NATO should brace for “bad news” coming out of Ukraine, Jens Stoltenberg, secretary general of the Western military alliance, has said.
“Wars develop in phases,” Mr. Stoltenberg told Germany’s ARD public broadcaster in a Dec. 3 interview.
“We have to support Ukraine in both good and bad times.
“We should also be prepared for bad news.”
Mr. Stoltenberg made the cryptic remarks amid increasingly frequent reports of Russian battlefield gains, especially in and around the flashpoint town of Avdiivka.
Located in the eastern Donetsk region, Avdiivka sits roughly 30 miles south of Bakhmut, which fell to Russian forces in May after nine months of fierce fighting.
Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy conceded that a months-long Ukrainian counteroffensive had failed to make significant headway.
“We wanted faster results,” Mr. Zelenskyy said in an interview with The Associated Press on Dec. 1.
“From that perspective, unfortunately, we did not achieve the desired results.”
The Ukrainian leader attributed the counteroffensive’s failure to insufficient supplies of Western arms and equipment.
“We didn’t get all the weapons we wanted,” he said.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine early last year, the West—with the United States at the lead—has provided Kyiv with tens of billions of dollars worth of arms and equipment.
These have included advanced combat drones, Western-made tanks, Patriot air-defense systems, HIMARS rocket launchers, and a host of other offensive weapons.
Mr. Stoltenberg called for stepped-up weapons production by NATO’s 31 members.
“We are working hard to ensure that this happens,” he told the German broadcaster. “The more we support Ukraine, the faster the war will end.”
However, despite continued Western largesse, Russian forces appear to have gained the upper hand in recent weeks.
In mid-November, Mr. Stoltenberg—in a departure from his typically rosy assessments—acknowledged that the battlefield situation in Ukraine is “difficult.”
At a Nov. 16 press conference, he told reporters that the situation in Avdiivka in particular is “more difficult than we hoped.”
Moscow rarely alludes to Avdiivka in official statements.
However, last week, Vitaliy Barabash, Avdiivka’s Kyiv-appointed military governor, said that Russian forces were moving in on the town “from all directions.”
Recent days have also seen reports—still unconfirmed—that Russian forces had overrun the town of Maryinka, located some 25 miles south of Avdiivka.
On Dec. 2, Oleh Zhdanov, a prominent Ukrainian military analyst, dismissed reports of a Russian breakthrough. Nevertheless, he went on to acknowledge that Russian forces were advancing on Maryinka.
“But the southwestern and northwestern parts of the town remain under the control of Ukrainian forces,” he told Reuters.
The Epoch Times couldn’t independently verify reports by either of the two warring parties.
Generals Reportedly Meeting
On Dec. 1, veteran journalist Seymour Hersh reported that private talks were underway between Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, commander of Ukraine’s military, and his Russian counterpart, Gen. Valery Gerasimov.Writing on Substack, Mr. Hersh cited anonymous U.S. intelligence sources to support his assertions.
According to the unnamed people, the two generals discussed proposals for ending the conflict, in which Kyiv would recognize Moscow’s sovereignty over territories captured by Russian forces.
These territories would also include the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia effectively annexed in 2014.
In return, Moscow would acquiesce to Ukraine’s acceding to NATO—on the condition that NATO troops and equipment weren’t deployed in the country.
According to Mr. Hersh’s sources, Gen. Zaluzhny’s private overture to his Russian counterpart had Washington’s endorsement.
U.S. State Department officials didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times regarding the claims made in Mr. Hersh’s report.
On Dec. 2, Russia’s TASS news agency published a brief report on Mr. Hersh’s explosive assertions. Another report on the same subject by Russia’s Sputnik news agency was taken offline shortly after publication.
Moscow has yet to issue a formal statement on any of the claims made by Mr. Hersh.
But on the same day that the report was published, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov appeared to pour cold water on any notion that talks—secret or otherwise—were underway.
Speaking at a summit of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Mr. Lavrov said, “We aren’t seeing any signs from Kyiv or its masters [i.e., its Western allies] that they are ready for any kind of political settlement.”
