Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said they need more time before initiating a highly anticipated counter-offensive against Russian forces, reports BBC.
He said this when the UK prepares to send Storm Shadow missiles to help Ukraine in war-front.
Britain's decision will make it the first country to provide longer-range missiles to Kyiv, which has been training a new contingent of forces and stockpiling Western-supplied munitions and hardware.
Analysts say these steps will be key to reclaiming territory captured by Russia, although the timing of the counter-offensive remains a question.
"Mentally we're ready...," Zelensky said in an interview with the BBC published Thursday. "In terms of equipment, not everything has arrived yet.
"With (what we have) we can go forward and be successful. But we'd lose a lot of people. I think that's unacceptable. So we need to wait. We still need a bit more time," he said.
But the head of Russia's Wagner private military company, Yevgeny Prigozhin, accused Zelensky of being "dishonest" in the interview.
Ukraine's counter-offensive "is in full swing", Prigozhin said.
Kyiv has spent months preparing to claw back ground in the eastern Donetsk and Lugansk regions, as well as the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions in the south.
Bd-pratidin English/Lutful Hoque
