The Russian commander of the “Vostok” Battalion fighting in southern Ukraine said on Thursday that Ukraine will not be defeated and suggested that Russia freeze the war along current frontlines.
Alexander Khodakovsky made the candid concession yesterday on his Telegram channel after Russian forces, including his own troops, were devastatingly defeated by Ukrainian marines earlier this week at Urozhaine in the Zaporizhzhia-Donetsk regional border area.
“Can we bring down Ukraine militarily? Now and in the near future, no,” Khodakovsky, a former official of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, said yesterday.
“When I talk to myself about our destiny in this war, I mean that we will not crawl forward, like the [Ukrainians], turning everything into [destroyed] Bakhmuts in our path. And, I do not foresee the easy occupation of cities,” he said.
I think many people are forgetting that the larger army, vastly outnumbering Ukrainian resources in numbers, has not won a victory since the beginning of the invasion. And only presents a problem because the 2 countries cannot reliably use air power to overcome 1st WW trench warfare. Russia has defenses, but no ability to move forward. They are just trying to hold on to what they took in those first few months and are very slowly failing at that. If Ukraine can keep going, supported by the West, Russia will lose. I do not think Russia will use nukes – any use of a nuke is basically on Russia’s own land – according to them – and will affect them as much as Ukraine. But the question of ending the war is an interesting one. Do we see Russia continuing the war if they lose most of their ill-gotten territorial gains? What happens to those insecure areas? Are people going to rebuild, i.e. invest scarce resources in unstable areas? Or will they just become dead zones, DMZ borders?
Are you still of the opinion that Russia is slowly losing its position and is incapable of moving forward?
Ukraine will run out of material before they reach the Azov sea. You can calculate this yourself based on the verified losses and land gained. In addition manpower isn’t infinite for Ukraine.
Everyone who supports Russia is a fascist.
Where did she state she was supporting Russia
You are suffering from brain worms. In your world anything that isn’t Slava Ukraina = Russian Support = fascism.
You are mentioning 2 different resources: 1. Materiel, 2. Manpower. After an initial bumpy start where Ukraine did indeed lose a few valuable pieces of equipment, you cannot point to any significant loses in the last month – except on the Russian side. And Russia does not have extensive resources thanks to the international sanctions. Russia is now moving troops from one point of attack to another, meaning they no longer have reserves to apply. They have already gone through the prison population, and the lasty conscription drive caused many people to move abroad. They are now conscripting people who have the least motivation to fight and giving them little training. These are death sentences. Meanehile, Ukraine continues to be supported by Western financials and technology. You are perhaps expecting a “blowout” scenario like in Kherkov last year. But placing a greater value on life, Ukraine has been going slow and carefully to minimize losses on thier side. The exact thing you see as a weakness is actually resource protection.
Check it out: https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-ukrainian.html?m=1.
Ukraine doesn’t have enough Bradleys and Leapords to reach the sea using current tactics.
The US has just approved the transfer of F-16s to Ukraine. So that might change soon. IIRC, Ukraine has had a shortage of airplanes to use. Russia has been very reluctant to use the airplanes that they have because they keep getting shot down, and they simply can’t replace them at the speed necessary (especially since their economy has crashed, and China is the only country that can supply them with the circuitry that they need).
A bigger problem is that Russia has air defenses and air bases inside Russia. NATO in general has been very reluctant to transfer offensive weapons to Ukraine that would make it possible to strike those–entirely legitimate–targets inside of Russia, because that would be an escalation. But to have air superiority, you need to ensure that those SAM batteries, RADAR installations, and forward air bases are not in the picture. So to break the stalemate, Ukraine has to be able to make strikes against Russia, in Russian territory. That’s potentially very dangerous.
If it’s allowed to grind on, Russia wins eventually, because they have a population many times the size of Ukraine, and can keep throwing bodies at them. So Ukraine needs to win air superiority, which means striking targets inside of Russia.
The F-16s will need parts, logistics, and weapons, the pilots and ground crews will need extensive training… those jets will do nothing this year. Perhaps next year though. I agree that Ukraine is fighting with one arm tied due to NATO fears of nuclear retaliation. Is that a reasonable fear? I think so. Putin is not a sane or reasonable person. And Ukraine has shown the capability to hit Russian targets within Russian territory. If the Ukrainians were allowed to hit harder, deeper, more sensitive targets in Russia, the war would escalate – Russia would not want to be seen as beaten by its little neighbor. A shame, agree or disagree, but right now, those are the rules of war that Ukraine must abide by for continued support from NATO.
Russia has been beaten by most of the smaller countries that it’s gone toe-to-toe against. The only particularly big win that Russia (or the USSR) has had in the past century was WWII, and that was because the USSR was getting an enormous amount of material assistance from… The US. source Russia’s aggressive actions against the Baltic countries are precisely why Estonia, Latvia, etc. joined NATO. And countries have to ask to join NATO. Without Russian aggression, there is no NATO.
You have a whole entire counteroffensive that shows the exact opposite.
Also
Have you taken a look at a map of the current situation? That’s just straight up bullshit
Don’t be mean to them, they’re manifesting victory and you’re harshing the energy.
I know you’re being sarcastic but no, they don’t deserve being talked to nicely. All these bloodthirsty libs are happy to dance on the graves of thousands upon thousands of Ukrainians because of some vague notion of the west being ‘the good guys’, gladly ignoring history but being incredibly smug in their ignorance. We provide sources, walls of text to explain where we’re coming from, only for them to ignore all the work and effort we put in and go back to their fuckin bubble to complain about how we’re ‘tankies’ and pat each other on the back for being anti-amperialist NATO lovers, lacking either the knowledge or the ideological spine to see the absolute hypocrisy in what they’re doing. Or the smug reddit tier comment saying ‘I ain’t reading all that’ because they need spend a fucking minute reading the thoughts of someone better informed than them.
Nothing more despicable than Putin bros like you invoking the “lives of Ukrainians” while regurgitating Putin propaganda. Literally Der Stürmer material in people like you.
TL;DR?
No
It would take you less that 15 seconds to just read the comment.
how’s this analysis working out for ya?
I’m pretty sure once Ukraine has thrown away enough lives trying to get to the first line of defense, Russia is going to use their mobilized army to roll up the coast line all the way up to Transnistria.
“thrown away”
A few weeks of NATO training and then sending them into minefields without sufficient artillery support or any air support at all is absolutely, 100%, throwing away lives. Particularly since anybody not huffing their own farts has known from day one that Russia would be able to keep any land they really want, there is no path to victory for Ukraine and there never has been without direct NATO intervention.
And this is precisely how NATO likes it, as long as Ukraine isn’t part of NATO then there is no obligation for NATO to get involved directly. They can just keep the proxy war going as long as they see it beneficial, and then cut and run when it burns itself out.
I mean marching a bunch of barely-trained 50 year old conscripts into known killzones or over minefields is absolutely throwing those lives away.
And this is based on the overwhelming success of the current Russian attempts?
Yes
By this time next year Ukraine will not have any coastline under their control.
I’m willing to take that bet. Just like Russia will take Kiev in 3 days. Just like Ukraine would be under Russian control in a matter of months. Just like many other Russian PR predictions, worthless.
…Those predictions were Western ones, not Russian ones.
So western lol
Oh damn I didn’t realize Belarus was Russia, this changes everything
Oh damn I didn’t realize Belarus was western, this changes everything.
I absolutely love the incomprehension on the part of liberals of why Russia didn’t just throw freshly mobilized troops into a meat grinder the way Ukraine is doing. Instead, they sensibly spent the time building multi-layer defences, and training the troops knowing that the west would push Ukraine into the offensive in order to justify all the spending.
It is kind of unbelievable that they don’t understand a smaller country can’t just send able bodied young men in to a defensive line to get slaughtered indefinitely. Vibes based world view. You’d think there are enough gamers in the world that the average commentator would understand how “camping” works as a strategy.
There was an actual article in WaPo that flat out said that the west knew that Ukraine didn’t have enough equipment to do the offensive, but pushed them into it anyways because they thought their motivation and gumption would make up for it. You just can’t make this shit up:
How does that saying go?
I keep telling everyone to read Sun Tzu because he’s very specific, numerous times, about not doing this specific thing. : p
The fact that they thought this could work shows that western sponsors of the proxy war are completely detached from reality. If they made an obvious blunder like this, one has to wonder what other terrible blunders have they been making over the past two years. It’s clearly that they’re completely out of their depth here. Yet, people still think they’re going to win because they project this level of stupidity on the Russians.
Gotta have a highly specific definition of “victory” to say something like this
Well, let’s use the Russian definitions… Did they take Kiev within 3 days? No. Did they hold Kherson? No. Are they able to stop the Ukrainians? No. There has not been any significant ground taken by the Russians in the last few months. Were they able to defend against Ukrainian attacks on the Black Sea? No. After losing their Moskva flagship, they still are suffering attacks on infrastructure, warchips, and bridges. So I am happy to use the limited in context term of victory, while not being so pendantic that it loses meaning.
This was never a goal, as even American military analysts will tell you.
This is outside the separatist regions.
The front has not moved appreciably in almost a year.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/7/12/analysis-ukraine-rolls-back-6-months-of-russian-gains-in-5-weeks
Less than 100 square miles.
Ah well since you quoted the actual number now the point is moot, good argument! Lol
Yes?
Did they take back all the Russian speaking territories actually in question? Yes
The city of Dnipro would disagree.
That’s outside the separatist regions.
It is Russian-speaking like OP specified, though, as well as Ukraine’s 4th largest city.
If they only cared about Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk they had them and could have done nothing new, but they tried to take the whole country and so now here we are.
They never tried to take the whole country. That’s just fantasy and doesn’t make sense for a dozen reasons.
About two thirds of Dnipro speaks Russian at home, but ethnic Russians are only 25-30% of the population (see “Demographics”). I would imagine this is why the city is predominantly not separatists.
I mean, it used to be more pro Russian, but then Russia changed a lot of minds by actually showing up in 2014.
Riiight.
Russia’s first failure was being a Fascist state that relies on Nazis for their openly imperialist agenda.
Your biggest failure is being a fascist that doesn’t even realize it.
You’re a child
Again, you guys are basically doing nothing but projecting. One of you hexbear brigaders literally thought comparing the real world to video games made for a good example to back up your claims.
I think many people are forgetting that the larger army, vastly outnumbering Ukrainian resources in numbers, has spent the past 9 months creating multilayered defences that the Ukrainian army has been banging their head against for the past 10 weeks. Ukraine no longer has a functioning military industry of its own or even an economy to speak of. It’s entirely dependent on the west at this point.
NATO scrounged up all they had for this offensive, and US even ran out of shells to give having to resort to cluster munitions. NATO also trained Ukrainian soldiers. Now all of this is being lost without any actual progress being made. Ukraine hasn’t even managed to reach the first defence line being mired in the security zone.
What we will see is that once the offensive burns itself out, Russia will start an offensive of their own against a depleted and demoralized Ukrainian army. The west will not be able to send more ammunition and equipment because it doesn’t exist, and Ukraine will have lost majority of their trained and motivated soldiers who can’t be replaced.
Even western sources are now admitting that Ukraine is suffering far higher losses than Russia, and that this is primarily an artillery battle where Russia vastly outnumbers Ukrainian artillery. 80% of casualties were being caused by Russian artillery.
Yes, artillery is at the core of Russian military doctrine. But this only means the rest of its technology is not being used. Where is air superiority? Non-existent. Russia is afraid to put aircraft in Ukrainian sights. Where are the huge tank battles? Non-existent because the Western technology makes Swiss cheese out of even their heaviest armor. I am amazed that someone can still believe in the Russian military when despite overwhelming numbers, Russia has not been able to defend itself against its neighbor, 1/5th its size and certainly less prepared for war. You think it’s a sign of victory that Russia is now using WW2 era tanks they are pulling out of storage? If anything, that shows exactly who is running out of materiel to run the war. And NATO has plenty of munitions. I think you are confusing production and capacity. Are the production of artillery and war machines too low? Yes, and NATO is addressing those issues. However, NATO has huge reserves of munitions sitting in warehouses that it hasn’t even tapped yet. Most of the donations to Ukraine have not even been of NATO’s best stock. It just happened to be a way of clearing old munitions. In some cases, both the US and Germany were going to destroy or mothball equipment only to reroute it to Ukraine. NATO is not running out of stock, it is simply getting rid of old inventory and ramping up production on new munitions. This takes time, but they are not running out. Unlike Russia… What will Russia do next? Having their Cossacks go back to fighting on horseback when the WW2 tanks run out of parts?
Did you somehow miss all the videos of Russian aviation taking out tanks on daily basis, or the fact that Russia does massive air strike campaigns against entire Ukraine weekly for many months now? Meanwhile, Ukraine has no air force to speak of, and at this point doesn’t even have much of air defence. What you’re saying is demonstrably false.
There aren’t huge tank battles because Russia is letting Ukraine blow up all their tanks in minefields and hunts them down with lancets. The battles we’ve seen so far are Ukrainian columns following a single mine clearing vehicle that gets taken out by a helicopter or artillery. Then the column ends up being stuck because it’s in a minefield, and the rest of the vehicles are systematically destroyed. These were the first two weeks of the offensive after which Ukraine abandoned the fabled NATO tactics and went back to sending penny packets of troops to get ground down by artillery.
That’s because you have absolutely no clue regarding the subject you’re opining on. Here’s what an actual expert has to say https://www.russiamatters.org/analysis/whats-ahead-war-ukraine
What this actually shows is that Russia doesn’t even feel the need to pull out its modern equipment, they’re clearing out their old inventory the exact same way NATO is.
Biden literally admitted that US ran out of high explosive shells to send. This is also admitted by mainstream media. Meanwhile, this is what the "dramatic increase in production actually looks like:
That’s what Russia uses on daily basis, and Russia produces over a million shells a year
You really should spend a bit of time educating yourself instead of spreading misinformation here.
I don’t think this person is worth arguing with. That last comment of theirs was such a comprehensively silly thing to say. “Where are the huge tank battles?” serious? This isn’t a movie. They’re chewing up the UA army with artillery. Assuming they’re not using tanks for indirect fire what would they use them for? It’s not like they need to g find the Ukrainians, they’re walking light infantry right in to prepared defenses.
It’s also really funny that people think there’s much of a difference between a tank from 1945 and a tank from 2015 if they both die to one hit from an ATGM or modern kinetic penetrator. They’re both equally defended against machine guns, splinter, and maybe even auto cannons up to a certain point.
Completely agree, a lot of western propaganda relies on the fact that most people have no clue on the subject. They expect wars to look like movies or games, but real life is very different.
Why? Do they enjoy dragging this conflict for more than a year? Is there some reason to why they don’t use some sci-fi orbital blaster?
If you lived there, Ukraine or Russia, doesn’t matter, and have served, you’d knew how deeply you are wrong. Bet you didn’t, and I did. Post-soviet army culture is what makes me suspect they don’t have anything breathtaking you think they have in worthy quantities.
Opposing western propaganda is one thing. Not taking a moment to understand you are high on russian one is another. Just take a glance at this quote of yours and say it’s not copium.
Because Russia realizes that this proxy war can escalate into a real war with NATO, and they’re obviously going to save their best weapons for that.
Meanwhile, the whole war was sold as a special military operation in Russia, meaning that Russia is not on a war footing and life for a typical person in Russia hasn’t actually changed all that much. This is basically equivalent to when US went to destroy Iraq, and most people in US didn’t really connect the war with their day to day lives.
Russian economy is currently growing at 4.9% as even western publications admit, they’ve managed to reorient their trade towards the east. On the other hand, many western countries are entering recession now, and there’s massive political unrest all over Europe.
You don’t have to be high on Russian propaganda to know this because all of this is freely admitted in western media. The fact that you don’t understand any of this shows just how ignorant you are regarding the topic you’re attempting to debate here.
These videos obviously exists from both sides, but neither side has aerial supremacy, if you know what that means.
Rheinmetall alone offers to produce up to 600,000 artillery rounds for Ukraine annually, and that’s just one company.
No, those videos don’t exist from both sides. Ukraine doesn’t have a functioning air force that can attack Russian positions.
[citation needed]
we’re talking about 155 mm shells here specifically
honestly, I don’t know why you keep trying to argue something that’s demonstrably false, even western media openly admits the problem https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/08/19/artillery-ammunition-ukraine-pentagon/
e.g. https://tass.com/world/1614189
Indeed.
I see you have poor reading comprehension, because the clearly says the plan to produce it. I plan to become a billionaire in the next couple of years. The reality is that it’s bullshit because here’s the actual reality of the situation:
You’re obviously not one of these few people. Furthermore, the article says the following:
I do encourage you to try engaging with reality going forward.
Unrelated, but anyway, thanks for your effort!
In your dreams. Like your failed predictions of freezing Europeans running out of Russan gas and whatnot, lol, we gonna make this reality check later on, just to remind you.
Yeah, we’re definitely going to get a reality check sooner than later and you’re going to have to figure out how to deal with it. Meanwhile, last I checked Germany is now deindustrializing and all of Eurozone is in a recession, but hey I’m sure that has nothing to do with the fact that Europe got cut off from cheap energy.