Gen Christian Freuding, an adviser to German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius, says that Ukraine’s military is succeeding and Russia’s has suffered huge losses.
“Eighty per cent of Ukraine is still free… The Russian Black Sea Fleet has de facto been pushed out of the western Black Sea,” Gen Freuding told the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. He was referring to Ukraine’s attack on a Russian battleship earlier this week, which has diminished Russia’s ability to launch missile strikes from the sea.
Referring to recent US estimates, Gen Freuding says that 300,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or seriously wounded, losses he calls “enormous”.
Russia will emerge from the war “weakened,” he says. But he also adds that Moscow might be able to reconstitute its forces in around five to eight years – a timeframe he says should be taken into account by Western countries when determining how to maintain “deterrence” against Moscow.