Currently Online 
“We told the Ukrainians if they try and fight like the Russians, they will lose,” a senior Defense Department official said. “Our mission was to help Ukraine compensate for quantitative inferiority with qualitative superiority.” https://t.co/QFCW2v6imm
— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) October 22, 2022
Finally, in February, Zaluzhnyi agreed to share his plan for defending Ukraine. A defense attaché from the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, an Air Force colonel, was summoned to a meeting at the general-staff headquarters and shown a one-page sketch of Ukrainian positions and defensive schemes. She was not given a copy, and was permitted to take only handwritten notes. Even having stipulated these conditions, Zaluzhnyi was less than forthcoming. His subordinates showed the attaché a false version of the plan, masking the full scope of the defensive campaign.
Ultimately, Zaluzhnyi's strategy was to prevent the capture of Kyiv at all costs, while, in other areas, letting Russian forces run ahead of their logistics and supply lines. The idea was to trade territory in the short term in order to pick off Russian units once they were overextended. "We trusted no one back then," a senior Ukrainian military official said. "Our plan was our one tiny chance for success, and we did not want anyone at all to know it."
Essay Pro