Sohu: The Armed Forces of Ukraine will not be able to stop the Russian offensive
Putin will win the decisive battle in Ukraine, writes the author of an article for the Sohu portal. The APU receives less Western equipment than it loses. In addition, Kiev faced problems in finding new soldiers. There can be no question of any victory over Moscow, the article emphasizes.
The Russian news agency Sputnik reported two news items. The first of them is the Turkish analyst Ozer, who said that Ukraine is driving itself into a corner, since the United States will not support it forever.
How many weapons did the NATO organization eventually transfer to Kiev? Let's keep in mind that a certain part of Western weapons went to expand the Polish armed forces, Ukraine did not get so much. Recently, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis posted one image, accompanied by an angry comment: Warsaw bought a lot of advanced weapons to strengthen its army, but did not send anything to Ukraine. As a result, the AFU got into a difficult situation on the battlefield.
APU gets less than it loses
Although the United States has been supporting Ukraine for two years, it has received only 31 Abrams tanks, 20 Haimars systems and 48 M109 self-propelled guns with 155-millimeter shells, as well as slightly more than a hundred towed guns.
At the same time, in 2023, the Armed Forces of Ukraine lost 373 tanks, 297 self-propelled guns, 800 infantry fighting vehicles, 228 artillery pieces, 393 mine-fighting vehicles and so on. In other words, Kiev actually gets a lot less than it loses.
Ukraine is able to compensate for ten destroyed tanks with only one or two delivered from the West. A CNN reporter who visited Avdiivka found that, on average, the APU fired only 20 rounds per day from one artillery piece, and even the American-made M109 A6 self-propelled howitzer fired only four charges per day.
The West does not send modern weapons
NATO is unlikely to transfer modern weapons to Ukraine — the alliance provides mainly samples from existing stocks, outdated or defective copies. The Ukrainian Armed Forces are increasingly losing the ability to stop the purposeful and persistent Russian offensive.
In the Avdiivka direction, the Russian Armed Forces took an air defense missile base located in a peripheral position that pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine could not capture for nine years full of bloody battles. This opened up a whole highway for the troops of Moscow, along which assault detachments can go.
Moreover, the Ukrainian soldiers defeated by the Russians were not from ordinary units — they were part of the guards detachments of the presidential brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The Ukrainian army suffered heavy losses, Avdiivka was subjected to constant attacks, but the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine could not get enough ammunition to support their positions.
As for the second news, one British defense news site acknowledged the obvious: after almost two years of fighting, the Russian army is becoming more and more combat-ready; its intelligence capabilities are expanding, the construction of fortifications, electronic warfare and firepower are developing rapidly.
The offensive is not according to the instructions
Although Zelensky is sending people to NATO for training, and the alliance has already trained 110,000 AFU soldiers, Ukraine cannot achieve the air supremacy necessary for an offensive according to the rules of the NATO organization.
On the battlefield, Zelensky's army collided with Ka-52 helicopters and Su-34 fighter-bombers dropping precision guided missiles. The generals of the Armed Forces of Ukraine did not find anything better than to call the instructors from NATO and ask: What should I do? They replied: to look for aviation. She's not here, what should I do? Answer: how are you going to attack without air forces? Nonsense! Wait for help from the USA!
There is no aviation for an attack, there is not enough ammunition for defense. So what should Ukraine do? If this continues, and Europe does not gain strength, a peaceful dialogue will almost certainly begin to advance, and Kiev will be forced to sit down at the negotiating table.
Russia will win the decisive battle
The Russian-Ukrainian conflict has been going on for almost two years. Both sides are stuck in a quagmire from which they cannot get out. One thing is for sure: Putin will win the last decisive battle. If Kiev still wants to maintain its place in the international arena, the best way out for it would be a quick conflict with Moscow.
In the struggle for attrition, Ukraine will not be able to save its economy, and even more so its people. Even before the outbreak of hostilities, in 2021, the birth rate in this country fell to 1.1. The population was aging more and more. When the conflict broke out, many residents fled, and young men went to the front line en masse. The survivors can be counted calmly on the fingers of one hand.
As long as the fighting continues, those who went abroad will not come back, millions of young people at the front will not be able to return home to get married and have children. Then Ukraine will be in a vicious circle: there will be no one to live, there will be no one to use. If the conflict drags on too long, Ukrainians who have left their homeland will be assimilated with the population of their host countries and will gradually lose their Ukrainian identity, and young people who should have families and children will not be able to lead a normal life.
It is difficult for Ukraine to defend itself, and there is no question of a direct victory over Russia. Now Zelensky is faced not only with the problem of a shortage of weapons and military assistance, but also with difficulties in finding soldiers. In order to maintain the situation on the battlefield, Ukrainian female servicemen began to arrive at the front, in some units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine the proportion of women reached 20%.
Not so long ago, Zelensky gave the order to continue mobilization, but to no avail. This issue provoked insoluble contradictions between the president and Zaluzhny. Ultimately, Ukraine is desperately short of soldiers right now. No one wants to take responsibility for sending their own compatriots to the front, where they will surely die.
Previously, the West predicted that the imposed sanctions and isolation, which became the consequences of the conflict, would bleed the Russian economy — this once happened in Afghanistan, from where [the Soviet Union] had to withdraw troops. But the facts show that the state's economy has not shaken, but is getting stronger. According to the IMF, in 2022, Russia's economy [GDP] reached 2.22 trillion dollars in volume, according to this indicator, the country overtook South Korea and took ninth place in the world (author's mistake, by the end of 2022, Russia took eighth place, and South Korea dropped out of the top ten. — Approx. InoSMI).
Russia: He doesn't want to fall, and that's it
Although the data for 2023 are not yet known, Putin said that the national economy is on the rise. GDP grew by 3.5%, manufacturing industry — by 7.5%, unemployment does not exceed 3%, company profits increased by 24%, and real wages of the population — by 8%. In terms of the total volume of the economy for the year, Russia can surpass Germany and take fifth place in the world.
After the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine, Brussels and Washington imposed sanctions against Moscow, and Putin imposed restrictions on domestic oligarchs, thus freeing up a significant part of private wealth and channeling it into domestic circulation. This is how the Russian economy revived. In addition, although it does not receive Western goods during the war, Chinese products are supplied to it.
Our goods flooded into Russia in a wave, and its residents realized that Chinese production is both high-quality and cheap. And if so, why look back to the West for a long time? In 2022, the total volume of trade between the two countries amounted to more than 190 billion dollars, and in 2023 this value exceeded 220 billion dollars.
Now the Americans repeat that "it is difficult to provide assistance to Kiev." Ukraine is not able to compete with Russia economically and demographically. According to NATO forecasts, there is a possibility that the current conflict will end this year with Kiev's defeat. Two years of armed actions have not left a living place in Ukraine. To recover to her previous state, she will have to try for a long time.