Ukraine launched a successful offensive and inflicted the worst defeat on Russia since World War II.
Today, while the parties are digging in and coming to their senses, it makes sense to talk about the future.
What can each side do next?
Announcement first.
Last month turned out to be the first unprofitable month in the history of our channel.
There was less advertising, maybe because of the foreign agency.
Russian viewers, of whom I have half, are disabled from monetization, there is also an outflow of donors on Patreon:
from one thousand two hundred and twenty patrons in March to nine hundred and twenty in July - that is, almost 100 per month.
After my last appeal, 76 people signed up for Patreon, we are very grateful to you!
But we still have 210 fewer patrons than when we first opened Patreon.
Let's try to make up for our fall. If you have a foreign card, please subscribe to our Patreon.
Link in description. We can also make a crypto transfer. Now on to the topic.
We'll talk today about actions of each side: what their further actions might be.
For the Russian leadership, one natural way out is now to try to negotiate with the Ukrainian side
at least for something that can be represented, if not a victory, then at least “not a defeat”.
And this is a whole new level.
We know for sure, simply by the time of preparation of the documents that have become publicly available,
that the idea of capturing the whole of Ukraine disappeared from the agenda in April-May.
Since then, the focus has shifted to trying to hold on to what has already been captured.
Hold referendums in the occupied territories and pass them off as a victory.
But for this to happen, two things are needed.
First, the relative peace in the controlled territory.
So that at least nothing explodes there on a daily basis, and so that Ukranians don't advance there.
And secondly, and much more important, is the absolute certainty that this territory will not be recaptured.
The whole current war is being waged just so that propaganda has content.
Wars in the 21st century, especially in a region like Europe, cannot be waged with any rational goals.
It used to be simple: we are fighting to seize fertile lands and taxable population.
Now everything is different.
How much is Azovstal worth now?
Optimistically, the destroyed plant is worth zero.
In reality, it costs a certain number of millions of dollars for long-term demining and tens of millions of dollars
more for complete dismantling and land reclamation.
Because the ruins of a giant metallurgical enterprise in the city are a source of constant danger,
children can climb in there and kill themselves, it is a source of constant pollution of the earth and groundwater.
Dangerous chemical reagents, which are kept in sealed flasks and under lock and key in laboratories,
are used in tanks in industry, especially metallurgical industry.
How many heavy metals, acids, poisons, the fiercest industrial solvents, which tanks and pipelines were broken
under the ruins of Azovsteal, what flows from where, where it goes, what compounds it forms -
all this is now known to God alone.
The fact is that from an asset that brought money and costed money, the plant,
destroyed by the war, became an exclusion zone for many years.
The money that was spent on capturing it will not only never come back.
You will need to spend orders of magnitude more just to get a flat piece of land where a mine will not tear off your leg,
you will not fall into a 10-meter well, where diesel locomotives cannot even be filled
with water from the territory of the enterprise.
In the modern world, even apart from all humanistic considerations, war brings a continuous loss.
There is direct damage: you spend a lot of money, and in return you get not slaves and arable land,
as in past centuries, but obligations to restore territories and pay pensions.
And there is indirect damage: you become a world outcast with whom no one wants to deal.
The only task that war solves today is to be fuel for propaganda, to raise the level of support for the authorities within the country.
Proceeding from this, it is necessary to assess the future prospects of the war.
OPTIONS FOR RUSSIA
Can they wage war indefinitely? No, they can't.
A prolonged bloody battle with no results - and especially with negative results - no one likes.
Can they implement the initial tasks of the war: to capture Kyiv? Or Kharkiv? Or Odessa?
This question is even ridiculous to ask.
Can they accomplish the minimum task of declaring the occupied territories their own?
In principle, they can, but there is a huge risk.
Because if the territories declared as their own return to Ukraine, then it will be impossible to justify this in any way.
It will be pure defeat.
Accordingly, we return to the starting point: it is impossible to continue the war, and the only way to end it is to somehow
agree with Ukraine so that everyone disperses, plus or minus, with what each got.
So that the topic can be hushed up and put aside.
The main question is: how to do it?
Yes, in the early days of the war, President Zelensky and the Ukrainian government were ready
for peace on almost any terms.
They were ready to freeze the question of ownership of the Crimea for 15 years.
They would go to great lengths to save the country. Then it was possible to negotiate from a position of strength.
But now Ukraine is winning, and clearly winning.
The whole world is looking for its jaw under the table in an attempt to understand how it was possible
to ruin the Russian army so much, nevertheless, there is a fact: the Russian army, having swallowed a trillion dollars,
is now only able to delay the Ukrainian offensive - but not stop it.
If six months ago the whole world was discussing what other territories Ukraine would have to give up in order to save itself,
now the whole question has come down to Crimea: will it be possible to return it or not.
Today there is a very real opportunity to win on the battlefield.
Today, President Zelensky and the entire Ukrainian government simply do not have the space
to negotiate on terms acceptable to Putin.
There has been no risk of losing the country for a long time, but there is a prospect of returning all the territories lost since 2014,
destroying separatist formations, ending the sluggish conflict on its land and, generally speaking, bringing it back to normal.
The only way Russia can try to regain its negotiating position is through terror.
Terror in the most literal sense of the word, intimidation of civilians.
Bombing of civilian infrastructure, public buildings and residential buildings.
Putin cannot win at the front, but he can try to sow a reluctance in Ukrainian society to continue the war.
But there is a problem here too. In order to inflict really great damage, bombardments are needed,
heavy bombs must be dropped from aircraft.
But since about the beginning of the summer, Russian planes no longer fly deep into Ukrainian territory,
because Ukraine now has a developed air defense. Russia has already lost more than fifty military aircraft.
Russia does not have an infinite number of combat aircraft, each of them costs tens of millions of dollars,
each one contains an expensive pilot who does not want to die. In general, there is no way to carry out carpet bombing.
Only rocket attacks remain.
Missiles carry a significantly smaller charge and are much more expensive than bombs.
Missiles are not designed for total war and carpet bombing - missiles are designed for targeted destruction.
Russia does not and will not have enough missiles to cleanly destroy the civilian infrastructure of Ukraine.
To spoil a little - maybe, but not to destroy.
In total, after six months of the war, all that Russia can do is try to persuade Ukraine to negotiate,
simultaneously engaging in terror of the civilian population.
But it is more interesting to talk about the prospects of Ukraine.
UKRAINE AND ITS PROSPECTS
So, what are the prospects for Ukraine?
In February, by stopping Russian tanks near Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Chernigiv, the Ukrainians proved
they could defend themselves stubbornly.
And now, by forcing Russian troops to flee, abandoning their vehicles,
and liberating an area the size of Lebanon in a week, Ukraine has proven it can attack successfully.
First of all, Ukraine proved this to its own citizens.
Proved that the talks about the upcoming large-scale counter-offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,
which have been actively conducted since the spring, are not populist promises, but a new reality.
Proved that Putin's army can not only be stopped, but also driven out.
Even before the retreat of the Russian army from Balakleya and Izyum, the vast majority of Ukrainians
were sure that their country would win.
According to a nationwide poll conducted in June, 93 percent of Ukrainians answered that a Russian attack would be repelled.
At the same time, if in the first months of the war there was still hope for a quick defeat of the Russian army, then in June,
on the fifth month of the war, most of the respondents admitted that many months and years separated them from victory.
In other words, even before the brilliant Kharkiv offensive, most Ukrainians believed in victory,
while realizing that the war would be protracted and long.
Now we have seen how the Armed Forces of Ukraine are breaking through the front and forcing the Russian army to flee.
Imagine how the confidence of the Ukrainians in victory and their readiness to wait for it just as long as it takes have strengthened.
Today, for any Ukrainian politician, talking about concessions to Russia or even returning
to the situation on February 23rd is political suicide.
It was possible to talk about the abandonment of offensive weapons, about the neutral status of Ukraine,
about postponing the solution of issues on the Crimea and Donbass in March, when Russian
tanks were stationed in the suburbs of Kyiv.
Now, when the Armed Forces of Ukraine are forty kilometers from Belgorod and do not go there just
because they do not want to, Ukrainian society needs a victory and only a victory.
The same mood in the Ukrainian army.
Already in February-March, every Ukrainian soldier realized that Putin's army is not an all-powerful
infernal evil that cannot be resisted.
Reality has shown that the Russian army, over decades of corruption and fraud,
has rotted to such an extent that in a big war it plugs some sections of the front with police and mobilized
from the occupied territories, and when front line breaks, it flees, generously leaving tanks, artillery and ammunition
to the advancing army.
Ukrainian soldiers saw Putin's army in all its glory and felt the taste of victory. And they are determined to repeat this victory.
Now the military initiative is on the side of Ukraine, that is, it is Ukraine who decides where
and when the main battles of this war will take place.
The Russian army can only react, without the possibility of at least something to be planned in advance.
So, after the almost complete de-occupation of the Kharkiv region, the Armed Forces of Ukraine moved south,
to the Donetsk region, and yesterday they liberated Svyatogorsk and its environs.
When it becomes inexpedient to continue the offensive in this direction, the Ukrainian army will be able to strike
in another place where it feels the weakness of the Russian defense -
in the Ugludar, Kherson, Zaporozhye or any other direction.
Once again, the Russian army, having lost the initiative, will be forced to hastily and, perhaps, suboptimally adapt.
Problems with a lack of equipment, it seems, will be resolved faster -
because of the new successes of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Ukraine, having liberated the Kharkiv region, proved to the Western allies that their weapons
would not be wasted in the battles for the cowshed in the village of Peski.
Now Western leaders have seen Ukrainian soldiers liberate cities with their weapons. few people will refuse
become a co-author of victory, victory over the main threat to world security.
And Western arms supplies will increase significantly in the near future.
And Ukraine has greatly increased Russian weapons after the Kharkiv flight.
In total, Ukraine now has both the desire to continue the war to liberate its territory, and the ability to do so.
Its leadership is not going to enter into any negotiations, but will fight to the bitter end.
The continuation of the war to a victorious end, of course, does not mean the siege of Moscow or the march to Vladivostok.
Now the goal of Ukraine is to inflict a few more major defeats on Russia.
And then Ukraine will find itself in a position from which it will be able to dictate the terms of peace and put forward ultimatums.
Sometime in the future, Ukrainian diplomats will again sit down at the negotiating table, but already as winners.
WHAT ARE YOU DYING FOR
If you want to understand what Putin will do next, then there is one question to ask.
What did he plan for himself and the entire system he had been building for two decades?
Did he expect in mid-September, towards the end of the seventh month of the war, to see where it all ended up?
If he had expected, if he had foreseen that the most faithful supporters of murder would begin
to vilify him with their last words,
if he had known that his army would become the main supplier of weapons for Ukraine, that it would scatter
as soon as it saw the enemy, he would not have started this war.
Putin's war was supposed to end for at least six months. Should have ended in a successful blitzkrieg,
should have ended in the capture of Kyiv.
And it doesn’t matter what would happen afterwards: the propaganda apparatus will cope with everything.
Now the main question for the military: do you understand that tomorrow the manual will change again?
That the goals and objectives of the special military operation will change again?
That Putin will pay with your lives to make the instructions for Solovyov not look so bad?
It is impossible not to see this: for those who sent you to war, only the picture of the evening broadcast matters.
It doesn't matter what and with whom Putin tries to negotiate - for you it will mean death.
No one will warn you about anything, you will die under Ukrainian fire, completely unaware that the concept has already changed,
that there is no war in your direction, and your death is no defeat.
Ukrainian soldiers die for their homeland. You are dying so that Kiselyov and Simonyan can connect two sentences.
You will leave such a memory of yourself.
See you tomorrow.