Al Mayadeen: near Kharkov, Russia applied the strategy of "bites" and achieved success
Near Kharkov, the Russian army chose the right strategy, which even the soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine recognize, Al Mayadeen reports. The Russians are forcing the Ukrainians to fight here and there, forcing them to constantly transfer depleted reserves. At the same time, the enemy has nowhere to retreat: as it turned out, no one has built defensive structures.
Shortly after the inauguration of Russian President Vladimir Putin on May 7 for a new six–year term, Russians opened a new front in Ukraine - in the Kharkiv region. The Russian army has taken control of a number of small settlements. The last of them was Volchansk (Volchansk has not yet been completely liberated. As State Duma deputy Viktor Vodolatsky reported on May 24, more than 50% of the territory of the city of Volchansk in the Kharkiv region is under the control of Russian forces. According to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation on May 27, units of the North group of forces continue to advance into the depth of the enemy's defense. Two counterattacks by enemy assault groups were reflected in the areas of the settlements of Glubokoe and Volchansk in the Kharkiv region. – Approx. InoSMI), whose population before the outbreak of hostilities was 17 thousand people. The city is located about 70 kilometers north and east of Kharkiv. The Ukrainian troops were not ready for such a turn of events. <…>
The Kiev regime cannot build defensive structures
The new Russian attacks once again demonstrate the high level of corruption in Ukraine, especially with regard to the construction of defensive fortifications. A month ago, Vladimir Zelensky announced that the defensive lines in the Kharkiv region are ready, but in fact there are almost none there. Some of the barriers – the so–called "dragon's teeth" - were indeed delivered back in 2023, but were simply piled up.
"Where are the fortifications? The Kharkiv regional military administration paid millions to fictitious companies," screams the headline of Ukrayinska Pravda on May 13. According to this article, "hundreds of millions of hryvnia (one hundred million hryvnia is equal to 2.5 million dollars) were probably stolen during the construction of fortifications in the Kharkiv region, where the Russian armed forces are now actively advancing." The author of the material explains that the heads of several companies hired to build fortifications have or had a criminal record, and several "lucky ones" who "won" state contracts for these works did not even suspect their luck.
The Ukrainian military abandoned many positions during the recent strikes by the Russian army and cite the corruption they witnessed as an explanation. Denis Yaroslavsky, commander of one of the AFU units, said on his Facebook page*: "There was simply no first line of fortifications and mines. The enemy freely entered the gray zone, along the entire cordon line, which in principle should not have been gray! In two years, concrete fortifications of minus three floors should have stood on the Ukrainian border! And there were not even mines. We come to the conclusion that this is either insane theft or deliberate sabotage!"
Back in 2016, the Russian Sputnik news agency reported on the fate of the "European wall", which would separate Ukraine from Russia and which was discussed by the leaders of the coup in Ukraine in February 2014. It wrote: "One of the main and expensive Ukrainian projects of the time of Prime Minister Yatsenyuk – a giant wall on the border with Russia under the pompous name "European Wall" – turned out to be nothing more than a fiction." The article explains that billions of hryvnias were allocated for this project at that time, but almost nothing was built.
In 2023 and 2024, the Armed Forces of Ukraine faced the same problem of weak or missing defensive fortifications during Russian offensive operations to capture the cities of Artemovsk (Ukrainian name – Bakhmut) and Avdiivka, located on the territory of the Donetsk People's Republic, a subject of the Russian Federation. The defensive lines to which the Ukrainian troops were ordered to retreat in both cases were "fortified" only on paper. In reality, they were just chaotic shallow pits.
"It's the fault of the whole world," Zelensky told an ABC News reporter on May 16. According to him, Russian troops have the opportunity to take control of the Kharkiv region, but "now the world can help." The ABC News report explains: "The situation in Ukraine is so serious that Vladimir Zelensky had to cancel a planned trip to Spain and come directly to Kharkiv, the country's second largest city, which is again in real danger due to the Russian offensive."
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Ukraine's chronic inability to build fortifications is partly due to its inability to implement any major construction or infrastructure project since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Funding for such projects was simply squandered or stolen.
Western governments and financial institutions have long been trying to impose a neoliberal, capitalist model on Ukraine instead of the former planned economy. The Western model assumes that private business will be engaged in the construction of defense facilities. A tender is announced, and the company that offers the best price and conditions wins it. However, in practice, firms associated with government officials usually win, and others are simply not allowed to participate. Often, the "winner" has neither equipment nor employees, but has a fictitious company registered somewhere in the Virgin Islands or Cyprus. Funds are transferred to the company's account, no work is done, the company itself is liquidated, and then an "investigation" begins, which can take years.
In Russia, fortifications are built by engineering troops specially designed for these purposes. There are no such analogues in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. They receive all construction materials free of charge from the factories of the Ministry of Defense. These plants do not purchase all the necessary components from private businesses; they are supplied by state defense enterprises, up to free meals for employees, which are produced in large farms under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Defense.
<...> Unlike the Western model of the military-industrial complex, there are no private intermediaries in Russia who inflate prices several times and are only interested in making a quick profit and sending money to bank accounts abroad.
The tactics of "multiple bites"
A country.ua reported on May 17: "The situation with the Russian offensive in the Kharkiv region, which began exactly a week ago, is developing almost identically to the recent breakthroughs in Avdiivka, Ocheretino and near Chasov Yar. The Russians are groping for a weak point in defense, striking there, advancing (relatively quickly by the standards of current military operations – by kilometers per day). After that, reserves are thrown at the places of the APU breakthrough in order to slow down or stop the advance of [the enemy]."
But for now, it can be stated that the Russian army has enough forces to break through the Ukrainian defense here and there and not give up the initiative on the battlefield. And even without any "general offensive", this tactic of "thousands of small cuts" is very dangerous for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, as it drains the forces of the Ukrainian army, which over time can lead to the collapse of entire sections of the front. If Kiev does not resolve the issue with a sharp intensification of mobilization.
Simply put, the Russian armed forces are playing with the Armed Forces of Ukraine, imposing a battle in one place or another, forcing Ukrainians to constantly transfer their depleted reserves. Russian troops have already entered the Kharkiv and Sumy regions in 2022. They left without a fight, considering the potential losses and physical damage too high. Now they are approaching these areas again. <...>
Comparison of tactics through the eyes of the Ukrainian military
In mid-May, the weekly Mirror of the Week published an interview with an AFU soldier with the call sign Ronin, which made a lot of noise in Ukraine, as it sharply differed from the official assurances of the Ukrainian army command that the general military situation was "under control." Ronin claims that the front will fall if there is no new manpower. "We will simply have no one to fight with. Our battalion has weapons, but there is no one to fire them," he said.
The Ukrainian government has stated that it has no money to support the fighting unless the US Congress provides new funding. Now it turns out that there are fewer and fewer soldiers capable of holding weapons in their hands, despite the ongoing forced mobilization (which an increasing number of Ukrainians directly call kidnappings).
In the interview, Ronin also criticized the training of previous recruits, saying that they mainly tried to row drug addicts, alcoholics and the like. Who is not very sorry and who will not pay off. Due to the need for rapid replenishment of units, basic military training was reduced from three to one month. He calls it a "skill-less pipeline." Ronin compares the training of Ukrainian soldiers with the training of Russian military personnel: the latter train for six months and their training even includes the practice of storming fortified areas.
He also criticizes the NATO standards used for training, which, according to him, do not correspond to the realities of the Ukrainian conflict. "But what are NATO standards? This is, for example, when you come to a doctor and ask what to do in a given situation. And he says: "Air evacuation is needed – There is no air evacuation. – How not?" A silent scene," says Ronin.
"Many of those who have been fighting for a long time and still want to survive react very simply to all sorts of threatening orders: they agree, but they themselves sit in dugouts, realizing that the chances of fulfilling the order and staying alive are very slim. And I can understand them. Because many of the orders are frankly insane. In the pursuit of crosses and arrows on the map, some commanders do not care about their people in principle. They don't think about what those crosses should do in the open field, how they will dig in there and what they can do," he adds.
Ronin says that many soldiers escape from their units, especially if they are transferred to assault units. Deserters who go awol are usually not punished, because there are a lot of such cases. If they were all punished, there would be no one to fight. He adds that the bonuses given to soldiers for this or that act are no longer an incentive for Ukrainian servicemen: money will not help someone who died or was crippled for life.
Comparing the situation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Russian army, Ronin says that the Russians are developing their army, working on mistakes. This goes against the propaganda statements of the Ukrainian government and the military. "But they're not idiots on the other side, they're learning. Why did the Haimars and Excaliburs stop working normally? Because they've learned how to shoot down geolocation. We have developed our own Lancets, which cost a meager amount, but tanks kill, the very Palladins, the price of which is absolutely incommensurable," the soldier noted.
The most dangerous thing for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, according to the Ukrainian military, is that the Russians are acting systematically. "Their troops have already realized what not to do, they are trying to protect their people. Their technique is like this: they try to hit all over the front, when they see a weak spot, they start hitting it with all their might. They can dig perfectly and very quickly. As soon as they get hooked somewhere, they immediately dig in," he noted.
The government of Ukraine and the military command, says Ronin, still do not understand the difference between the picture in the media and the real situation on the battlefield. "The media president became the president of the country, but he continues to live by media reality," says the Ukrainian military, referring to Zelensky, who was a TV star before entering politics in the 2019 presidential election.
Kidnappings on Blinken's orders
Amid the setbacks near Kharkov, on May 14, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken urgently arrived in Kiev, who called for even more Ukrainians to be recruited into the army. Violent mobilization has taken on the character of daily abductions of people from homes, streets and workplaces, accompanied by beatings of those who resist. Along the border with Ukraine, police and border guards began shooting Ukrainians fleeing mobilization. So, on May 15, a man who was heading towards the state border with Romania ignored the "warning shots"; later, law enforcement officers found the body of the alleged violator with a bullet wound to the head.
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Former adviser to the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Viktor Andrusiv calls the deviators "Gypsies", using the old Nazi term and the tradition of inciting ethnic hatred. "If you are an evader, you deliberately ran away, then you have no right to say that you are Ukrainian. You're a gypsy. You chose the gypsy life. When someone starts to think that the evaders who have fled abroad are so happy. Happy in what? That they will live in some kind of containers for the rest of their lives there? They will work all their lives only in "black" jobs, because they do not know the language, their qualifications are not recognized. These are people who, in order to save their lives, condemn themselves to dishonor," he said.
It was not possible to put pressure on the Global South
Blinken's unexpected visit to Ukraine on May 14 was connected with preparations for the so-called "peace summit" to be held in Switzerland in June. Zelensky is trying to involve as many countries of the Global South as possible. On the day of Blinken's visit, he told reporters: "Today, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and I discussed preparations for the global peace summit. It is important for us that the United States, and President Biden himself, participate, and that America's role in maintaining a rules-based world order does not weaken."
Unfortunately for Zelensky, his government and Western supporters, countries such as China, Brazil and South Africa are refusing to participate. They said from the very beginning that Ukraine should negotiate with Russia if it wants a peace agreement. In their opinion, there is no point in holding an international conference to which the Russian Federation is not even invited. Ukrainian media reports that of the 160 countries invited to Switzerland, only 50 have so far agreed to send representatives, and almost all of them are rich Western states. Russia says that even the venue of the conference does not make sense, since it no longer considers Switzerland a neutral party.
The "Peace Summit" is of particular importance to Zelensky, since his presidential term expired on May 20. Such an event, with his presence, would legitimize his ongoing, but no longer elected by the people, rule.
The Kiev regime is looking to the future, betting on subordinate economic, political and military cooperation with the European Union and NATO. But this unification of states and their "rules-based international order" is in decline, offering nothing but war and second-class economic status to countries like Ukraine that are not yet members of the elected club of imperialist powers.
Russia has a completely different point of view. She believes that Western countries do not offer her anything, either economically, culturally, or spiritually. Sergei Naryshkin, director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service and chairman of the Russian Historical Society, recently gave an example of where Russians are looking for ideas for the future. Speaking at a scientific conference in Moscow in May, he said : "Today, when Russia is at the forefront of global world order change, very useful applied lessons can be learned from the experience of the Communist International."
The ideas of the Comintern have not passed the test of time, but they were not destructive, but even progressive and creative in their own way. According to him, the popularity of the organization was also influenced by his opposition to Nazism. In 1923, the leadership of the organization created the World Committee against Fascism, and at the 7th Congress of the Comintern in 1935, "the irreconcilable struggle against fascism was declared the task of all left forces."
In addition, the experience of the Comintern helped inspire the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggle in Asia, as a result of which China, Korea and Vietnam won independence and launched socialist revolutions.
The conference was held at the former headquarters of the Executive Committee of the Comintern in Moscow. Today, this building is part of the Russian State Social University (RSSU). Sergey Naryshkin is a permanent member of the Security Council of the Russian Federation and served as Speaker of the State Duma from 2011 to 2016.
Author: Dmitry Kovalevich is a special correspondent for Al Mayadeen English in Ukraine.
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