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.
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.
Who are you quoting that said "They are less than human" liar? STFU.
You are not even dogwhistling it now, Adolf.
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.