Head of Ukraine's military says he has 'no doubt' the Russians 'will have another go at Kyiv' as Putin adds more troops to his army

• Russia is attacking civilian infrastructure to force a ceasefire, according to Ukraine's top general.
• Valerii Zaluzhnyi, head of Ukraine's armed forces, said Russia wants to regroup for a new offensive.

Russia is waging a kind of total war on Ukraine's infrastructure — terrorizing civilians and committing potential war crimes — in an effort to force a ceasefire that it will only use to replenish its forces ahead of a new offensive early next year, Ukraine's top military commander said in an interview published Thursday, warning that the Russian invaders will at some point again try to seize the nation's capital.

"The Russians are preparing some 200,000 fresh troops," General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, head of Ukraine's armed forces, told The Economist, referencing recent Russian mobilization efforts. "I have no doubt they will have another go at Kyiv."

Zaluzhnyi, who took command of the military less than a year before Russia's February 2022 invasion, suggested that Russia, despite humiliating setbacks in recent months, is on the verge of crippling Ukraine's energy infrastructure, which could have a devastating effect on the army's morale.

"I am not an energy expert but it seems to me we are on the edge. We are balancing on a fine line," he told the magazine.

If Russia succeeds in destroying Ukraine's power grid, he continued, "that is when soldiers' wives and children start freezing. And such a scenario is possible. What kind of mood the fighters will be in, can you imagine? Without water, light and heat, can we talk about preparing reserves to keep fighting?"

Earlier this month, holding a glass of champagne at a Kremlin awards ceremony, Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged that his armed forces are indeed targeting Ukraine's energy infrastructure — attacks that have left millions without electricity in the winter cold, a potential war crime. "Yes, we do that," he said. "But who started it?"

The Russian leader suggested that Ukraine was responsible for Russia's actions, pointing to an attack on a bridge to Crimea that has since been repaired.

Russian attacks on Ukraine's infrastructure, in many ways, come from a position of weakness. The Kremlin had prepared for no more than three months of war, Zaluzhnyi said. What the country's armed forces need now is a chance to regroup, possibly under the guise of peace. Putin himself has said the war may well be a "long process," but it's clear the conflict was not meant to be.

"So most likely they are looking for ways to stop [fighting] and get a pause by any means: shelling civilians, leaving our wives and children to freeze to death," he said. "They need it for one simple purpose: they need time to gather resources and create new potential so they can continue to fulfill their goals."

The conventional wisdom has been that Russia's most recent mobilization will result, at best, in thousands of demoralized conscripts being thrown into the meat grinder that is eastern Ukraine. But Zaluzhnyi said he does not believe those troops will be as lacking in patriotism and motivation as some might think.

"Russian mobilization has worked," he maintained. "It is not true that their problems are so dire that these people will not fight. They will. A tsar tells them to go to war, and they go to war. I've studied the history of the two Chechen wars — it was the same. They may not be that well equipped, but they still present a problem for us."

Ceasefire or not, Zaluzhnyi expects Russia will throw all its got at a new offensive "which may take place in February, at best in March, and at worst at the end of January," he said. "It may start not in Donbas, but in the direction of Kyiv, in the direction of Belarus, I do not rule out the southern direction as well."

Earlier this month, Ukraine's defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, told CNN that he's worried that a fresh Russian invasion could come from Belarus, whose authoritarian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, is a close ally of Putin — although, in a recent assessment, experts at the Institute for the Study of War argued that Belarus itself is unlikely to join the war.

Come what may, Zaluzhnyi said he was confident his forces can defeat their much larger adversary, provided that Ukraine's allies continue to aid its defense. "I know that I can beat this enemy," he insisted. "But I need resources."

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