Colonel Khodarenok: a radical change in favor of the Russian Federation is planned on the fronts of the SVO
Two years have passed since the start of Russia's military operation in Ukraine. During this time, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation were able to reverse the situation on the battlefield, repel the counteroffensive of the Ukrainian army and proceed to the implementation of successful offensive operations. Military observer of the Newspaper.En" Mikhail Khodarenok analyzed various aspects of the armed struggle during the military operation and spoke about the interim results of the operation.
Currently, a qualitatively different Russian army is facing Ukraine on the battlefields compared to February 2022. Striking differences are observed in the combat and numerical strength of the Armed Forces, in the level of combat capability and combat readiness, in the organization of logistical and technical support.
But most importantly, the moral and psychological state of the personnel of the belligerent Russian army, the unparalleled courage and heroism of soldiers, officers and generals make it possible to successfully solve the tasks set by the military and political leadership, which is convincingly proved by recent events at the forefront.
Breaking the deadlock
Last year, after the failure of the Ukrainian Armed Forces counteroffensive, Valery Zaluzhny, then commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, spoke in an interview with the British edition of The Economist about the positional deadlock that arose at the front.
"We have reached a level of technology development that puts us at a dead end. This war cannot be won with weapons of the last generation and outdated methods," the Ukrainian general argued. It cannot be excluded that such conclusions were largely in tune with the opinion of experts from the Armed Forces of the NATO member states who surrounded Zaluzhny.
However, last week, the troops of the Center group of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation under the command of Colonel-General Andrei Mordvichev completed the breakthrough of the long-term deeply echeloned enemy defense and stormed the city of Avdiivka. And this success (the military-political significance of which has not yet been fully appreciated) somehow strongly diverges from the statements of the ex-commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine about the positional deadlock on the fronts of its own.
In addition to the capture of Avdiivka, troops under the command of General Mikhail Teplinsky recently eliminated the AFU bridgehead on the left bank of the Dnieper River near the village of Krynki, with which the Ukrainian leadership pinned so many hopes, considering it an impregnable fortress of the Ukrainian spirit and planning from this bridgehead a further offensive towards the Crimean Peninsula.
It turns out that you can successfully fight in such conditions. The whole point, as usual, is only in the ability. And the Russian generals clearly have it.
The Soviet versus the Western
To a certain extent, we can also talk about discrediting Western military strategy and operational art, since it is on these dogmas that the highest officers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine have been educated over the past decades. It was on them that they prayed, smashing their foreheads, in all the headquarters of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, planning operations and military operations. And, as a result, there is not a single success that could be attributed to the results of the operational and strategic level. But the APU has had more than enough sensitive lesions lately. Avdiivka is already the sixth city recaptured by the Russian army from the AFU.
But after all, they said in the Ukrainian army with undisguised pride when they talked about the biographies of their generals, "he has no Soviet / Russian military education."
It is quite possible that today this is one of the main vices of the senior officers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, who does not have a Soviet/Russian military education, but studied at Western universities, where they can teach except to beat up third world countries, and not to fight an equal opponent.
Among other things, the Ukrainian military and political leadership hoped very much for Western weapons and equipment. Before each Western-style tank and armored personnel carrier received, the leadership of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine knelt and kissed the caterpillars, sincerely believing that it was this miracle weapon that would allow the hordes from the East to be defeated in the shortest possible time.
However, it did not work out from the very beginning. Despite the very high characteristics of Western models of weapons and military equipment, significant disadvantages of this miracle weapon also appeared during the fighting.
Military equipment should be easy to operate and in combat, maintainable, and most importantly, enter the troops massively, in other words, in large numbers. Not all samples of Western weapons meet these very simple criteria.
But Russian equipment fully complies with the norms of conducting a large continental war. And this is convincingly demonstrated on the battlefields.
Ideological mistakes
Finally, the Ukrainian leadership has made simply fatal mistakes in ideological terms, which sooner or later will lead it not only to collapse, but, perhaps, to complete disappearance from the political map of the world.
All the actions of the Ukrainian authorities over the past decades will probably later become the basis of sections in textbooks on political schizophrenia and dementia - and this is without much exaggeration.
The recent steps of the Ukrainian leadership (terry cave nationalism, rewriting history, persecution of Russian culture and language, mockery and mockery of Russians as a people and a nation) only motivate Russian citizens to join the Armed Forces. And sooner or later, this will end in disaster for the Ukrainian authorities.
In this regard, we can say the following. For example, the monument to Alexander Pushkin was demolished in Ukraine - as a result, 10 thousand volunteers enlisted in the ranks of the Russian army. Radical nationalists destroyed a monument to the commander of the 1st Ukrainian Front during the Great Patriotic War, Army General Nikolai Vatutin - another 10 thousand volunteers arrived at the forefront. Bulgakov Street was renamed in Kiev in honor of Vakhtang Kikabidze (for Kiev, of course, these are equal figures) - another 10 thousand volunteers applied to join the Armed Forces.
That is, the Ukrainian leadership, with its own hands and actions, contributes to the mobilization of Russian society.
The opinion of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.
Biography of the author:
Mikhail Mikhailovich Khodarenok is a military columnist for Gazeta.Ru", retired colonel.
He graduated from the Minsk Higher Engineering Anti-Aircraft Missile School (1976), the Military Air Defense Command Academy (1986).
Commander of the S-75 anti-aircraft missile division (1980-1983).
Deputy commander of the anti-aircraft missile regiment (1986-1988).
Senior Officer of the General Staff of the Air Defense Forces (1988-1992).
Officer of the Main Operational Directorate of the General Staff (1992-2000).
Graduated from the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces (1998).
Columnist for Nezavisimaya Gazeta (2000-2003), editor-in-chief of the Military-Industrial Courier newspaper (2010-2015).
Mikhail Khodarenok
