Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov has said that a few more victories of the Ukrainian Armed Forces at the front will send the Russian troops running.
"I will try to explain my feeling, or I would even say conviction. Why did most of the world not believe in Ukraine's victory and believe in our imminent defeat? There are several factors. The first one is that we have always been perceived as a former Soviet country, that we may be partially from the Soviet Union, maybe even partially from Russia, confusion, similar languages, say, information history," he said in an interview with RBC-Ukraine.
Second, according to him, the Ukrainian Armed Forces were perceived as a small Soviet army that would oppose the great Soviet army.
And the third factor, according to Reznikov, is the difference between a Ukrainian soldier in the battlefield and a Russian soldier. Half of the Russian soldiers "were on their way to training, half were on their way for an easy walk with their parade uniforms already in the tank". While the Ukrainian military are defending their country, they have a completely different morality.
"We have no other option, we have to survive as a nation, a country and people. And these are completely incomparable things. And that is why I am convinced that a few more successes on the front in the form of victories, however small, will result in the Russian troops fleeing, and they will, believe me, because we are destroying their logistical chains, warehouses and so on. And the question will arise: where will they go? And morale... it will be like an avalanche, one line of defence will shake and they will all crumble," Reznikov said.
He recalled that previously Russian troops had already fled Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy regions when the Ukrainian Armed Forces started pushing them out.
"They called it an 'act of good will' because they understood that they were facing their end there. There was nothing to feed them, to fuel their tanks, because we were disrupting their [supply] chains. The same is happening now with the use of high-precision artillery and equipment, that is why there is such a chance that this avalanche will fly faster," he said.
At the same time, Reznikov abstained from predicting the war's end.
"What will be the scenario of getting out of this war? I would not dare to predict it now because it will depend on our partners in the world too," he explained.
Ukrainian troops have recently advanced several tens of kilometres deep in the south of the country.
In recent days, they have liberated over a thousand square kilometres of Ukrainian territory from the occupiers. In certain directions, Ukrainian troops have penetrated the enemy defence up to 50 km deep. More than 30 settlements temporarily occupied by the Russians in Kharkiv Region have been liberated or taken under control.