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 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.
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the ratio of artillery is essentially a proxy for the casualty rate because this is an artillery battle. I remember an interview with a foreign volunteer in Ukraine who claimed that most Ukrainians never even get to see a Russian soldier, and when they do, it's the slightest glimpse before they retreat and start blasting them with artillery again.
there's a counterclaim that astshually it doesn't matter that Ukraine is firing 10 times less artillery because they're 10 times more accurate, but this is just a very strange claim; Russian artillery is superior to the West's and any issues earlier on in the war with lots of misses have been largely solved by now
at the end of the day, who is constantly doing counteroffensives? Ukraine, not Russia. who is constantly needing to do mobilizations? Ukraine, not Russia. who is needing to kidnap people off the streets to funnel them into the military? Ukraine, not Russia. whose country is overflowing with graveyards? Ukraine, not Russia. most of Russia's September mobilization - the only one they've done - hasn't been devoted to the battlefield yet because they're being properly trained and nurtured for some future role, which would be impossible if Russians were dying in large numbers as Ukraine claims.
one can be like "oh but Russia is just hiding all this stuff" but I think it's a lot harder to hide that level of mass death than people think. if Ukraine could, I reckon they would, and they have the entire Western propaganda network at their backs.
truthfully I don't know exactly how many Russians and Ukrainians have died, but claims that more Russians have died than Ukrainians is genuinely comical, like "Oh, I know this person is a complete dipshit and I know to never listen to them on any take if they can be so completely moronic here," it's like the "100 million people died under communism" of Ukraine War talking points at this point. and I would genuinely be extremely surprised if the ratio was less than 1:2 in favor of Russia. Lukashenko thinks it's 1:8, which is probably too high but like, he also probably has a better idea than me.
Spy satellites have the resolution to read stuff like license plates. If Russia was taking these huge losses we would have irrefutable proof of it, not stories or estimates.
BBC Russia and media zone make an independent project of counting Russian death, and they're not Russian mouth piece, but ironically, their number is close to Russian MOD. lol
There's so much evidence for this that even western media now talks about it
You can read about the higher losses Ukraine suffers in Mearsheimer's latest article that provides sources and citations https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/the-darkness-ahead-where-the-ukraine
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Didn't Russia frag all their logistics a few months ago? I thought they finally took the gloves off and started destroying infrastructure a long time ago?
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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.
lol get out of here with your Russian propaganda. No one believes you. Go back to lemmy.grad or hexbear. Lmao.
It’s a proxy war dude. No one wins until one side exhausts their resources. And it’s the west v Russia. Yes, Russia whose GDP is about the same as the Uk. lol.
Edit: Hi hexbear/lemmy.grad shills! So bizarre to get significantly more upvotes than the brigaded comments from dear comrades.
He even gave you sources dickweed. It's no use trying to burst your bubble, as it's made of steel.
Nah lots of people believe him actually. You're just very clearly stuck in a pro Western echo chamber, as all libs are. The longer this war goes on the more Ukraine loses lmao. So by all means, keep encouraging this to continue.
Just like Vietnam, right!
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A lot of people don't really understand how limited NATO is, how badly designed a lot of NATO weapons are, and how long it's been since NATO actually fought a proper war. NATO has this long standing, unearned veneer of invincibility. And now we're seeing NATO equipment used without total, uncontested air support, which is the only thing NATO is really good at and which is the thing that two successive Russian government have been preparing to fight against for 70 years.
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Having comrades is the natural state of humanity, you should try it
There's nothing humane about the comrades at hexbear and lemmy.grad.
Hey man, we're not the ones who decided to use Ukraine as disposable munitions to destabilize Russia in preparation for a resource grab. We're just calling plays from the sidelines. If we had any say in this DC, the Kremlin, and the Rada would all be smoking pits in the ground.
Easy there Hitler
Yeah, nothing humane about the people who make up the instance where every user says that food, housing, and healthcare are human rights and should be made accessible to every human being, period. The one that loudly shouts the fact that trans rights are human rights and has provided one of the best safe spaces on the internet for trans people (as the large percentage of trans users that make up hexbear will themselves tell you). The one that frequently has mental health check-ins for their users and offers support to them. The one that uses its mutual aid comm to give real life material support to comrades in need. Nothing humane about them at all, no sirree.
Talking about hexbear here, but lemmygrad is almost as based.
"They are less than human" I say while definitely holding the high ground in this conversation.
Liar.
I'm sure you are, yes.
have you seen the ratio
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.