General Valery Zaluzhny admits the war is at a stalemate 瓦列里·扎卢日尼将军承认战争陷入僵局

image: getty images

Nov 1st 2023

Five months into its counter-offensive, Ukraine has managed to advance by just 17 kilometres. Russia fought for ten months around Bakhmut in the east “to take a town six by six kilometres”. Sharing his first comprehensive assessment of the campaign with The Economist in an interview this week, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, General Valery Zaluzhny, says the battlefield reminds him of the great conflict of a century ago. “Just like in the first world war we have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate,” he says. The general concludes that it would take a massive technological leap to break the deadlock. “There will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough.”
F 在反攻几个月后，乌克兰只前进了 17 公里。俄罗斯在东部的巴赫穆特周围战斗了十个月，“以占领一个六乘六公里的城镇”。乌克兰总司令瓦列里·扎卢日尼将军本周在接受《经济学人》采访时分享了他对这场战役的首次全面评估，他说战场让他想起了一个世纪前的大冲突。“就像在第一次世界大战中一样，我们已经达到了让我们陷入僵局的技术水平，”他说。这位将军得出的结论是，要打破僵局，需要巨大的技术飞跃。“很可能不会有深刻而美丽的突破。”

The course of the counter-offensive has undermined Western hopes that Ukraine could use it to demonstrate that the war is unwinnable–and thus change Vladimir Putin’s calculations, forcing the Russian president to negotiate. It has also undercut General Zaluzhny’s assumption that he could stop Russia by bleeding its troops. “That was my mistake. Russia has lost at least 150,000 dead. In any other country such casualties would have stopped the war.” But not in Russia, where life is cheap and where Mr Putin’s reference points are in the first and second world wars in which Russia lost tens of millions.
反攻的进程破坏了西方的希望，即乌克兰可以利用它来证明这场战争是无法取胜的——从而改变弗拉基米尔·普京的计算，迫使俄罗斯总统进行谈判。这也削弱了扎卢日尼将军的假设，即他可以通过让俄罗斯的军队流血来阻止俄罗斯。“那是我的错误。俄罗斯已经失去了至少15万人死亡。在任何其他国家，这样的伤亡都会阻止战争。但在俄罗斯却不是这样，那里的生活很便宜，普京的参考点是在第一次世界大战和第二次世界大战中，俄罗斯在这场战争中损失了数千万美元。

An army of Ukraine’s standard ought to have been able to move at a speed of 30km a day as it breached Russian defensive lines. “If you look at nato’s text books and at the maths which we did [in planning the counter-offensive], four months should have been enough time for us to have reached Crimea, to have fought in Crimea, to return from Crimea and to have gone back in and out again,” General Zaluzhny says sardonically. Instead he watched his troops and equipment get stuck in minefields on the approaches to Bakhmut in the east, his Western-supplied equipment getting pummelled by Russian artillery and drones. The same story unfolded on the offensive’s main thrust, in the south, where newly formed and inexperienced brigades, despite being equipped with modern Western kit, immediately ran into trouble.
乌克兰标准的军队应该能够以每天 30 公里的速度突破俄罗斯的防线。扎卢日尼将军讽刺地说：“如果你看看北约的教科书和我们（在计划反攻时）所做的数学计算，四个月的时间应该足以让我们到达克里米亚，在克里米亚作战，从克里米亚返回，然后再次进出。相反，他眼睁睁地看着他的部队和装备被困在东部通往巴赫穆特的途中的雷区，他的西方提供的装备被俄罗斯的大炮和无人机击中。同样的故事发生在进攻的主攻方向，在南部，新组建和缺乏经验的旅尽管装备了现代西方装备，但立即遇到了麻烦。

“First I thought there was something wrong with our commanders, so I changed some of them. Then I thought maybe our soldiers are not fit for purpose, so I moved soldiers in some brigades,” says General Zaluzhny. When those changes failed to make a difference, the commander told his staff to dig out a book he once saw as a student in a military academy in Ukraine. Its title was “Breaching Fortified Defence Lines”. It was published in 1941 by a Soviet major-general, P. S. Smirnov, who analysed the battles of the first world war. “And before I got even halfway through it, I realised that is exactly where we are because just like then, the level of our technological development today has put both us and our enemies in a stupor.”
“起初我认为我们的指挥官有问题，所以我改变了其中的一些。然后我想也许我们的士兵不适合目的，所以我调动了一些旅的士兵，“扎卢日尼将军说。当这些改变未能产生影响时，指挥官告诉他的参谋们翻出一本他曾经在乌克兰军事学院读书时看过的书。它的标题是“突破坚固的防线”。它由苏联少将 P. S. Smirnov 于 1941 年出版，他分析了第一次世界大战的战斗。“在我读到一半之前，我意识到这正是我们所处的位置，因为就像那时一样，我们今天的技术发展水平已经让我们和我们的敌人都陷入了昏迷。

image: the economist

That thesis, he says, was borne out as he went to the front line in Avdiivka, also in the east, where Russia has recently advanced by a few hundred metres over several weeks by throwing in two of its armies. “On our monitor screens the day I was there we saw 140 Russian machines ablaze—destroyed within four hours of coming within firing range of our artillery.” Those fleeing were chased by “first-person-view” drones, remote-controlled and carrying explosive charges that their operators simply crash into the enemy. The same picture unfolds when Ukrainian troops try to advance. General Zaluzhny describes a battlefield in which modern sensors can identify any concentration of forces, and modern precision weapons can destroy it. “The simple fact is that we see everything the enemy is doing and they see everything we are doing. In order for us to break this deadlock we need something new, like the gunpowder which the Chinese invented and which we are still using to kill each other,” he says.
他说，这一论点在他前往东部的阿夫迪夫卡前线时得到了证实，俄罗斯最近在几周内投入了两支军队，向前推进了几百米。“在我到达那里的那天，在我们的监视器屏幕上，我们看到 140 台俄罗斯机器着火了——在进入我们大炮的射程后四小时内就被摧毁了。”那些逃跑的人被“第一人称视角”无人机追赶，这些无人机遥控并携带炸药，他们的操作员只是撞向敌人。当乌克兰军队试图前进时，同样的画面也展开了。扎卢日尼将军描述了一个战场，在这个战场上，现代传感器可以识别任何集中的力量，而现代精确武器可以摧毁它。“一个简单的事实是，我们看到敌人正在做的一切，他们也看到我们正在做的一切。为了打破这种僵局，我们需要一些新的东西，比如中国人发明的火药，我们仍在用它来互相残杀，“他说。

This time, however, the decisive factor will be not a single new invention, but by combining all the technical solutions that already exist, he says. In an article written for The Economist by General Zaluzhny (see here), as well as in a full-length essay shared with the newspaper, he urges innovation in drones, electronic warfare, anti-artillery capabilities and de-mining equipment, including new robotic solutions. “We need to ride the power embedded in new technologies,” says the general.
然而，这一次，决定性因素将不是一项新发明，而是通过结合所有已经存在的技术解决方案，他说。在扎卢日尼将军为《经济学人》撰写的一篇文章中，以及与该报分享的一篇长篇文章中，他敦促在无人机、电子战、反炮兵能力和排雷设备方面进行创新，包括新的机器人解决方案。“我们需要利用新技术中蕴含的力量，”将军说。

Western allies have been overly cautious in supplying Ukraine with their latest technology and more powerful weapons. Joe Biden, America’s president, set objectives at the start of Russia’s invasion: to ensure that Ukraine was not defeated and that America was not dragged into confrontation with Russia. This means that arms supplied by the West have been sufficient in sustaining Ukraine in the war, but not enough to allow it to win. General Zaluzhny is not complaining: “They are not obliged to give us anything, and we are grateful for what we have got, but I am simply stating the facts.”
西方盟国在向乌克兰提供最新技术和更强大的武器方面过于谨慎。美国总统乔·拜登（Joe Biden）在俄罗斯入侵之初就设定了目标：确保乌克兰不被击败，美国不被拖入与俄罗斯的对抗。这意味着西方提供的武器足以在战争中维持乌克兰，但不足以让它获胜。扎卢日尼将军并没有抱怨：“他们没有义务给我们任何东西，我们对我们所得到的表示感谢，但我只是在陈述事实。

But by holding back the supply of long-range missile systems and tanks, the West allowed Russia to regroup and build up its defences in the aftermath of a sudden breakthrough in Kharkiv region in the north and in Kherson in the south late in 2022. “These systems were most relevant to us last year, but they only arrived this year,” he says. Similarly, f-16 jets, due next year, are now less helpful, suggests the general, in part because Russia has improved its air defences: an experimental version of the s-400 missile system can reach beyond the city of Dnipro, he warns.
但是，在2022年底在北部的哈尔科夫地区和南部的赫尔松突然取得突破后，西方通过阻止远程导弹系统和坦克的供应，允许俄罗斯重新集结并建立防御。“这些系统去年与我们最相关，但它们直到今年才出现，”他说。同样，这位将军表示，明年到期的F-16喷气式飞机现在的帮助已经不那么大了，部分原因是俄罗斯改善了防空能力：他警告说，S-400导弹系统的实验版本可以到达第聂伯罗市以外的地方。

Yet the delay in arms deliveries, though frustrating, is not the main cause of Ukraine’s predicament, according to General Zaluzhny. “It is important to understand that this war cannot be won with the weapons of the past generation and outdated methods,” he insists. “They will inevitably lead to delay and, as a consequence, defeat.” It is, instead, technology that will be decisive, he argues. The general is enthused by recent conversations with Eric Schmidt, the former chief executive of Google, and stressed the decisive role of drones, and of electronic warfare which can prevent them from flying.
然而，扎卢日尼将军表示，武器交付的延迟虽然令人沮丧，但并不是乌克兰困境的主要原因。“重要的是要明白，这场战争不能用上一代的武器和过时的方法赢得，”他坚持说。“它们将不可避免地导致延误，并因此导致失败。”相反，技术将起决定性作用，他认为。这位将军最近与谷歌前首席执行官埃里克·施密特（Eric Schmidt）的谈话让他兴奋不已，并强调了无人机的决定性作用，以及可以阻止无人机飞行的电子战。

General Zaluzhny’s assessment is sobering: there is no sign that a revolutionary technological breakthrough, whether in drones or in electronic warfare, is around the corner. And technology has its limits. Even in the first world war, the arrival of tanks, in 1917, was not sufficient to break the deadlock on the battlefield: it took a suite of technologies, and more than a decade of tactical innovation, to produce the German blitzkrieg in May 1940. The implication is that Ukraine is stuck in a long war—one in which he acknowledges Russia has the advantage. Nevertheless, he insists that Ukraine has no choice but to keep the initiative by remaining on the offensive, even if it only moves by a few metres a day.
扎卢日尼将军的评估发人深省：没有迹象表明革命性的技术突破，无论是在无人机还是在电子战方面，都即将到来。技术有其局限性。即使在第一次世界大战中，1917 年坦克的到来也不足以打破战场上的僵局：1940 年 5 月，德国闪电战的诞生需要一套技术和十多年的战术创新。言下之意是，乌克兰陷入了一场长期的战争——他承认俄罗斯在这场战争中占有优势。尽管如此，他坚持认为，乌克兰别无选择，只能通过继续进攻来保持主动权，即使它每天只移动几米。

Crimea, he believes, remains Mr Putin’s greatest vulnerability. It is the linchpin of his imperial restoration project, and his legitimacy rests on having brought it back to Russia. Over the past few months, Ukraine has taken the war into the peninsula Mr Putin annexed in 2014 and which remains critical to the logistics of his war. “It must know that it is part of Ukraine and that this war is happening there.” On October 30th Ukraine struck Crimea with American-supplied long-range atacms missiles for the first time.
他认为，克里米亚仍然是普京最大的弱点。这是他的帝国复辟计划的关键，他的合法性取决于将其带回俄罗斯。在过去的几个月里，乌克兰将战争带入了普京在2014年吞并的半岛，这对他的战争后勤仍然至关重要。“它必须知道它是乌克兰的一部分，这场战争正在那里发生。”10 月 30 日，乌克兰首次用美国提供的远程 atacms 导弹袭击了克里米亚。

General Zaluzhny is desperately trying to prevent the war from settling into the trenches. “The biggest risk of an attritional trench war is that it can drag on for years and wear down the Ukrainian state,” he says. In the first world war, mutinies interfered before technology could make a difference. Four empires collapsed and a revolution broke out in Russia.
扎卢日尼将军正在拼命地试图阻止战争进入战壕。“消耗性堑壕战的最大风险是，它可能会拖延数年并削弱乌克兰国家，”他说。在第一次世界大战中，兵变在技术发挥作用之前就进行了干预。四个帝国崩溃，俄罗斯爆发了一场革命。

A collapse in Ukrainian morale and Western support is precisely what Mr Putin is counting on. There is no question in General Zaluzhny’s mind that a long war favours Russia, a country with a population three times and an economy ten times the size of Ukraine’s. “Let’s be honest, it’s a feudal state where the cheapest resource is human life. And for us…the most expensive thing we have is our people,” he says. For now, General Zaluzhny says, he has enough soldiers. But the longer the war goes on, the harder it will be to sustain. “We need to look for this solution, we need to find this gunpowder, quickly master it and use it for a speedy victory. Because sooner or later we are going to find that we simply don’t have enough people to fight.”■
乌克兰士气和西方支持的崩溃正是普京所指望的。毫无疑问，在扎卢日尼将军的心目中，一场长期的战争有利于俄罗斯，这个国家的人口是乌克兰的三倍，经济规模是乌克兰的十倍。“老实说，这是一个封建国家，最便宜的资源是人命。对我们来说...我们拥有的最昂贵的东西是我们的员工，“他说。扎卢日尼将军说，目前，他有足够的士兵。但战争持续的时间越长，就越难以维持。“我们需要寻找这个解决方案，我们需要找到这种火药，迅速掌握它并利用它来迅速取得胜利。因为迟早我们会发现，我们根本没有足够的人来战斗。■