soviet model into a modern fighting force. Hardened by years of battling Russia on the eastern front, he was among a new generation of Ukrainian leaders who learned to be flexible and delegate decisions to commanders on the ground. His dogged preparation in the run-up to the invasion and savvy battlefield tactics in the early phases of the war helped the nation fend off the Russian onslaught. “Zaluzhny has emerged as the military mind his country needed,” U. S. General Mark Milley wrote for TIME of his counterpart last May. “His leadership enabled the Ukrainian armed forces to adapt quickly with battlefield initiative against the Russians. ”

Photo illustration by Neil Jamieson for TIME (Source Photo: Gleb Garanich—Reuters Pool Photo/AP)
That initiative has now taken a key turn in Ukraine’s favor. In Kyiv’s biggest gains since the war began in February, a lightning counteroffensive in the country’s northeast in early September stunned Russian troops, who fled in disarray and ceded vast swaths of occupied territory. Combined with a second operation in the south, Ukrainian forces say they wrested back more than 6,000 sq km from Russian control in less than two weeks, liberating dozens of towns and cities and cutting off enemy supply lines. The Ukrainian army’s deft game of misdirection, touting a counter-offensive in the south before attacking in the northeast, caught Russia off guard. And it validated the Ukrainians’ arguments that intelligence collaboration and billions of dollars in weapons and materiel supplied by Western allies would yield results on the battlefield.
The sudden victories came at a critical point in what had become a grinding war of attrition. As the economic pressures built across Europe and around the world, skeptics were beginning to doubt whether Ukraine could endure a protracted fight.

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