Ukraine plans ‘million-strong’ army to retake south from Russia

‘Give us the tools, we will finish the job,’ says Oleksii Reznikov in reference to Winston Churchill

Volodymyr Zelensky is said to have told Ukraine’s military to prepare a counteroffensive in the south (Presidential press service/EPA)

Ukraine is planning to arm a million-strong force with western-supplied weapons as it seeks to retake southern territories seized by Russia, Kyiv’s defence minister has claimed.

President Volodymyr Zelensky has told Ukraine’s military to retake coastal areas vital to the country’s economy, Oleksii Reznikov said, as Kyiv’s forces continued to engage in fierce fighting over control of the eastern Donbas region.

In a public appeal for Ukraine’s allies to expedite weapons shipments, Mr Reznikov warned that “each day we’re waiting for howitzers we can lose a hundred soldiers”, channelling Winston Churchill as he added: “Give us the tools, we will finish the job.”

Suggesting that Nato had initially underestimated Kyiv’s determination and overestimated Russia’s strength, the minister said he believed that Western countries were stepping up arms supplies now because Ukrainians had proved that they could fight.

“I tried to explain that after eight years of hybrid war we have more than 400,000 veterans plus their relatives in different parts of the world,” he told The Times. “Workers from Poland to Portugal decided to return to Ukraine to defend their country.”

“We have approximately 700,000 in the armed forces and when you add the national guard, police, border guard, we are around a million strong,” added Mr Reznikov, a former soldier in the Soviet airborne forces who assumed his current post last November.

Despite reports that western leaders have advised Ukraine not to attempt a major counteroffensive yet, Mr Reznikov said that “politically, it’s very necessary for our country” to retake parts of the south, which were captured swiftly at the outset of Vladimir Putin’s war using troops from annexed Crimea.

“The president has given the order to the supreme military chief to draw up plans. After that the general staff are doing their homework and say to achieve this goal we need X, Y, Z,” he said. “This is my job. I’m writing letters to counterparts in partner countries, the generals talk about why we need this kind of weaponry and then we get the political decisions.”

Over the weekend, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk urged residents in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia to evacuate ahead of a counter-offensive effort which she warned would be a “huge battle”.

But analysts suggest that the defence minister’s comments are more of a broad rallying cry than a precise statement of intent, according to the BBC.

Rescuers clear the scene on Sunday after shelling in the eastern town of Chasiv Yar (AFP/Getty)

“It's not a million-strong force that will be conducting a counterattack,” Dr Jack Watling, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, told the broadcaster.

“Normally you would want operational surprise when you launch a counterattack, so announcing it publicly is partly about forcing the Russians to have to commit resources more widely to guard against this threat.”

Ukraine recently withdrew from its last major strongholds in Luhansk, the cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, in what Mr Reznikov claimed were tactical losses necessary to save lives rather than strategic defeats.

His remarks echoed those by the Ukrainian military that the withdrawal from Lysychansk earlier this month had been “in order to preserve the lives of Ukrainian defenders”, with Mr Zelensky later vowing Ukraine “will return thanks to our tactics, thanks to the increase in the supply of modern weapons”.

On Sunday night, Mr Zelensky dismissed suggestions of an “operational pause” by Moscow following its capture of the two cities, as an onslaught of Russian strikes were alleged to have killed dozens of civilians in the country’s east and south.

Ukraine’s national police force also announced that it was opening a criminal investigation into the alleged destruction of hundreds of hectares of crops and granaries in the southern Kherson region, as Russia appears to be striking repeated hammer blows at a key pillar of the Ukrainian economy.

Large-scale fires are said to be taking place every day, with residents allegedly being stopped from extinguishing them by Russian forces.