Russia has overtaken Ukraine in battlefield innovation, Ukrainian Ambassador to the United Kingdom and former commander-in-chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi said during a defence forum, Strana reports.

“We need to talk about this honestly,” Zaluzhnyi stated, acknowledging that Ukraine can no longer consistently develop or scale military innovations, even in areas where it had previously outpaced Russia. “Ukraine is currently unable to continuously generate and scale innovations even in those areas where it was recently more developed than the Russian Federation,” he said.

Technological innovation has been swinging backward and forwards between the two combatants over the last three years, especially in electronic warfare (EW) and the drone war.

While Kyiv retains some technological capabilities, the ambassador said they are limited and insufficient to support the country’s broader defence and survival strategy. “The Ukrainian side has its own technological achievements, but they are quite limited and do not cover the entire spectrum necessary for implementing the survival strategy,” he noted.

Zaluzhnyi has been bluntly outspoken in the past and upset Bankova (Ukraine’s equivalent of the Kremlin) by saying the war had reached a stalemate in an interview with The Economist in 2023. Nevertheless, the widely respected general is well liked by the public and is currently leading the polls as a possible successor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy should presidential elections be held. The combination led Zelenskiy to fire him and send him to London.

Zaluzhnyi pointed to an “absolutely obvious” reliance on foreign military and economic assistance, underlining the scale of the challenges faced by Ukraine more than three years into Russia’s full-scale invasion. He cited a severe shortage of human resources as well and described the economic situation in Ukraine as “catastrophic.”