Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Oleksandr Syrskyi states that there is a sufficient number of personnel to carry out rotations and replace those servicemen who have been on the positions for over 60 days.
"A special instruction was developed that defines the procedure for conducting this replacement, the procedure for preparing and creating units that must be prepared to replace servicemen who have been on the positions for a long time, over 60 days. And in fact, all this replacement turns into a special operation… Some criticize that we supposedly lack personnel, people. We know the situation, we know how many servicemen have been brought into the area of operation, how many are on the positions. And I can confidently state that this process is precisely provided with the number of people," Syrskyi said in an interview with TSN, aired on Tuesday.
He noted that not all forces and means in the rear are involved in the Armed Forces to support that number of servicemen: "there are many times fewer of them on the positions than in the rear areas."
"Therefore, everything is defined. And the process of the first rotation is now underway. It is not easy everywhere, primarily where active hostilities are taking place. Of course, this process is complicated… In some cases, we use special operations forces – where the situation is truly difficult – to ensure this process," said the commander-in-chief.
According to Syrskyi, every day they directly analyze how many servicemen have been withdrawn, how many have been replaced, "where this process is going successfully, where not entirely, so appropriate measures are taken."
At the same time, he emphasized that during the rotation process, decisions are sometimes made to abandon certain positions. "On some positions, sometimes a decision has to be made, perhaps even at my level, because when we understand that we cannot guarantee evacuation or replacement there, simply because these servicemen simply will not get there and will be killed. Therefore, it is better under certain conditions to simply withdraw personnel from that position, which no longer plays any role, and that must be a decision. There is no need to deceive ourselves and create illusions that, say, a separate position located in an infiltration zone can provide some deterrence of the enemy. Mostly, its role is reduced only to that of an observation post, which informs its commanders that it notices the movement of some enemy troops or groups," Syrskyi said.
