Ukraine has one million ready for fightback to recapture south

Ukraine is massing a million-strong fighting force equipped with western weapons to recover its southern territory from Russia, the nation’s defence minister has revealed to The Times.

In his first interview with a British newspaper since the invasion began, Oleksii Reznikov said President Zelensky had ordered Ukraine’s military to retake occupied coastal areas which are vital to the country’s economy.

“We understand that, politically, it’s very necessary for our country. 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 XYZ,” 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.”

Ben Wallace, Britain’s defence secretary, was key to helping shift the approach from providing Soviet equipment to Nato standard 155mm artillery, guided multiple launch rocket systems and high-tech drones, he said. The intensity of the war is rapidly depleting Soviet-era stockpiles.

“It was a long process, a month and a half, but we got a result. Ukraine had a Soviet-era armed forces with thirty-year-old weapons. We changed this in three months.”

The minister, 56, said he was satisfied with the support Ukraine was receiving from Nato partners but not the pace of deliveries. “We need more, quickly, to save the lives of our soldiers. Each day we’re waiting for howitzers, we can lose a hundred soldiers.”

Western countries were only stepping up arms supplies now because Ukraine had proved it could fight, he said, having underestimated the determination to defend itself and over- estimated the strength of the Russian army at the start of the invasion.

“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,” Reznikov said. “Workers from Poland to Portugal decided to return to Ukraine to defend their country.”

As the Russians advanced on the capital in February, his government distributed 21,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles to people signing up to the capital’s territorial defence in just two days. By the tenth day, 130,000 Ukrainians across the country had joined territorial defence forces.

“We’re people of the free world and with a real sense of justice and liberty. 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.”

British soldiers are already training two battalions of Ukrainian soldiers in England as part of Boris Johnson’s pledge to train 10,000 troops every 120 days. Kyiv is not concerned the prime minister’s imminent departure could derail that commitment, the minister said.

“We’ve looked into the eyes of our partners, I have a great relationship with Ben Wallace and James Heappey, our minister of foreign affairs Dymtro Kuleba is speaking with Liz Truss, I saw in London a lot of Ukrainian flags in all official buildings and unofficial buildings too.”

The British efforts will help boost the Ukrainian army after heavy losses defending the Donbas region in the face of a massed Russian artillery onslaught, where President Zelensky said Ukraine was losing as many as 200 men a day.

Ukraine’s recent withdrawals from two cities in the Luhansk region, Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, were tactical losses necessary to save lives rather than strategic defeats, he stressed. The democratic world had united to defeat Russia and this war would finally end its empire, he said.

“We are sure the anti-Kremlin coalition was born. Our partners in London and Washington DC and other capitals, they are invested in us, not only with money but the expectations of their people that we have to make the Kremlin lose. We have to win this war together,” Reznikov said.

Even Putin’s old alliances with Hungary and Kazakhstan were splintering, he added, pointing to President Toqayev’s pledge to uphold sanctions on Russia and his refusal to recognise its territorial claims, sparking a trade war between the two largest former Soviet states that has culminated in Moscow shutting a key pipeline for Kazakh oil.

“I’m sure that in the next few years we will see a procession of calls for sovereignty on Russian territory. The Russian Federation will finish its life as different countries — Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, etc.”

A career lawyer, Reznikov came to politics driven by a strong sense of justice that continues to sustain him through the war. During the 2004 Orange Revolution he and his law firm partner Serhii Vlasenko volunteered to join the legal team of opposition candidate Viktor Yuschenko, as they sought to overturn the fraudulent presidential election of the pro-Kremlin Viktor Yanukovych. Yuschenko had been poisoned during his election campaign.

“When I heard the declaration that Yankouvych had won, I felt it was unfair, it was my personal challenge as a citizen to defend my right to vote and my right to have a real president after a fair and transparent calculation of the votes,” Reznikov recalled.

“There was a big meeting in the office, there were probably 30 or 40 lawyers. Mykola Katerinchuk, the lead lawyer, asked everybody who is ready to show their face in court tomorrow? There was silence in the room. My eyes met my partners’ and we raised our hands. Everyone understood it’s a real risk to be in this court, you became a target for Yanukovych’s gangsters.”

After the Euromaidan revolution in 2014, he agreed to join heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko on the Kyiv city council while on sabbatical. He was later drawn into negotiations with Russia over the fate of occupied Donetsk and Luhansk in an effort to highlight his Alternative Dispute Resolution practice.

As a former soldier in the Soviet airborne forces, where he learnt to parachute, dive and shoot a sniper rifle, he thought he would be able to negotiate with former Russian comrades. He soon learnt they were paralysed by fear of Putin, he said.

“When I’m a negotiator, I have a mandate but I have flexibility to maneouver, to bargain, to try to find a solution for all sides, to try to persuade them there is a win-win situation. I know my president will back me up.

“Their side is inflexible — it’s like they have an FSB officer’s gun to their temples. They have a narrative that was signed by the President of Russia, so they will go down this unreal propaganda track. They are not going for compromise.”

When President Zelensky offered him the defence minister’s position in November 2021 it came as a surprise to him and his family. He is married to Yulia Zorii, 36, a presenter on a popular Ukrainian morning TV show and has two children, a daughter aged 32 and a son aged 18 from a previous marriage. He has two young grandchildren aged two and seven.

He said: “I still believe I’m not a politician, I’m trying to see myself as a public servant. When I was appointed in November, I made a deal with Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces General Zaluzhnyi. I told him I’m a lawyer, I’m not a military commander. Tell me what you need to defend our country better, I will try to find it, I will try to persuade our partners to give us these things.”

The Russian army’s behaviour in Ukraine, slaughtering civilians, pillaging their homes and raping and executing women and children had helped him make his case, he said. Evidence of mass killings in Bucha, the first of dozens of towns liberated by Ukrainian forces, had helped the world realise what the Ukrainians were fighting for. “After Bucha people in other countries understood that the Russian army is an army of rapists, looters and murderers.

 “They live in a world of different values, they believe in the right of force, whoever has more power is right. They want to rebuild the Berlin wall. We are defending the eastern wall of the European civilisation and democratic values.”

This was the argument he had made to Ukraine’s partners, he said, channelling Winston Churchill’s plea to the Americans for military aid before they entered the second world war. “Give us the tools, we will finish the job.”