Today we will talk about another flight from the battlefield of the Russian army and the liberation of territories by Ukrainians,
but first, here's one thing. You may have heard that I was added to the list of the «Mirotvorec» website for, I quote,
“propaganda of Russian-fascist Nazism and chauvinism, as well as for participating in acts
of humanitarian aggression against Ukraine.”
Don't ask me what a "humanitarian aggression" is supposed to mean.
As they say in the media, they did this due to the fact that
I turned to the Finnish government about allowing transit to the Russians.
This is a private and anonymous site, not a government site, there are no legal consequences for entering it.
There are many people there, for example Alexey Arestovich. But the topic created a media occasion.
The introduction was accompanied by a large number of curses that some Ukrainians wrote to me.
What I want to say about this. I try to cover this war as adequately as possible.
Our editors are trying to give an objective analysis, I never hid my opinion, I called a spade a spade,
because of which I was forced to leave my country. Whoever is watching me – you all know this, in Russia,
I have long been recognized as a foreign agent working in favor of Ukraine, and now a prominent Ukrainian resource
has admitted that I work for Russia, which means that both propaganda are dissatisfied with me.
This is probably a good sign. Yesterday, in Ukrainian public space, I saw quite unexpected support – for example,
in the UNIAN telegram channel, the news that I was included in the list of the Mirotvorec was downvoted,
which almost never happens there. Thanks to everyone who wrote words of support.
At such moments, public speakers, even experienced ones, often lose themselves.
When you are attacked by an audience that should objectively support you, this often leads
to the fact that people change their minds, this won't happen to me, I will conscientiously continue to fulfill the role that has
fallen to me in media analytics of this war.
My sympathies are still on the side of Ukraine, which heroically defends itself against aggression.
But on Twitter, I can sometimes troll those who attack me, forgive me here.
Alright, let's get to today's video.
Why is the Russian army in the eighth month of the war no longer just not advancing anywhere,
but not even sustaining a trench war?
Why does it simply crumble before the Ukrainian army advances?
In order to answer these questions, we first need to remember whose tasks this army performs,
that Vladimir Putin is in command in the operational mode, and then we need to make a small lyrical digression
to explain the setting of military goals and objectives.
Here I quickly want to remind you about my Patreon – it helps our editorial staff to exist,
pay everyone good salaries and release daily videos. Subscribe if you have a non-Russian card,
it will help us a lot.
WHY POLITICIANS SHOULD NOT ENGAGE IN WAR
Why is it considered not a good idea when the state does business?
For many reasons, but one of the main ones is that the state-owned company almost inevitably
begins to sacrifice commercial interests for the sake of political ones. Imagine that we have some kind
of completely abstract gas corporation, in principle, the gas corporation has simple business philosophy:
to produce gas and trade it, expanding sales markets as far as possible in order to sell even more gas.
But when our abstract gas company is in the hands of the state, it can do completely different things.
For example, own your own media holding. Why does a gas company need TV channels, radio stations,
a whole bunch of stillborn online projects, why does it need to shoot serials and produce stand-up shows?
Why waste financial and managerial resources on a very complex and non-core business?
From a commercial point of view, it is not necessary and is very harmful.
But the state does not give a damn about commercial motives, the state needs control over the media.
Does this abstract company need to invest tens of billions of dollars in gas pipelines, the payback
of which is doubtful and illusory? No, it is not necessary, because it is interested in selling as much as possible with
as little investment in infrastructure as possible, and not vice versa.
But the state may have other views on this matter, for the state these gas pipelines are a weapon of an energy war and,
most importantly, a way to enrich contractors with corruption.
As a result, after a couple of decades, instead of a rapidly growing gas seller earning big money, whose capitalization
flies over a trillion, which is included in the list of the most expensive companies in the world,
we have a very strange organization, it builds pipes like crazy, maintains football clubs and stadiums,
invests in patriotic films, shuts off gas to unfriendly neighbors, gives huge discounts to friendly neighbors.
It saves failed state business projects, pays for the Olympics, maintains thousands of fake positions for the employment
of children, wives, mistresses, children of mistresses and mistresses of children of respected people.
In short, it does anything except efficient production and sale of gas, that is, making money.
Because no one sets the task of making money for it, it faces political tasks.
Putin's political rationale for holding Kherson is clear. This is the only city since the beginning of the war,
the capture of which can be talked about without hard to contain sarcasm. It is a major regional center,
it is a land corridor to the Crimea, it is something tangible.
You can try to sell it to citizens, with it in your hands you can offer some kind of negotiations.
This is at least some answer to the question: where and in the name of what did you put the entire professional army,
plunged the country under sanctions and isolation. The answer is bad, but at least there is one.
On the other hand, there is the logic of war.
Not being experts in it, focusing on what people who understand say, we can assume
that from a military point of view it would make sense to leave Kherson.
Is it so reasonable to keep a huge grouping of troops sandwiched between the advancing enemy and the Dnieper?
Dnieper, through which all the main crossings are destroyed.
That is, deliberately dooming this grouping to the most severe shortage of supplies,
depriving it of any operational possibilities for movement, in fact, making its existence meaningless at the very moment
when the Russian army needs people everywhere. Needed to such an extent that he had to go first
to the recruiting of prisoners, and then to mobilization.
What is the Russian army around Kherson doing now?
It sits and waits for the Armed Forces of Ukraine to cut it and kill everyone.
In this sense, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have nowhere to hurry: reinforcements cannot come,
ammunition depots are under constant attack by HIMARS.
And all these pontoon crossings, self-made ferries are a completely ridiculous solution for a grouping
of this magnitude, it is impossible to organize any flow of supply of ammunition and equipment.
A huge piece of the Russian army is simply in the hands of the Ukrainian army, and it can do whatever it wants with it.
From what is visible to our non-military-expert eyes, it will not work to keep Kherson in any case.
The only military way out is to withdraw the troops from it while it is still possible to save them.
If the decisions in this war had been made by the military and taken on the basis of military logic,
then Ukraine would have had a much harder time. But the decisions are made by Vladimir Putin,
and these decisions are not military, they are political. Based on political logic, Kherson must be kept at any cost,
because thousands of corpses can be hidden from viewers, but the loss of Kherson cannot be hidden in any way.
When an army is controlled not by the military, but by an informational autocrat, one can be surprised that it fights
the way it fights, managing to break down the worst forecasts of its ill-wishers, just like being surprised that a state-owned
company does not make a profit. It is fundamentally impossible to perform two opposite tasks at the same time.
It is impossible to be an instrument of gas blackmail and a successful gas seller,
it is impossible to fight and at the same time deliver good news for propaganda.
This is especially impossible when even political motives are not clear and change right along the way.
Well, it’s impossible to answer the question now: why and for what military purpose did the Russian army put its best,
most professional forces into the attack on Kyiv?
The paratroopers who landed in Hostomel cannot be returned and cannot be replaced by any mobilised forces.
Vladimir Putin is not a military man, Vladimir Putin is an informational autocrat.
This whole war was needed as a means of restoring his ratings, and it is being waged in the name of ratings.
But the army is not a department of the internal policy of the presidential administration,
it is not designed to solve such problems, it does not know how and cannot solve them. And when army tries,
it ends in complete defeat. For Ukraine and for all of us in general, this is, of course, a happy occasion.
It's a happy case that an adversary who has ten times more money for a war is not organically designed to wage it.
Now let's move on to retelling what happened at the front.
THE RETREAT OF THE RUSSIAN ARMY
Yesterday morning, while the Federation Council unanimously voted for the ratification of the treaty on the annexation
of Ukrainian lands, Ukraine made a breakthrough in the Kherson region.
By evening, the retreat had to be recognized by the Ministry of Defense. However, not very loudly.
Aloud, Konashenkov reported on hundreds of killed Ukrainian soldiers, dozens of tons of destroyed ammunition depots
and blown up command posts. However, behind him was a map, according to which the Russian army was almost
completely driven out of the Kharkiv region, retaining only a small section of the region northeast of Dvurechnoye.
And in Kherson lost the strategically important Davydov Brod, for which the fighting went on for two months,
lost along with Arkhangelsk, Dobryanka, Lyubimovka and many other surrounding villages
in the depths of thirty kilometers of Russian positions.
Having once again allowed the collapse of the front, the Russian army is trying to build a new line of defense
in the villages of Borozenskoye and Dudchany.
Moreover, the northern part of Dudchany is already controlled by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
They are separated from the southern part of the village by the Dudchanskoe reservoir.
Retreating for which, the Russian army blew up the bridge.
This is curious, first of all, because the destroyed bridge will prevent both sides from advancing.
This means that the army is aware that it will not work out to reach the borders of Russia declared by Putin
in the near future, no matter what papers the State Duma and the Federation Council now unanimously sign.
If the new defensive line of the Russian army, passing through the Dudchansk reservoir, is broken through,
then the threat will already hang over Berislav.
This is one of the main transport hubs on the Dnieper, through which the supply of the Kherson group is carried out.
Now it is separated from the front by 50 kilometers, which means that Ukrainian rocket artillery reaches it,
including HIMARS and tochka-U missiles, at the same time, on these 50 kilometers there is nothing where the army could
gain a foothold: no trench or natural barriers, therefore, when breaking through the Borozenskoye-Dudchany line,
the offensive of Ukraine will not hold back anything. The loss of Berislav will turn into a huge problem.
It will exacerbate the supply shortage and increase the likelihood that the entire Kherson group of the Russian army
of many thousands will be cut off from the main forces and fall into a huge encirclement.
Trying to calm the Z-public, the deputy chairman of the occupation administration, Kirill Stremousov,
and before the war, one of the main anti-vaccinators of Ukraine,
made an appeal where he said that there was no panic in Kherson, everything was stable, everything was fine.
We're now in the peaceful citiy of Kherson. We can hear explosions nearby,
not as often as panic in social media would suggest. There are talks of Kherson territory being captured.
I tell you what, yesterday, near Duchany, the nazis' offensive have now been stopped, the aviation and the artillery
is finishing off those who invaded the sovereign territory of the Russian Federation.
I repeat, no panic, and no illusions, no need to make a show out of it.
The last time we heard a similar phrase from Russian propagandists and pro-war bloggers about Balakliya,
it was released a few days later.
Stremousov explained the large-scale retreat of the Russian army as an attempt
to drive the Armed Forces of Ukraine into a trap. Like, Davydov Brod was handed over on purpose,
in order to lure Ukrainian troops into a fire bag and destroy as much Ukrainian equipment as possible in it.
It is hard to believe in such a thing. Indeed, many photographs and videos of damaged and abandoned military
equipment have appeared, but not Ukrainian, but Russian.
This means that the departure of the Russian army was not an insidious military trick,
but, as in Izyum and Liman, it was an escape.
HOW WILL THE SITUATION DEVELOP
From the state of the Russian army, which we described in the first part of the video,
it is quite obvious that the defeats of the last month are not an excess, this is a systemic phenomenon.
Which comes from the tasks assigned to the army. Of their political, not military nature.
From the variability of these political tasks.
The worse the situation at the front, the more Vladimir Putin will be directly involved in the management of the army.
It's unavoidable. Inevitably, simply because it is much easier to sell yourself the idea of mediocre generals than to admit
your own incompetence and the deliberate doom of the very idea of attacking Ukraine.
And the greater the political motive in the actions of the Russian troops, the worse the situation at the front will be.
After all, people will not fight for the goals that can be achieved, it is hardly possible to come up with better news
for General Zaluzhny than the one that political strategist Putin opposes him.
Apparently, General Zaluzhny will completely fail in organizing some kind of constitutional plebiscite.
But political strategist Putin has gone where General Zaluzhny is really good. Putin went to war.
We see a reality in which the political strategist has lost control. He takes chaotic actions in an unusual situation,
and his system just goes crazy and does nothing but eat each other and silently contemplate how the army flees
the occupied territories.
And once again: if it seems to someone that a series of defeats will lead to the fact that the levers of control will pass
into the hands of qualified military men (if there are any at all), then he is mistaken in exactly the opposite direction.
The worse Putin and his inner circle show themselves in the role of commanders,
the more levers they will pull over themselves, the more chaotic their actions will become
and even more subject to pure political logic.
And it will lead them do a disaster
See you tomorrow.