Sergio Rodriguez Gelfenstein
For all those who speak of missed deadlines, of slow development of combat actions, of imminent collapse of the Russian economy, of certainty in the immediate and immediate expiration dates of the Russian missile and ammunition arsenals, it must be said that this is nothing more than desperate Western propaganda aimed at deceiving the naive, ignorant and unwary.
During the first week of Russia’s special military operation (SMO) in Ukraine in February last year, Russian troops arrived in the vicinity of Kyiv and Kharkov, the two main cities of Ukraine. They stayed there for a month. The world waited impatiently for the moment when the Kremlin would order the offensive to take the capital. However, on April 1, Russian military forces withdrew without casualties. Immediately, the Western press began to shout with an overwhelming roar that Russia had suffered a great defeat and had been forced to retreat amid great human and material losses. They could show no proof of such losses. The spectacles of lies and fake news in the Ukrainian conflict had begun.
A little over a year after the start of the SMO, it is worth asking: was Russia’s goal to take Kiev and produce a withering defeat for Ukraine? In light of events, that does not seem to have been the objective. The missions enunciated by President Putin himself were clearly stated from the outset: to prevent the genocide being prepared for the Donetsk and Luhansk republics, to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine. In this reasoning, it is not possible to evaluate the development of the actions on the basis of objectives arising from Western think tanks or transnational disinformation media, not from those who decided and planned the operation.
For all those who speak of missed deadlines, of slow development of combat actions, of imminent collapse of the Russian economy, of certainty in the immediate and immediate expiration dates of the Russian missile and ammunition arsenals, it must be said that this is nothing more than desperate Western propaganda aimed at deceiving the naive, ignorant and unwary.
The only statement heard in the last year came not from any Russian leader, but from Chinese President Xi Jinping. In bidding farewell to his Russian counterpart after their meeting in the Kremlin, he said, “Changes are taking place that we have not seen in a hundred years and it is we who are leading them together.“ There was no immediacy, short–termism or short–term vision of the conflict, but a deep reflection and long–term strategic analysis of the structural nature of the transformations that are taking place. This is the true dimension of what is being experienced.
There are a number of facts that show that it is not Russia that is losing the war.
On February 16 it was reported that the arsenals of European countries were empty due to the conflict in Ukraine. In this context, Western defense ministers wondered with what resources and for how long they could continue to support Kiev. Mateusz Morawiecki, Prime Minister of Poland, Ukraine’s closest ally, declared in January that the West is already “tired” of the conflict in Ukraine.
In turn, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace stated that the Ukrainian Armed Forces should use ammunition more sparingly, as they do in NATO. Wallace specified that one of the objectives of the Ukrainian army’s training program is “to fight in the Western style“. Anyone who knows a little about these matters knows that an operational, logistical and combat readiness transformation cannot be done in the short term, much less in the context of the development of a war.
For his part, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg explained that the arms production capacity of Ukraine’s allies is less than the rate at which Kiev is consuming them. He stated that, “The current rate of spending on ammunition in Ukraine is many times higher than our current rate of production,“ which, he emphasized, “puts our defense industries under pressure.“
Ukraine has had 257,000 deaths among NATO soldiers, instructors and officers, as well as mercenaries from various countries, according to data provided by Ukraine’s own Defense Minister, Oleksii Reznikov, contained in a report he made to U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin during his visit to Washington and which was cited by the Israeli Mossad in a report leaked to the press. These data give an account of the great difficulties to replenish losses in Ukraine, when 25% of its population, mostly young people, have left the country or are already under Russian sovereignty. In Artemovsk/Bakhmut alone, Ukraine has had between 9 and 11,000 soldiers killed per month, most of them untrained novice fighters who have fallen in what has been called “the Bakhmut meat grinder.“
A country that has also lost over 120,000 km² of territory recaptured by Russia (almost 20% of Ukraine’s total area) and 234,000 wounded and whose combat capability has been affected by the destruction of 407 aircraft, 228 helicopters, 3,764 drones, 8,699 tanks and armored vehicles 4,606 artillery systems, 415 Ukrainian anti–aircraft systems, 9,552 special military vehicles and 1,086 multiple rocket launcher systems, does not seem credible that it is winning the war.
The buzzword now is about the upcoming Ukrainian counteroffensive which nobody believes in, given the intelligence documents recently leaked in the United States. Given this situation one might ask: if NATO and Ukraine are preparing an offensive, why do they insist on losing soldiers in a city like Bajmut, already 80% occupied by Russia and which, given the latest developments, will fall sooner or later?
For its part, Russia continues to train its tens of thousands of mobilized troops, the vast majority of whom have been preparing for months and some of whom are already in the SMO area covering positions and performing support tasks. Russia is preparing an offensive but no one knows when it will take place. Who has ever seen the main direction of an operation, the forces and means to be used and the combat and rear security situation aired in the media and anyone have an opinion about it? Only people who have ever seen a rifle in their lives, let alone been in combat. They are “internet and play station generals“.
Let’s understand it better in the words of Brigadier General Erich Vad, who served as an advisor to former German Chancellor Angela Merkel from 2006 to 2013: “Then the question arises, what should happen with the tank deliveries? To seize Crimea or Donbass, Leopards tanks are not enough. In eastern Ukraine, in the Bakhmut area, the Russians are advancing systematically. They will surely have completely conquered the Donbass in a short time. Just consider the numerical superiority of the Russians over Ukraine. Russia can mobilize up to two million reservists. The West can send 100 Marder and 100 Leopards there. This will not change the overall military situation at all. And the most important question is how to end such a conflict, with the most powerful nuclear power in the world,
Everything responds to a decision that has only media objectives on the part of Ukraine and NATO: US generals and their allies know that from the military point of view it is totally absurd to keep a city (Artemovsk/Bakhmut) on the brink of collapse. and in which they have a strategic position at a total disadvantage (almost surrounded, with an almost non–existent supply chain, with heavy casualties). Meanwhile, the Russian high command sees that their soldiers would be exposed to unnecessary risks and in absolute disadvantage, they would retreat to another position to continue fighting in better conditions, as it happened in Kherson, where a month–long retreat of 105,000 civilians, 35,000 soldiers and about 40,000 military equipment took place across the Dnieper river... without a single casualty,
Today, Ukrainian forces are greatly decimated and weakened. If those units fall in the defense of the Donbass, there will be no fortifications and no major cities between that territory and Kiev. The field will be open for a Russian offensive... or for a, perhaps, belated negotiation for Ukraine, hence the importance of the Battle of Artemovsk/Bakhmut. After achieving that objective, the Russian armed forces will only need to conquer Slaviansk and Kramatorsk and all will be over, thus fulfilling the first objective of the SMO.
This is the explanation for the series of diplomatic visits that the presidents of Spain, France, the president of the European Commission and the high representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy of Europe have made or are about to make to Beijing. Why at this time? The reason for these trips to China could be explained by the uncontrolled economic drain on military resources in Ukraine and the inability of Europe and the United States to supply them, which has created an increasingly critical situation in European countries. The IMF has already reported that Germany and the UK will have negative GDP growth in 2023. They are therefore looking to Moscow’s allies, in particular China, to achieve at the negotiating table what NATO has failed to achieve in the field of warfare.
It should be recalled that on March 15, 2022, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki jubilantly declared that, “We have completely crushed the [Russian] economy. For his part, on August 26 last year at the final session of the summer course lectures at the Menéndez Pelayo International University in Madrid, the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, stated that: “The war is at a decisive moment and it is no longer Russia that is taking the initiative at the moment, Russia has already lost the war“. They will have to eat their words because, moreover, they do not know what to do now.
INTERNATIONALIST 360° 