Two years and 36 days of war have passed. The front line has hardly changed in twenty-four hours. The Russians continue to shell Ukrainian cities every day. Mostly energy infrastructure is shelled, but there are also hits on other objects, including residential areas. Almost every such shelling results in human losses.
It seems that all assessments of the Russian military-industrial complex’s ability to produce missiles and drones need to be revised. However, it is possible that Putin is getting them from allies Iran and North Korea. Or maybe he gets them all together: his own production plus supplies from allies.
Either way, Ukraine needs an objective assessment of the enemy’s capabilities, not propaganda self-hypnosis. Volodymyr Zelensky gave several interviews in which his position sounded more realistic than before. He admitted that negotiations with Russia could start without the AFU reaching the 1991 borders.
But that’s where his realism ends, and he remains convinced that a Russian military defeat in Ukraine (or even a hint of one) will inevitably lead to Putin’s loss of authority inside the country and then Putin will be ready to negotiate.
That is, according to his logic, if Putin suffers such a defeat in Ukraine that will push him back to the borders of February 23, 2022, it will be a good moment to start negotiations with him. And then, according to Zelensky’s logic, Putin himself will peacefully give up the rest of the Ukrainian territory he holds, and the AFU will not need to reclaim it.
It seems to me that in this part of his interview, Zelensky is wishful thinking. In the dictatorship that Putin has built, there is no room for thinking in terms of “loss of authority among the people”. He can form this authority himself – with the help of the repressive stick and the propaganda carrot.
In the virtual reality that Putin is shaping in the heads of Russians, he cannot suffer any defeat. And even if it happens, Russians simply will not know about it. And the information that does reach them will be declared the PSYOP of the enemies and anyone who disseminates it will be imprisoned.
Already now the picture of the world of the Russian average person is radically different from the way this world is perceived by people outside Russia. More and more Russians are convinced that this war was started by Ukraine, that it has been waged against the Russian people for ten years and that Putin had no other choice but to start the “SMO”.
They are also sure that Russia is ready to stop the war at any minute and the only reason it continues is the insane ambitions of the “Kyiv Nazi regime” and its “overseas masters”.
And I’m not talking about the fact that in the opinion of the vast majority of Russians, all the stories about Bucha, Irpin, Mariupol and the bombing of residential neighborhoods are slander against the Russian army, because a Russian soldier is a humanist and will never allow himself to do such things to his brotherly people.
I’m not writing these things to open your eyes: you know all this without me. I’m writing so that you can see for yourselves that there is no room for a “decline in authority” in this kind of brain processing. In today’s Russian society, there is not even a scale on which to measure Putin’s level of authority. He is a constant, frozen at the maximum level. “We have Putin – we have Russia, no Putin – no Russia”…
Which means that if Zelensky hopes that by pushing the Russians to the line of demarcation on 02/23/2022 he will make Putin more cooperative because Putin will be afraid of his authority falling in Russia, he hopes in vain. Putin will only become more cooperative if he sees that he is running out of resources to continue the war. And this has nothing to do with reaching any specific borders.
He may run out of resources even if he stands near Kyiv (as it was with the Germans, who in 1918 stood 100 kilometers from Paris), and he may have plenty of resources even if he is pushed back to the borders of 1991.
I say banal things: after the failed counteroffensive of the AFU last summer, a war of attrition began. And in this war, the front line does not matter. Only the military and economic potential of the parties matters.
As applied to our case, we can confidently say that Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian oil refineries bring Ukraine’s victory much faster than battles over the five-block village of Gadyukino, in which hundreds of people, tons of ammunition and dozens of armored vehicles are killed.
And these air raids move Putin toward constructive negotiations far more than any victories on the battlefield. To this day, by the way, there is still no definitive answer to the question of what led to the victory over Hitler: the Battles of Stalingrad and Kursk or the American bombing of the Ploiesti refinery and the steel mills in the Ruhr?
Therefore, there is no need for Zelensky to set for himself the boundaries that he will consider possible to start negotiations with Putin. The effectiveness of these negotiations depends not on where the front line is, but on the extent of allied aid, the determination of the Ukrainians themselves to fight, and the speed with which Russia’s military and economic potential is spent.
I also remembered that Patriarch Kirill (Gundyaev) and oligarch Konstantin (Malofeev) had one very iconic thing in their “Edict”: they declared the “SMO” a “holy war”. It is very amusing to watch these cynical and talentless people trying to adapt old patterns to new circumstances.
Already Stalin’s “Great Patriotic War” was a plagiarism, because it referred people to the old images of the “Patriotic War of 1812” and the “Second Patriotic War” (as pre-revolutionary propaganda called World War I). And the song “Holy War”, which became almost an anthem, was also plagiarizing – a WWI song.
And in essence, where did this image of “holy war” come from in the first place? Especially from the mouth of the head of the church? Wow! It’s a direct reference to the Crusades! Exactly so: religious war with infidels. That’s why in the “Edict” and appears as an enemy of Western “Satanism”. And the “Russian world” is a kind of “City of God”, whose duty and, as it is now fashionable to say, civilizational mission is to destroy this stronghold of the devil.
The Patriarch of All Russia has actually proclaimed a crusade against the West. With what we congratulate him. I wonder if the Muslims in the Russian army realize what kind of “ghazawat” they are participating in. And is this “holy war” theirs?
In the cacophonous style of Russian propaganda, Putin said he had no thoughts of going to war with NATO and called the idea “nonsense”. He bluntly said: “What they say about us going to attack Europe after Ukraine is complete nonsense and scaremongering of their population solely to get money out of them”.
This begs the question: what about the crusade announced by the “Orthodox Pope” Kirilka? Is it over? “Satanists” can relax? Or what?
In short, they don’t know what they want. And it doesn’t look like it’s going as well as they’re trying to make it look. We’re on the right track. We need to continue to deplete the enemy’s military and economy. And we need patience. A lot of patience.
Glory to Ukraine!🇺🇦
Netanyahu said that preparations for the Rafah offensive were continuing and he was not going to stop anything.
At the same time, Israel invited Arab countries to send their troops to the Gaza Strip to ensure control over the distribution of humanitarian aid. And in general – to control the situation. So far this idea is being considered by Egypt alone (which is also a lot).
Also, the Israeli Air Force struck a Hezbollah arms and ammunition depot on the outskirts of Aleppo. Syrian authorities have already raised an outcry about this. This is how things are.
I❤️🇮🇱
