NEW – September 15, 2022
The Ukrainian offensive lauded by the Americans is not what it seems at first glance. The bright wrapper of the Ukrainian flag hides a lot of things that Kiev prefers to keep quiet about.
Map of the special operation in Ukraine
Late in the evening of September 13, information began to arrive about the UAF’s offensive on the village of Davydov Brod in the Kherson region. However, this raid cannot be called successful: the attack was successfully repulsed, and the Ukrainian army was pushed back further than the positions it occupied before the attack.
“Davydov Brod is locked up. Another Ukronazi attack has been repelled. Regular statements of Ukrainian public figures about the breakthrough of the defence line at Davydov Brod do not correspond to reality,” said the deputy head of the regional administration Kirill Stremousov. He added that the settlement is periodically attacked, but they are successfully repelled by the Russian Army.
At the same time, a wave of fakes about the capture of Kiselevka near Kherson by the Ukrainian Armed Forces swept through Ukrainian channels. And also about that Russian troops are allegedly withdrawing, and the front line is moving to Chernobayevka and Kherson. In fact, the line of engagement in favour of the Ukrainian Armed Forces does not move, because there is no advance of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in this area.
“Yes, there was a message, they tried to enter, but in fact they are now lying in the fields, no one even takes them [their bodies – SZ] away,” the commander of the fire support platoon of the 127th DPR regiment with the call sign “Sich” told reporters.
According to him, about 1,200 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in the senseless attack. Total losses during the second unsuccessful breakthrough of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on Kherson are still to be calculated. During the first offensive, which began on August 29, the enemy lost at least 5,000 people, and the total losses, including wounded and missing, can be up to 10,000 people.
There is a simple military arithmetic, according to which offensive operations are ten times more expensive than defensive ones. Especially if the army is advancing with the last of its strength. The Ukrainian Armed Forces are trying to break through in different directions, but the Ukrainian army has not learned how to gain a foothold in the territories left behind during the regrouping. And this, according to military experts, can play a cruel joke on the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Military expert Aleksey Leonkov noted that the Ukrainian Armed Forces were created in order to provoke Russia into conflict and continue to wage war on defence, maximally depleting military and economic resources with the help of Western partners, and such tactics have no serious prospects.
“They did not manage to conduct successful offensive operations, and the armed forces as a whole cannot be said to be Ukrainian. Yes, they are fighting under the Ukrainian flag. But there were foreign mercenaries, fighters of terrorist organisations, who were led by instructors and even regular military personnel of the United States and Great Britain. It is quite possible that they are specialists in punitive operations, but not in offensive ones” – Aleksey Leonkov, military expert.
Order to lose
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken hastened to say that the so-called counteroffensive of the Ukrainian Armed Forces was carefully planned and provided with the support of America and other countries. However, he immediately had to make a reservation, possibly with a reserve for the future, that Russia retains “significant forces” in Ukraine, including weapons and ammunition.
While the official authorities of Ukraine continue to fabricate victories on the Internet, Blinken insures himself and is already deceiving, misleading not only the Ukrainian side, but the entire West as a whole. The situation is such that the counteroffensive of the Ukrainian Armed Forces has actually stopped after several attempts, there are no active battles, which indicates the inability to develop the offensive with large forces.
In Ukraine, they are puzzled by the current paradox. On the one hand, euphoria in connection with the advertised counteroffensive, the announcement of attempts to break through to other areas. On the other — endless ambulances, wounded, killed, destroyed and abandoned equipment from the UAF. Hundreds and thousands of dead, even more wounded.
From September 6 to 10, the Russian Aerospace Forces destroyed more than 4,000 Ukrainian soldiers and wounded more than 8,000 in the Nikolaev-Krivoy Rog and Kharkov directions. On September 11, it became known about another 450 destroyed soldiers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces near Kharkov. The number of liquidated vehicles was estimated in dozens of units. On September 13, the Russian Armed Forces destroyed a base of foreign mercenaries in the Kharkov direction.
At the same time, Kiev, accustomed to acting impudently, or as it was called in the 127th regiment of the DPR People’s Militia, “frog lunge”, again and again announces the liberation of the territories controlled by Russia. To draw a sports analogy, the UAF are sprinters, but not long-distance runners. As soon as the battles drag on, all the enemy’s problems are revealed. For this, military experts call the Ukrainian Armed Forces “the army of one breakthrough”. In part, this nickname was assigned to the Ukrainian military after the defeat on the Kherson fields, when an entire motorised rifle brigade landed in the kill zone in Sukhoi Stavka.
What is mobilisation in Ukrainian?
Former UN Weapons Inspector in Iraq Scott Ritter noted that the offensive of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in any of the selected areas is spontaneous and always gives a lot of blood. Ritter noted that the UAF demonstrated a short-term fuse, which faded as quickly as it appeared. And when the time for heavy routine field work began, the Ukrainians had no strength left. Some military experts have already suggested that by acting in this way, the Ukrainian Armed Forces are driving themselves into a trap. Russian artillery and combat aircraft are working on enemy concentrations and UAF equipment. According to some reports, the crew of one combat helicopter hits at least two armoured targets per night. Tanks, vehicles, MLRS and other enemy weapons are destroyed.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces entered the autumn with chronic problems. The first and most important was the serious crisis of motor vehicles. According to military experts, the enemy carries manpower and ammunition to the war zone on civilian trucks taken from the population. When transferring heavy equipment, tank carriers are less often used, which are sorely lacking, and tanks and BMPs are increasingly moving under their own power, which is why they quickly wear out and break down.
The situation with the personnel is alarming. Professionals continue to die, and hastily mobilised citizens refuse to fight and are deliberately captured to save their lives.
“By the way, they have a new wave of mobilisation being prepared there, the sixth, and they will put everyone from 18 and above under the gun. The antidote to this may be the collapse of the military and administrative infrastructure of Ukraine” – Alexey Leonkov, military expert.
What will happen to Ukraine next
According to the laws of military strategy, for long-term planning, it is necessary first of all to take care of the rear. Organise the production and modernisation of weapons, repair of equipment. During the Great Patriotic War, in the framework of lend-lease, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the USSR, Joseph Stalin, in addition to weapons, asked the West for machine tools for the production of weapons. The Soviet government evacuated factories to the rear and actively built new ones. It was a long and difficult job for the future. In the end, it bore fruit.
Kiev has not learned how to work for the future, and the country’s authorities do not show any steps towards industrial independence, especially military independence. The construction of factories for the production of their own weapons is not discussed, although now Ukraine does not even produce cartridges, and the modernisation of weapons is impossible due to the lack of large factories. Therefore, Kiev is counting on a short-term PR campaign.
The fruits of this strategy are already visible today: no matter where the UAF offensive is planned, the Ukrainian army cannot operate for more than 7-10 days. However, rapid and local operations are also constantly disrupted: three landings at the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant failed, the second offensive on Kherson was repulsed, and the Ukrainian Armed Forces fell into the same trap as a month ago. If Kiev uses the tactics of “thousands of cuts”, as was stated by the adviser to the Office of the President of Ukraine Mikhail Podolyak, then they cut themselves on their own knife and the wounds bleed more and more.
From all this, it follows that Kiev is still completely dependent on the “good West”, from its own Zelensky regime there is only an administrative and punitive resource that allows for violent mobilisation, propaganda that writes about non-existent victories, and an army that has long been fighting with NATO equipment, which it cannot restore on its own.
According to some experts, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have turned into a conglomerate of mercenaries, cannon fodder and militants fighting under the Ukrainian flag. Illogical and self-destructive from the point of view of military art, but understandable from the point of view of PR actions will sooner or later lead to the fact that the UAF will fall into a trap that they will not be able to get out of.
Sergey Andreyev
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