CinC Zaluzhnyi names Ukraine’s three main objectives for 2024 in ongoing war

This is stated in an oped he penned for CNN, Ukrinform reports.

"In 2024, we must focus our main efforts in three areas Creating a system to provide our armed forces with high-tech assets.  Introducing a new philosophy of training and warfare which takes account of restrictions in assets and how they can be deployed. And mastering new combat capabilities as soon as possible," Zaluzhnyi wrote.

According to him, the experience of military operations conducted by the Armed Forces of Ukraine in 2022-2023 is truly unique, but it also obliges the command to constantly review the existing capabilities and explore ways to gain an advantage over the enemy. Such an advantage is possible if Ukraine uses relatively cheap, highest-end, and extremely effective technologies that are developing rapidly.

It is the attempt to take advantage of technological progress that would allow Ukraine to prevail in the scientific, technical, technological, and tactical battles and will lead not only to unconditional Victory, but also to saving and preserving resources by both Ukraine and our partners. The need to significantly increase the capabilities of unmanned systems and other modern systems, to positively influence the course of hostilities, prompts as a result the search for new forms and methods of use, which, in turn, will definitely affect the structure of both the Armed Forces and other elements of Ukraine’s defense forces, Zaluzhnyi believes.

• According to the commander-in-chief, such assets already allow commanders to monitor the situation on the battlefield in real time, day and night, and in all weather conditions;
• Provide real-time intelligence allowing the adjustment of fire around the clock, without pause; and
• Give Ukraine the ability to deliver high-precision strikes against enemy targets in forward positions and in depth.

According to Zaluzhnyi, “this means nothing less than the wholesale redesign of battlefield operations – and the abandoning of outdated, stereotypical thinking.”

Based on the experience of conducting hostilities and the outlook for battlefield developments, the following decisive conditions to achieve this result, in the CinC’s opinion, are:

• achieving absolute aerial superiority, especially at altitudes that provide effective attack, intelligence, surveillance, and logistics;
• depriving the enemy of opportunities to conduct offensive or defensive operations;
• increasing the mobility of troops and completely limiting the mobility of the adversary;
• ensuring safe access to designated positions, taking control of critical terrain; and
• depriving the enemy of opportunities to recover lost positions and expanding own efforts.

Zaluzhnyi noted that it is also important to address a number of operational tasks, for each such task, the required effects will be created thanks to the forces and means involved.

The CinC noted that in order to implement the conditions for creating the required effects, it is already necessary to consider as separate the following operations:

• Creation of a digital field;
• e-warfare situation control;
• Combined operation using attack drones and cyber assets; and
• Logistics.

“Such operations will be coordinated and conducted under a single concept and plan. Crucially, the aim will not always be solely combat in focus,” Zaluzhnyi believes.A

s for conducting operations directly to achieve effects, they will essentially be defensive and offensive. At the same time, Zaluzhnyi emphasized that, by type of execution, they may involve an operation to reduce the enemy's economic potential; complete isolation and exhaustion operation; robotic search-and-strike operation, robotic crisis area control operation, psychological strike operation, and defense technological non-contact operation.

This list of operations will constantly expand along with the development of tools involved, which leads to the need to create a new organizational structure. All this will be possible with flexible and quick response of government institutions to changes.

In his opinion, unmanned and other modern technological systems are of special significance.

In order to master new forms and methods, the Defense Forces need to create a completely new state system of technological rearmament, Zaluzhnyi believes.

“Taking everything into account at this moment, we think the creation of such a system could be achieved in five months. Our partners are of the same view,” he wrote.

“Our goal must be to seize the moment – to maximize our accumulation of the latest combat capabilities, which will allow us to commit fewer resources to inflicting maximum damage on the enemy, to end the aggression and protect Ukraine from it in the future,” Zaluzhnyi concluded.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, on the evening of January 29, a number of Telegram channels spread unverified reports that the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valerii Zaluzhnyi was allegedly dismissed from his post.

Reports about the alleged sacking of Defense Minister Rustem Umerov were also spread across social media. The Ministry of Defense issued a refutation without specifying the official in question.

In a comment to Ukrinform, Ukrainian President’s press secretary Serhiy Nikiforov stated that Volodymyr Zelensky did not fire Valerii Zaluzhnyi from his post.

Photo: General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces