It's "as if a professional boxer were fighting a schoolboy," says Ukrainian presidential adviser Arestovich on the Ukrainians' fight against newly recruited Russians. "They are poorly equipped, have no medicine and are armed with rusty rifles." It's terrible.
The Ukrainian government assumes that dozens of newly drafted Russians have been killed in recent days. This is what Presidential Advisor Oleksiy Arestovich said to the "Bild" newspaper. He thinks that Russian President Vladimir Putin will use his newly mobilized soldiers in the occupied territories. "But we will win this fight. Destroying these mobilized forces will not be difficult for us."
When asked how many of the 300,000 new Russian soldiers have been trained and will survive, Arestovich says: "None. They are poorly equipped, have no medicine and are armed with rusty rifles. They have no training at all. They don't even have a bad one Education, they just don't have any education – it's awful. It's like a pro boxer fighting a schoolboy."
Arestovich said of the Russian strategy: "The Russians have lost 70 percent of their military, I don't see a winning strategy for Putin." However, he could try to advance further in the Donetsk region - "but that is impossible for him. He will try to defend the annexed area and threaten us with tactical nuclear weapons. He could provoke negotiations by using the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant. He could do things like blow up Ukrainian gas lines."
At the same time, Arestovich expresses the expectation that the war will last "no longer than summer 2023". If something happened in Moscow, the war could end unexpectedly.
The close adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also rejected negotiations with Moscow if Russia annexed the occupied territories. "Our president said today that if Putin annexes our territories, there will be no negotiations. Finito. We will see it on the battlefield."
