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.
ISW is a propaganda outlet run by Vicky Nuland, so if that's where you get your information from that explains a lot about your world view. The fact that a lot of people in the west guzzle propaganda isn't really an argument.
Therefore, you you should stick to actual facts of the situation instead of making stuff up.
If you were concerned about the truth then you wouldn't be pretending that the uprising in Donetsk was somehow orchestrated when there's a mountain of evidence to the contrary. Let's take a look at a few slides from this lecture that Mearsheimer gave back in 2015 to get a bit of background on the subject. Mearsheimer is certainly not pro Russian in any sense, and a proponent of US global hegemony. First, here's the demographic breakdown of Ukraine:
here's how the election in 2004 went:
this is the 2010 election:
As we can clearly see from the voting patterns in both elections, the country is divided exactly across the current line of conflict. Furthermore, a survey conducted in 2015 further shows that there is a sharp division between people of eastern and western Ukraine on which economic bloc they would rather belong to:
The reality is that the population in these areas is largely ethnic Russian and after US sponsored coup regime started doing things like banning Russian language, these people rebelled against it.
Furthermore, here's what CNN was reporting the regime doing in Donbas back in 2014 https://twitter.com/paulius60/status/1611148483859255296
Here's an article from the human rights watch https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/10/20/ukraine-widespread-use-cluster-munitions
And here's a whole documentary of the atrocities these people suffered https://yewtu.be/watch?v=bN68OfFKaWs
Pretending this was somehow orchestrated as opposed to directly caused by the oppression of the regime is the height of dishonesty. Which is pretty weird to see coming out from somebody who seeks the truth.
Plenty of western experts have been talking about this for many decades. This only became controversial to mention after the war started. Here's what Chomsky has to say on the issue recently:
https://truthout.org/articles/us-approach-to-ukraine-and-russia-has-left-the-domain-of-rational-discourse/
https://truthout.org/articles/noam-chomsky-us-military-escalation-against-russia-would-have-no-victors/
Except Russia made many kilometres of progress there and Ukraine is now evacuating from the area. That's not give and take, that's Ukrainian position collapsing. Russia isn't evacuating anybody at any single point that Ukraine was trying to break through for the past 10 weeks.
A leftie citing a Realist. Then Chomsky, the serial genocide denier larping as an Anarchist you must be American he's a persona non grata in Europe. In a sense also a realist in the sense of "no chess piece country is ever doing anything and everything bad that ever happens is due to the CIA because what the other players are doing is always good".
Now I have my issues with Kraut but watch this.
you are very good at repeating slander ! We are very good in seeing through it ...
tell me why would you miss out on a "A leftie citing a Realist" and a "serial genocide denier larping as an Anarchist" sounds interesting .. also its required from you, Your not a serious Person if and worth the discussion if "listening to the Dissent" is to much to ask for you ...
Imaging in a Court
"the evidence is not relevant because it was filmed by a Japanse camera , and the Japanese are dirty , i will not watch this , Also take me Serious please !"
Because the Soviets -- rightly -- decried geopolitical realism as imperialist apologia. You're citing imperialist apologia. As a so-called leftist.
And Chomsky denying genocides, do I really have to go into that?
what ? maybe actually concern yourself with the TOPIC.. not with the Messanger ? Do you Think i am Vladimir Putin ? That i controll the Russian army ? I explaine to you "Russias Course" of action , I am not Russia , i am a Person explaining to you the Thoughts of Russia , BECAUSE THEY ARE RELEVENT TO THE SITUATION, Russia has a Full Strategic Array , World most advanced Nuclear and Missile Technology and Security council seat and hundreds of Tousends of Soldiers ,you are probably not even valued more then Medicine by your state , Russias Opinion is RELEVANT to the Situation they are way more relevent then your thought s and my thoughts ... The Sowjet union is Dead , she Preached many great thinks we all love and miss her dearly ...
We are the "dirtbag" left , you dont scare or scold us with your purity fetish...
which one ? Uigurs, Palestina or Great Replacementtheory ... ?
I linked you a video. Watch it. The issue with realism is not who spouts it but the way in which it frames international relations.
Cambodia, Yugoslavia, I think there were others but those I'm sure of. He later on did accept that the Red Khmer were assholes but still defended his prior judgement ("The CIA is evil so me saying killing fields were a CIA invention was warranted"), to this day so far as I know he's still supporting Milosevic and denying Serbs erected concentration camps, were shelling civilians, suchlike.
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they don't hide it https://www.aalep.eu/institute-study-war-isw
The forces are most definitely not balanced, and this whole idea of a frozen conflict is just the new narrative the west is pushing. You'll see what happens when Russia actually starts doing offensive operations.
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Last I checked Russia took Bakhmut, and they managed to use a PMC to bleed Ukrainian army there in the process which delayed the offensive and gave Russia more time to build fortifications. Even US analysts are now admitting that they advised Ukraine against trying to hold it, and blame the losses there and the delays for the current debacle.
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I have no idea where you got this idea that Russia didn't take the whole city, you can clearly see the whole city is under Russian control on the pro Ukrainian liveuamap https://liveuamap.com/
Meanwhile, the battle has been grinding for the Ukrainian military while it didn't even engage Russian military proper on the Russian side. It was fought by a private military company. This was easily one of the biggest blunders in the war that Ukraine has made to date.
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I mean you can clearly see that the city is controlled by Russia on the map, saying that Ukraine took a couple of blocks in the suburbs is just pure cope. If anything, the fact that Ukraine is still wasting resources there months after losing the city they shouldn't have tried to contest in the first place, further shows how dysfunctional Ukrainian strategy is.
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The west hasn't been much better. 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:
This is not how you fight a war.
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That does not say she owns, runs, or operates it...
ISW is owned by Kimberly Kagan, not Vicky Nuland. It's in your link. They do appear to be in laws however.