(Bloomberg) -- Volodymyr Zelenskiy rebuffed criticism that Ukraine’s military is too thinly stretched and should be massed for a single attack to achieve a breakthrough of Russian lines. 

Responding to a question about a report in the New York Times, in which US strategists said Ukrainian troops are too spread out and should instead be concentrated along the main front in Kyiv’s southern counteroffensive, the president said doing so could leave other cities vulnerable. 

Russian efforts to break through in eastern Ukraine could succeed in cities such as Slovyansk and Kramatorsk — and even the northern metropolis of Kharkiv, which Ukrainian troops took back last autumn, if Kyiv shifted some of the roughly 200,000 troops from the area, he said.

“We aren’t giving up Kharkiv, Donbas, Pavlohrad, Dnipro,” he said during a news briefing in Kyiv. 

Addressing the pace of the counteroffensive in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, he said soldiers often had to slog through minefields on foot to avoid damage to valuable armored vehicles because the areas are so heavily pitted with explosives.

“Where it’s tough, it’s going to be tough,” Zelenskiy said during a press briefing in Kyiv. “We are at war with Russia.” 

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