By David Sole
In a startlingly frank interview in The Guardian, Ukraine’s top military commander, Oleksandr Syrsky, is publicly admitting Ukraine is losing its proxy war against the Russian Federation. For over two years Ukraine and the Western media have covered up and denied that they have been losing what is widely seen as a war of attrition.
Syrsky’s interview ran in The Guardian on July 24, where: “he acknowledges the Russians are much better resourced. They have more of everything: tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, soldiers. Their original 100,000-strong invasion force has grown to 520,000.” This imbalance in equipment is despite the massive shipments of U.S. and European Union heavy weaponry since hostilities began in February 2022.
For a long time Western media have reported that Russia has run out of troops and weaponry and is about to collapse on the battlefield. Syrsky, however, admits “when it comes to equipment, there is a ratio of 1:2 or 1:3 in their favor. Since 2022 the number of Russian tanks has “doubled” – from 1,700 to 3,500. Artillery systems have tripled and armored personnel carriers [have] gone up from 4,500 to 8,000.”
On the battlefield: “since last autumn Ukraine’s armed forces have been going steadily backwards.” Ukraine’s frontline forces “are exhausted. The patriotic fervor that led many in spring 2022 to volunteer has worn off….While many Ukrainian men are obeying a new law to register at recruitment centers…Others are hiding” to avoid an increasingly unpopular war.
Other major media outlets are also finally shining some light on the true battlefield situation. On July 28 The New York Times admitted “Russia Punches Through Weakened Lines in Eastern Ukraine.” The article points out: “Russian forces have made rapid gains in the eastern Donetsk region over the past week or so, capturing a few villages and closing in on the city of Pokrovsk, one of the main Ukrainian defensive strongholds in the area.” https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/28/world/europe/ukraine-russia-battle-gains.html
The Times further notes: “Russian progress contrasts sharply with the slow but steady gains that Moscow had made so far this year in the Donetsk region.” What has been ignored in earlier reporting is that Russia has been fighting against a heavily fortified line established from 2015 onward by the Ukrainians who had been driven out by the ethnic Russians in what became the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic. Major battles were fought to take the cities of Bakhmut and Avdeyevka, which fell to Russian forces in May 2023 and February 2024 respectively.
Russia is also using artillery and air superiority to reduce its casualty rates on the front lines. The Ukrainians often fight for positions that are indefensible, rushing reinforcements into hopeless situations. The Russians, from the start of their Special Military Operation, have had the goal of grinding down the Ukrainian military power. The fruits of this strategy are starting to show, as admitted by General Syrsky to The Guardian.
Ukraine’s long-term prospects are further clouded by feuding among European Union members and Ukraine. Hungary has refused to send weapons to Ukraine or to allow Hungarian territory for NATO weapons shipments. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has traveled widely to encourage peace talks between Ukraine and Russia.
With Ukraine’s electric grid seriously damaged by Russian missile and drone strikes, Ukraine has been increasingly dependent on importing electricity. In June Hungary provided Ukraine with a whopping 42% of its needs. The EU recognized this situation by granting Hungary an exemption from the sanctions on its use of Russian oil. But Ukraine, inexplicably, decided in mid-July to cut off the flow of Russian crude oil through the Druzhba pipeline that supplies both Hungary and Slovakia 30-40% of their needs.
In response, Hungary’s Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto announced that his country would block the payment to Ukraine of a scheduled 6.5 billion Euros designated for weapons shipments. He described Ukraine’s actions as “unacceptable and incomprehensible.”
At the same time, The Telegraph reported on July 17 that Germany plans to cut back its military aid to Ukraine from 8 billion Euros to 4 billion in its 2025 budget.
Losses by Ukraine on the ground only heighten the danger of U.S./NATO escalation as long as the Western imperialist powers refuse to sanction any talk of peace. On July 24, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported that “a British reconnaissance aircraft accompanied by two fighters approached Russian territorial waters near Crimea but turned back after a Russian jet flew to intercept them.” The spy plane was identified as a RC-135W accompanied by two Eurofighter Typhoons of the Royal Air Force. The plane flies at over 500 miles per hour. The Russian interceptor is rated at flying at speeds up to 1,600 mph.
The Kyiv Post reported that the Russian and UK planes “played cat and mouse with Russian forces for almost four hours. At those speeds it is a dangerous game that the British planes were playing by approaching a tense war zone. An accident or miscalculation could easily escalate and become a serious military confrontation.
Of course, two can play this game and on the same day the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) reported that it had “detected, tracked, and intercepted two Russian TU-95 and two PRC [People’s Republic of China] H-6 military aircraft operating in the Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone.” The aircraft “did not enter American or Canadian sovereign airspace.”
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