The senior Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) general for operations and planning said that he expects Russia to launch a major spring offensive and that Kyiv’s forces will meet it with agile counterattacks and even more lethal drone swarms.
Maj. Gen. Oleksandr Komarenko, Head of the Main Operational Directorate of the General Staff, in a Tuesday interview with the independent news platform RBC-Ukraine, said that he and his planners have a good understanding of the location of Russia’s forces deployed in Ukraine, their strength, and probable intentions and that Ukraine’s strategy will be to identify Russian weaknesses and exploit them.
Komarenko said: “We constantly monitor the enemy’s actions. We track where they have more forces, where less, where they are regrouping. We predict why they are doing it, what their further actions may be. For example, we can see a section or direction where we can achieve success, where the enemy’s troops are stretched, or where they have fewer troops, or if there is a terrain there that is conducive to active actions. That is, there is constant monitoring and from it comes an understanding of where it is possible to act.”
The AFU’s Main Operational Directorate (HOU) is responsible for planning operations and organizing offensives of the Defense Forces at the front. Members of the highly-secretive cell rarely speak in public.
Komarenko said HOU-developed operations in 2025 produced successful Ukrainian counter-offensives that defeated Russian attempts to capture the northern city Kuypansk, the eastern urban group Bakhmut-Dobropillya, and a tactically important belt of villages and high ground in the Hulyaipole-Zaporizhzhia sectors. Offensive operations – even in modern warfare conditions of near-total exposure to drone swarms, making legacy armored vehicles risky to use – are still possible and can succeed, he said. But planners must keep their mouths shut and look honestly at the enemy and battlefield conditions.
“The main principle is to talk less and act more. If you stick to that you will succeed. Indeed, right now, for about 20-25 kilometers [12-16 miles between troop lines] everything is visible, and will be attacked by drones and artillery. This is all the so-called ‘kill zone.’ Therefore, now we are waiting for adverse weather conditions – fog, rain, snow or strong wind, when drones cannot fly – in such conditions there is an opportunity to act… If you talk less, and instead act when there is opportunity, then surprises appear for the enemy. He should not know where to focus his attention,” Komarenko said.
The Kremlin plans to use infiltrating infantry advancing at the price of extremely heavy casualties in spring offensives, concentrating on the Donbas and Zaporizhzhia sectors. But those plans already are being made more complicated by Ukrainian reinforcements sent to those areas, who have launched local counterattacks that are interrupting Russian planning, he said. Komarenko declined to give tactical details citing operational security for ongoing operations.
According to independent military analysts and most Ukrainian mainstream media, the main effort of Ukraine’s counterattack operations has concentrated around the southern city Hulyaipole, with a task force led by veteran infantry units trained in urban fighting. In February they captured more than a dozen outlying villages captured by Russian detachments earlier in 2026.
The main principle is to talk less and act more. If you stick to that you will succeed.
Offensive operations in the southern Zaporizhzhia sector are being carried out by assault troops and are supported by mechanized brigades in a planned offensive operation “that has gone through all the procedures of approval, coordination, etc.,” Komarenko said, and now those forces have mostly shifted to the defensive per that plan.
“Almost the entire territory of the Dnipropetrovsk region has been liberated. Three small settlements remain to be completed and two more to be cleared,” he said.
Commander of all Ukraine forces, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, in a Tuesday announcement published on his personal Telegram channel confirmed counterattack operations around Hulyaipole (aka “Oleksandrivka direction”) were continuing, and argued the Ukrainian strategy of forcing Russia to transfer troops from priority sectors to sectors chosen by the AFU, is working.
“We are continuing counteroffensive operations in the Oleksandrivka direction. Here, the DShV (air assault infantry) group regained control over 285.6 sq. km. in a month. In total, since the beginning of the operation, control over more than 400 sq. km. of territory has been restored… The Russian aggressor is numerically superior by almost three times, but given our active actions, the enemy is forced to postpone the dates of its planned operations, patch holes in its defenses and transfer troops from other sectors,” Syrsky said.
Ukrainian counterattacks in January-February 2026 in the Zaporizhzhia sector forced Kremlin planners to reduce forces committed to the Donbas sector further east, a Russian priority, and Russian attacks around the cities Myrhorod and Pokrovsk – both top Kremlin objectives since 2024 – in March fell to the lowest levels in more than a year, a Kyiv Post review of General Staff daily situation updates found.
Brig. Gen. Pavlo Palisa, deputy head of the Office of the President, in Sunday comments to the Donbas Realii news platform said that national defense production was focusing on equipping frontline units with critical tactical weapons like drones and artillery shells, and on developing more high-tech weaponry produced in Ukraine for use in long-range strikes against Russia, and defending against Russian long-range drones and missiles.
“Right now more than 50 percent of all equipment used by the AFU is still produced in Ukraine and… this percentage is constantly growing. This is very good, but usually there are things that at the moment we are not able to do in the required quantity or in the required quality as partner countries do. This is a giant task that is being worked on constantly,” Palisa said.
Palisa named development of Ukraine-made ballistic missiles and advanced air defense systems as top priorities, but warned that fielding weapons like that would not be soon, and that Ukrainian high-end air defenses in coming months would be dependent on foreign assistance in coming months.
Komarenko said that in order to interrupt and undermine renewed Russian attacks expected in the east and the south in March-May, the AFU is planning flexible, active defenses that would force Russian forces to fight on terms and in locations chosen by Ukraine’s generals.
“Our intelligence is working, obtaining information. In accordance with the enemy’s actions, we plan our defensive actions. But simply reacting to the enemy’s actions will not achieve success. If we do not have the initiative, and instead simply fight back, then sooner or later we will be finished off. Therefore, actions are planned separately that will force the enemy to change their plans and act in a way that they did not plan – in order to impose our initiative on the enemy,” he said.
“And these will not necessarily be direct actions of the troops, we are also planning asymmetric actions. There will be something unexpected,” Komarenko said.