Since the Russian capture of Adveeka in February of this year the Western media is finally coming round to the fact that Ukraine is losing the war.
This has led to a surge in doom laden articles bewailing the predicament of the Kiev regime. The main excuse made for the military defeats of the AFU are laid at the door of the gridlocked US Congress. Apparently, if only Ukraine could get the $60 billion in promised US aid then it could halt the Russian advances and prepare another grand counter offensive; conveniently forgetting how the much trumpeted offensive of 2023 failed miserably.
The Western media fail to report on the magnitude of the military defeats suffered by the Kiev regime this year and what they portend for the future of the war.
Neither do they ever explain the historical background to the current war which is crucial to understanding why Russia invaded in February 2022. This background helps us understand the national question in Ukraine crucial to future political developments and give us some idea as to Russian military objectives.
Tenth Anniversary of Kiev’s Anti-Terrorist Operation
The war in Ukraine started in the spring of 2014 following the CIA sponsored Maidan Coup in February which violently overthrew the elected government of Victor Yanukovich.
Following the coup the Communist Party and other left parties such as Borotba were banned. The Kiev Rada attempted to abolish the law on regional languages. Russian speaking media was outlawed, Russian was no longer allowed to be used in schools and trade unions were effectively driven underground. The Russian speaking population of Eastern Ukraine demanded the right to speak their native language and have their children taught in Russian.
Starting on April 6 Russian speakers organised mass protests in cities from Lugansk to Kharkov to Donetsk against the ultra nationalist regime in power in Kiev. Public buildings were seized in city after city and barricades built. Workers militias began to be formed. On 7 April the Donestk People’s Republic was proclaimed.
In April 2014 the Kiev regime responded to these peaceful protests when it launched its infamous Anti Terrorist Operation against the Russian speakers of the Donbass region. This began on 13 April 2014 with the warplanes and helicopter gunships attacking the airport in the city of Donetsk and marked the beginning of the civil war in Ukraine.
In response to this attack the people of Donetsk and Lugansk began to form militias which received limited military support from Putin’s government which feared antagonizing the West any further. Anti-fascists from all over the world joined the ranks of these militias forming an international battalion within its ranks.
Russell 'Texas' Bentley - volunteer aid worker recently disappeared.
Neo-Nazis
The neo-Nazi elements who took control of the Maidan uprising in its later stages (Svboda, Right Sector amongst others) organised, in collusion with the Kiev regime, the massacre of anti-Maidan protestors in early May 2014 in Odessa.
The Odessa Massacre of Russian speakers hiding in the Trade Union House sent a huge wave of fear amongst the Russian speaking population of Eastern Ukraine.
On 11 May 2014 referendums were held in the Donetsk and Lugansk Oblasts regions where the largely Russian speaking populations voted overwhelmingly in favour of creating the breakaway states of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNP) and the Lugansk People’s Republic (LNP).
For the next 8 years the Ukrainian army (AFU) mercilessly shelled Donetsk and other towns and cities in the oblasts (regions) controlled by the pro-Moscow authorities killing over 10,000 civilians.
These new governments, comprising the Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic relied heavily on financial/arms supplies from Moscow.
A study of OSCE daily monitoring reports clearly show how the Kiev regime was the primary instigator of the fighting in the Donbass. For example, the Kiev regime refused to comply with the provisions of the Minsk 1 and 2 Peace Accords from 2014-15 by refusing to store its heavy weapons in warehouses away from the front lines which could be monitored by the OSCE.
It should be added that during the battles of 2014-2015 the Ukraine armed forces were beaten by the militias of Donetsk and Lugansk. These defeats culminated with the decisive and crushing defeat of the Ukrainian Armed Forces at the battle of Debaltsevo in February 2015.
Since then the Kiev regime has deployed neo-Nazi military units, such as the Azov battalion, on the front lines along with regular Ukrainian troops, cut off fresh water to Crimea, cut electricity supplies to Donetsk and Lugansk and put an embargo on any other supplies getting into the breakaway republics.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has estimated that between April 2014 to 31 December 2021 between 14,200-14,400 people have died in the civil war in Eastern Ukraine.
It should be emphasised that the exact number of casualties is still undetermined due to the large number of missing people. Many civilians under artillery fire buried their relatives in makeshift graves and many of the militia men from the DPR/LPR did not have uniforms and so many will have been classified as civilians deaths.
Thankfully, a few brave independent journalists, who are dismissed as Kremlin apologists in the West, have reported on this issue throughout the last 10 years. Eva K Bartlett, Christelle Neant and Graham Philips have doggedly recorded the Kiev government’s war on the civilians of the Donbass. The stand out for me is US navy veteran Patrick Lancaster who has issued daily video reports on YouTube showing in graphic heart breaking detail the impact of Ukrainian shelling on the lives of civilians in the two breakaway republics.
Reports from Amnesty and other human rights groups have noted the many war crimes carried out in the Donbass by the Azov battalion, Kraken, Donbass, Carpathian Sich and other neo-Nazi military units all armed with Western supplied weaponry.
The French journalists who run the Donbass Insider news outlet estimate that there are currently over 40 neo-Nazi battalions in the AFU, many of which have been rebranded to deflect attention from their Nazi roots/ideology. Yet there is no mention of this in the Western media. Characterising it as propaganda.
They never mention the critical role of these Nazi military units in sustaining Ukraine’s war effort on the battlefields. Whenever the AFU is in crisis on any particular fron, then the neo-Nazi military formations are sent in like firefighters to try and rescue the situation. As AFU defences were collapsing in Adeeka the Azov brigade was sent in to try and prevent a total collapse of the front line but failed miserably taking heavy casualties into the bargain.
Taking all of the above into consideration it should come as no surprise that the people of the DPR/LPR voted overwhelmingly to ‘rejoin’ Russia in the referendums in 2023. In the DPR for example over 87% voted in favour of breaking away from Ukraine. There is no way the people of these oblasts would ever support being part of Ukraine on any basis. They have suffered far too much during the course of the civil war since 2014.
These people have the right to self determination, as enshrined in the UN Charter, and escape national oppression under the Kiev regime and join the Russia Federation. Any future political settlement of the war has to take into these hard realities on the ground irregardless of the wishful thinking by Western media/politicians. To take such a position does not mean giving support to Putin or his government.
It is clear that in any future settlement of the conflict that Russia will not ‘give back’ the territories which have voted to rejoin Russia. These regions, overwhelmingly Russian speaking, will never be reconciled with the Kiev regime under any circumstances. The only way forward is for the collective West is to recognise this hard reality and accept the fact that Ukraine is never going back to its 1991 borders.
Putin’s invasion February 2022
From early February 2022 there was a huge escalation in the fighting in the Donbass. OSCE monitoring reports reveal a sharp increase in the intensity of artillery/mortar shelling by AFU units into the cities of Donestk and Lugansk.
This was in coordination with the AFU moving 100,000 troops to the contact line between the DPR/LPR and Ukraine. To all intents and purposes it appeared as if the AFU was poised for a large scale attack on the breakaway republics which would have involved massive casualties amongst civilians.
This threat to the Russian speaking population was one of the justifications used by Putin when he explained the order he gave for the Russian army to invade Ukraine.
The renowned geo-political historian Professor John Mearsheimer has noted in numerous articles that Putin’s real motive for invading was an attempt to try and impose neutrality status on Kiev which would give Moscow the security guarantees it has been asking for since 2008.
Russia’s attempt at shock and awe in late February 2022, with thousands of troops landing in the suburbs of Kiev, was an attempt to bring the Kiev regime to the negotiating table and impose a neutral status on Ukraine. As Mearsheimer has pointed out, on many occasions since 2008 Putin has warned the West that if it kept pushing the issue of Ukraine becoming part of NATO then Russia might be forced to take military action to prevent this becoming a reality.
In fact, the Russian invasion did bring the Kiev regime to the negotiating table in March 2022. Subsequent disclosures by Ukrainian members of its delegation to the Istanbul peace talks have revealed how close the two sides came to a peace deal which would have brought the war to an end. Unfortunately, Boris Johnson was dispatched to see Zelensky and make it clear to him that if he signed a peace deal with Russia then all Western aid would be cut off.
Johnson and Zelensky, PD
Johnson promised Zelensky that he would have the full backing both financially and militarily of Western imperialism if he left the peace talks and resumed the war. As we know Zelensky chose war and the conflict continued to this present day which has tragically led to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian casualties.
The massive level of casualties suffered by Ukraine was revealed in the leaked Pentagon papers of 2023 and by comments made by several retired NATO generals. The most recent being made by Polish General Raymund Andrzejcak who lamented the fact that Ukraine is clearly losing the war while suffering terrible casualties which he put at over a million. Stating on Polish TV;
More than 10 million people are missing. According to my estimates, losses should be in the millions, not hundreds of thousands. The country has no resources, no one to fight. Ukrainians are losing this war.
Russia has undoubtedly taken thousands of casualties. Brian Bertelic, former US marine and now a military analyst for the New Eastern Outlook, has sifted through numerous data sets and puts Russian casualties at 40-50,000 which is terrible but nowhere near Western claims that it has lost hundreds of thousands of men. Let’s face it if Russian losses were as catastrophic as the West claims then it would not have been able to win numerous decisive victories over the course of the last 10 months from the capture of Artemovsk (Bakhmut) to the recent victory at Adveeka.
Russian advances on the battlefield in 2024 and the collapse of the AFU defensive line in Donetsk region
Following the failure of the AFU summer offensive of 2023 the Western media spun a new narrative claiming there was a stalemate on the battlefield.
This particular narrative has been put forward by Western propagandists to cover up the fact that Ukraine’s armed forces are getting decimated in the aggressive attritional warfare being waged against them by Russia’s armed forces. This is not say that the Russian army has not made numerous tactical mistakes in the war.
It is worth recalling that the mainstream media in the West has put forth a torrent of racist narratives regarding the Russian armed forces.
From day one of the Russian invasion the narrative has been put forward that Russian troops were poorly trained and equipped and were led by incompetent commanders using Stalinist era tactics of ‘human wave’ assaults trying to overwhelm AFU positions by sheer weight of numbers.
Meanwhile, the brave troops of the Kiev regime were being trained to much higher NATO standards and being equipped with superior Western wonder weapons such as main battle tanks, long range artillery systems such as HIMARS and superior air defence systems such as the Patriot. The latest wonderwaffen being heralded by the Western media are F-16 combat planes which are scheduled to arrive in Ukraine in the second half of the year.
Events over the last year have proven how false and misleading this Russophobic narrative has been. NATO and its echoes in the Western media have completely failed to understand Russian military doctrine. Surprisingly, information that supports this assertion is provided by an article in the August 2022 edition of the United States Marine Corps Gazette.
Writing under under the pen name 'Marinus', a senior marine corps officer, provides an objective analysis of Russian military strategy since late February 2022. It totally undermines the narratives provided by Western media and pro Washington politicians and much of the Left in the West.
Modern Warfare
Firstly, it should be noted that since 2014, with NATO help, Ukraine had built a very strong line of fortified positions in towns and cities across the Donbass from which they bombarded the 'rebels'. That's the context in which the 'special operation' was conducted.
Marinus has noted how Russia was fighting a 'revolutionary’ kind of warfare focused on using massive artillery firepower to destroy AFU positions over long periods of time before sending troops in to try and take enemy fortified positions.
Besides artillery, Russia has made extensive use of cruise missiles and massive use of kamikaze drones such as the Lancet and Iranian designed ‘Geraniums’ to destroy AFU armour/artillery on the battlefield as well take out infrastructure such as war factories/command and control bases.
The AFU defeat at Artemovsk (Bakhmut) in May 2023, where it suffered tens of thousands of casualties, greatly reduced the attacking power of its failed summer offensive and was largely due to the overwhelming firepower deployed by Russian artillery.
The Ukrainian defenders of the city had numerical superiority over the Wagner forces, yet they were broken by the Russian artillery pounding the city for months. This city was an important logistical hub for the AFU which was connected by road/rail to other fortified cities across the Donbass such as Chasov Yar, Konstantinovka, Toretsk, Kramtorsk, and Adveeka. Since the defeat at Artemovsk the AFU has lost some of the above mentioned ‘fortresses’ the most important of which was the recent loss of Adveeka.
In the last few months the Russian airforce has made massive use of FAB bombs (250, 500,1000 and 1,500 pounds of high explosive) to devastating effect on AFU positions. The Western media has recently gone into panic mode over this Russian weapon lamenting how Ukraine needs more air defences to protect it from these ‘game changing’ bombs.
The AFU loss of the city of Adveeka, which was the most fortified city in the Donbass, was made possible by saturation bombing of Ukrainian defensive lines. Numerous Ukrainian commanders have bewailed in interviews with Western media that they have no defence against these glide bombs which can be tens of kilometres away from the line of contact ensuring the safety of Russian warplanes such as the SU-34.
The capture of Adveeka dealt a huge blow to the AFU which lost its strongest defensive position in the whole of the Donbass.
Adveeka, a suburb of the city of Donetsk, was used by the AFU to fire incessantly into the city killing many civilians. Along with the capture of the city of Marinka it was the elimination of a powerful bridgehead with a huge number of fortifications.
West of Adveeka are the remaining fortified towns of the AFU which Russia has been steadily taking in recent weeks. Once these fortified towns and villages fall the Russian army will be out into the fields where AFU troops will find it very difficult to defend out in the open.
Since the capture of Adveeka in February of this year Russian forces have advanced west of the city capturing numerous fortified positions of the AFU which represent the second and last line of fortified defence on that sector of the front.
Severnoe and Lastochkino have fallen to Russian troops along with Pobeda. Russian troops have captured Orlovka, Vodanoye, which follows the capture of Tonenkoye, and are close to taking Berdychi.
In the Zaporozhye region Russian forces have been reactivated and have re-entered Rabotino which the AFU took last summer at a huge loss of manpower and heavy armour. They are pressing the AFU hard in the Verbovoye area forcing the AFU to divert precious resources from other hard pressed fronts in an effort to prevent a Russian breakthrough.
Besides, the progress of Russian troops west of Adveeka they have been advancing on several fronts overstretching the AFU. On the southern Donetsk front Russian forces are entrenched in fighting for Novomikhailovka, they have also entered the crucially important town of Krasnogorovka near Marinka. East of Artemovsk (Bakhmut) the village of Krasnoe has been taken which cleared the way for the Russian advance on Chasov Yar.
The Battle for Chasov Yar
Since early April Russian artillery and aviation has been hammering AFU defensive positions and its supply lines into the city. After the humiliating losses of Bakmut and Adveeka, which Zelensky had said would be held no matter the cost in terms of casualties, has stated that another military defeat is unacceptable.
This has led to the AFU driving reserves into the defence of the city to prevent its fall. Here Zelensky is just repeating the same mistake he made last summer when he burned up strategic reserves trying to defend Bakmut which helped condemn his summer offensive to abject failure.
A year later Russian forces have something which they lacked last year which is an overwhelming superiority in weapons from artillery to tanks to combat aircraft, drones and long range missiles/bombs.
In recent days Russian troops have stormed and occupied the eastern outskirts of Chasov Yar. These are a commanding height from which to continue the attack. Russian units are attacking the city from 3 different directions: the north, centre and south of the city. The AFU commander in chief Syrsky is diverting precious reserves from other fronts to the defence of the city.
The problem he faces is that Russian artillery/aviation is taking a very heavy toll on AFU reserves as they are moved towards the city. Russian military bloggers on Telegram report that its storm troops increasingly hear a request from Ukrainian troops to retreat, but the high command orders its soldiers to fight to the end.
The situation facing the AFU garrison in Chasov Yar appears hopeless. Its defeat is only a matter of time. Unfortunately, for its men defending the city it appears Zelensky is willing to sacrifice them so as to show to his Western sponsors that his army is still in the game and that it is still a worthwhile recipient of arms and ammunition with which to continue the war.
Grave situation facing the AFU going forward
It is quite clear that following the failure of last years summer offensive where the AFU suffered tens of thousands of casualties and massive losses of heavy armour and artillery supplied by the West, it has failed to requip and rebuild battered military brigades never mind create much needed new brigades.
Besides a dire shortage of ammunition for western supplied air defence systems and artillery, the AFU lacks an adequate electronic warfare complex/air defence system capable of repelling massive waves of drone attacks by Russia never mind the glide bombs which are being used in the hundreds each day.
Perhaps worst of all for the future of the war from Kiev’s perspective is the dire manpower shortage facing Ukraine. Ukraine is now scraping the bottom of the manpower barrel conscripting thousands of young women, including pregnant women for combat duty. There are hundreds of videos on Telegram showing AFU recruiters kidnapping young men off the streets or from their homes.
It is very clear that further western supplies of weapons and ammunition will only prolong the agony of the Ukrainian armed forces. The US and its allies can print all the money they like but they can’t print ammunition which their military industrial complexes are incapable of producing in sufficient numbers, nor can they print manpower to fight on the front lines.
Telegram
The Ukrainian armed forces face an existential crisis which is only going to get worse as each day passes with AFU casualties per day estimated between 500 and 1000.
Ukraine clearly faces defeat on the battlefield
To conclude, there is a growing realisation amongst the imperialist powers which make up NATO that Ukraine is losing the war badly and faces certain defeat unless something drastic is done by the West to try and revive its failing proxy war with Russia.
This has been recently manifested by Macron’s hysterical outbursts claiming that France hasn't ruled out sending thousands of troops to Ukraine to prevent a Russian victory on the battlefield.
This is delusional thinking of the highest order. A recent article in the French publication Marianne revealed how secret reports drawn up the French army reveal that how it fears that the AFU faces collapse; that its western training is insufficient and too short; that western weaponry is considered less efficient than Soviet equipment because the latter is easier to maintain and cheaper to mass produce; Russian superiority in the defensive domain was underlined; western military planners have underestimated Russian tactics which have preserved a large operational reserve capable of exploiting breaks in AFU defences.
The secret report concluded;
It is clear in view of the forces present that Ukraine cannot win this war militarily.
The Marianne publication interviewed several senior French officers who made very negative comments about the combat readiness of the French army. One quipped;
We must not fool ourselves facing the Russians, we are an army of majorettes!
If French imperialism actually dispatched its own troops to Ukraine it would represent a very dangerous escalation of the conflict. Putin and his generals have made it clear that French forces would represent a clear and legitimate target for Russia to bomb.
With no air cover French forces would be easily destroyed by Russian glide bombs or hypersonic missiles. Russia has not held back from bombing groups of Western mercenaries/NATO intelligence officers across Ukraine which includes many hundreds of French dead.
Hopefully the French people, who have protested in huge numbers against the Macron regime on numerous occasions, will take action if their government decided to send troops under their own banner not NATO’s to Ukraine.
Kira Bonye skit
It is clear that Ukraine is losing its attritional war with Russia. The current stage of the conflict increasingly resembles the Eastern Front during 1944 where the remaining strong units of the Nazi Wehrmacht (Army Group Centre) were destroyed by the Red Army (Operation Bagration) preparing the way for the invasion of the German Reich and the conquest of Berlin.
Once the AFU collapses, as the German Wehrmacht did, then the Zelensky regime faces being overthrown maybe in another Maidan style coup by forces of the Nazi right.
It appears that, despite his claims to be open to negotiations, Putin is clearly heading towards imposing a military/political settlement on Ukraine which he believes will guarantee the security of Russia’s western border.
Meanwhile, Zelensky still continues to beg for Western aid as if money alone will win this unwinnable war. It will, however, continue to fill the boots of him and his lackeys.
Leaked U.S. strategy on Ukraine sees corruption as the real threat
Whoa... that was really good. Nice writeup! I stopped reading about this because the media is always extremely biased when it comes to this sort of reporting. I like the contrast in attitude about the tanks from the same news agency at the end there.
For many, particularly after the victories of the People's Republics early on, this has been apparent from the get to. The above quote is from Marianne, despite Macron's posturing, and analyses I have read recently suggests France, which has already delivered ~40% of it's artillery to the Ukraine, couldn't realistically put more than a couple thousand boots on the ground, far less than 5k. Nonetheless, I hear the French Foreign Legion has put troops on the ground in the Ukraine, although I was unable to learn more due to the rapidly emerging situation between Iran and Israel.
I reckon this is the most concise, yet complete, history of the development of the war in the Ukraine, and I very much appreciate you putting it together. I hope many, many people concerned about events there read this and gain substantial and rational understanding of how the current circumstances have arisen.
IMHO, Zelensky and his brass are only there to skim Western funds. Since those funds seem to have dried up, I expect them all to take sudden vacations in their new villas and condos they have acquired during the war.
Thanks!
Edit: I was unaware that Texas Donbass, the Commie that has been active in defending the people of SE Ukraine from the Nazis, has gone missing. That's terrible news, as his notoriety is sure to earn him harsher treatment if he's been captured. Please let me know if any word of Russell's situation becomes available.
What I've heard so far is that he was taken by 5th Tank Brigade RF. Hopefully they will realise their mistake and let him go soon. Best wishes to his family
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