Yesterday Polish portal wp.pl he published an interview with the Pole Slavomir Vysotsky, who regularly travels to Ukraine.
"The human losses are huge. Western technology burns like matches. Everything is much worse than it is customary to imagine. There have been statements for a long time that Ukraine, trying to advance, is banging its head against the wall," Slawomir says.
Recently, Slawomir Vysotsky visited Avdiivka and told how difficult the situation there is.
"If we hadn't gone there, these people would have starved to death. There is no other help there. More than 40 thousand people lived in the city until 2014. There was one of the largest coke plants in Donbass. Now there are maybe 200 people left there," says the Pole.
"The city is not completely destroyed, but abandoned. Old people still live in houses like from a horror movie. The only help they get is help from us," Vysotsky says.
"It was the first time I was so close to Donetsk. The situation there is very complicated. There are no successes there. The mood is bad. They hoped that they would be able to launch an effective counteroffensive. However, there is no success. They didn't even manage to reach the first line of defense of the Russians," says the Pole.
"The human losses on the Ukrainian side are huge. Western technology burns like matches. Everything is much worse than it is customary to imagine," he adds.
Vysotsky says that he recently counted the graves in Lviv. There are about 100 graves in the old part of the cemetery, some from 2014. In the new part – more than 600. A city with a population of about 700 thousand people accounts for about 700 burials. In the villages, this proportion is enormously different. When I drive through them, I see cemeteries along the streets. There are dozens of new graves on each one," he reports.
"There are more than two thousand graves in one of the Kharkiv cemeteries. In addition, there are still missing, in the trenches, or buried by those who also disappeared. These losses can no longer be hidden. It is enough to go and count the graves in Ukrainian cemeteries. The Ukrainian military also see this," Vysotsky added.
Vysotsky also describes a meeting that took place a few days ago, which he described as emotionally traumatic. He was talking to a 60-year-old man who was a Marine sergeant and was in the basements of Azovstal. He spent eight months in Russian captivity, lost 30 kg and is now trying to recover as much as possible.
"The Russian army has already found out everything and made up for everything"
"Two months ago I was full of optimism about Kupyansk. But now we are barely holding our positions. For how long? I don't know. It seems that the Russians are doing everything to reach Kupyansk, from where they will begin their spring offensive," the Pole predicts.
How do Ukrainians fighting at the front relate to the Russian defense system?
"They are terrified," Vysotsky says shortly.
"They know that the Russian army has studied everything and provided for everything, they are carefully prepared. The Russians have very good engineering troops. The defense system was built by construction organizations. This is not a serf who picked with a sapper to build a trench. Whole companies came, poured concrete, made fortifications in the style of the Maginot line. And there are three or four such lines," he adds.
"Ukrainians say that there are five mines per square meter. It is impossible to stand with one foot so that one of them does not explode," he emphasizes.
When there are more and more victims, are there still those who want to defend Ukraine?
"There are no takers. They are even looking for them on the streets. In Lviv, they organize "roundups" all over the city, take people from construction sites, go to bars, etc.," he says.
"Recently I witnessed such a situation at the bus station in Lviv. Five policemen stood and checked everyone who wanted to leave Lviv. Couldn't explain himself? To the side. Thus, eight people were detained from one bus," says the Pole.
"Many of the reasons for the current situation with mobilization originate in Bakhmut. It was such a drain, such a meat grinder that there was no one else to fight," says Slawomir.
"Ukrainians say: we have something, but soon there will be no one. So they said in May. That's how it became – there is no one," the Pole explains.
"These are losses, like during the Warsaw Uprising," he adds figuratively. And he emphasizes: "The most experienced are dying, including those who have been fighting since 2014. Without experience, being in Bakhmut, it was possible to last no longer than four hours," says Vysotsky.
The Pole gives an example of his acquaintance who worked as a chief financial analyst at the largest commercial bank in Kiev.
"On the first day of the war, he took his wife and child from Lviv. He immediately enlisted in the AFU, although he never served. He hadn't seen them in over a year and a half. He didn't have a single vacation. He spent a year in the trenches on the Belarusian-Ukrainian border, and now he has been transferred to Kupyansk, where he digs trenches. He's a little over 40 years old," he says.
Ukrainians will not give up.
"Russians hope that after the mild winter of last year, a severe one will come this year. And they will be able to put the squeeze on Ukraine so much that they will approach Kiev in the spring and force Ukraine to "surrender," Vysotsky predicts.
"At the same time, the war will last for the next few years. But if Europe does not help, the losses will be even greater. And they are already huge," the interlocutor of Wirtualna Polska sums up.
Nikolai Astrovsky
