The Russian commander of the “Vostok” Battalion fighting in southern Ukraine said on Thursday that Ukraine will not be defeated and suggested that Russia freeze the war along current frontlines.

Alexander Khodakovsky made the candid concession yesterday on his Telegram channel after Russian forces, including his own troops, were devastatingly defeated by Ukrainian marines earlier this week at Urozhaine in the Zaporizhzhia-Donetsk regional border area.

“Can we bring down Ukraine militarily? Now and in the near future, no,” Khodakovsky, a former official of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, said yesterday.

“When I talk to myself about our destiny in this war, I mean that we will not crawl forward, like the [Ukrainians], turning everything into [destroyed] Bakhmuts in our path. And, I do not foresee the easy occupation of cities,” he said.

Russia does not have the resources for that. A reminder this isn’t a proxy war for them, even though it is for the West. Russia is there in person conventionally and is somehow losing to a minor Western ally.

The Ukrainians aren’t going to run out of stuff within the next year for sure, and maybe not ever because even if the US gets bored Europe is highly invested. Russia has negligible productive capacity of it’s own, and is bound to have serious problems eventually, unless they convince China to help and China has so far been uninterested. They could theoretically win by population attrition, I guess, but nobody’s really talking about that yet. And, to do anything, they need political stability, after already having one mostly-failed coup.

is somehow losing to the minor Western allies

How are you defining “losing” here? They’re occupying the separatist parts of Ukraine and can do so indefinitely.

Their original objective was to topple the government in Kiev, and they’ve gotten fairly continuously further from that. Saying they’re winning has “Mission Accomplished!” energy at this point.

They’re occupying Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea if that’s what you mean, although it’s in question if they can do that or anything else including exist indefinitely.

Their original objective was to topple the government in Kiev

According to who? If you read the article from U.S. military analysts posted elsewhere in this thread, not even they think that was the point of the early war thrust towards Kiev.

Interesting you mention “Mission Accomplished” – would you say the U.S. and its media did a good job of accurately informing the public about the War on Terror? Would you say they had good intentions?

What did they decide the Kiev thing was about? Was it a botched attempt at a decapitation strike to prevent basically everything else that happened?

It’s very much worth a read. The broad strokes are:

There’s a notable difference between the attack towards Kiev and the attack in the separatist regions (it also talks about attacks in southern Ukraine outside the separatist regions, but I think it says they’re basically similar to the Kiev attack).
The attack in the separatist regions were to hold territory with an amenable population. So you have a lot of troops, tons of artillery, and they dug in elaborate fortifications that they will actually stay and defend.
The attack towards Kiev was an opportunistic raid to divert troops from the main thrust of the attack in thr separatist regions. The article talks about similar raids the Russian Empire did in the Napoleonic Wars, the Union calvalry did in the U.S. Civil War, pretty sure it mentions a Soviet one in WWII, etc. It involved much less artillery because it wasn’t intended to hold ground and they wanted to avoid unnecessarily antagonizing civilians they didn’t want to govern anyway.
On that last point, the article also talks about how Russian missile strikes have largely avoided the most damaging civilian targets. It gives an example of striking an electrical substation that converts electricity into a type usable by trains instead of striking electrical infrastructure that is more general purpose (and would shut down broader civilian electricity, too).

The Kiev attack’s goal appears to have been “disrupt, divert, and if you see opportunities, take them.” I bet if the Ukrainian government had shown signs of folding or if the defense of Kiev had been weaker they would have pushed for more, but that didn’t happen, the separatist regions were taken successfully, and the Russian Kiev column had no more reason to be there.

Okay, sure. That fits.

According to who? If you read the article from U.S. military analysts posted elsewhere in this thread, not even they think that was the point of the early war thrust towards Kiev.

All I see is a chain of threads that go mostly nowhere. No, a wargame from 2002 is not relevant.

Here is the comment with the article I referred to.

Yeah, that’s the one I’m talking about. Is it buried somewhere in the tiny print of the image of some magazine that somebody has highlighted all over?

Well, there war goals were to protect Donbass, kill a shitload of Nazis, and de-militarize Ukraine. Plans change but it still looks like they’re doing what they set out to do.

Ukraine is looking plenty militerised, and more pro-Western than ever.

There are a finite number of 18-35 year old men.

“Kill nearly every young man in Ukraine” is their main path to victory, but Russia has only about 4x the population of Ukraine, so they’ll have to mind their casualty ratios pretty well. And avoid any more coups.

Their original objective was to topple the government in Kiev

Citation needed.

Here’s a map of the invasion a few weeks in. Kiev (Киев if you can’t read Cyrillic) is the capital of the nation. What does it look like they tried to achieve right off the bat?

Edit: Oooh, Wikipedia has an animation if it’s still not clear.

Depends what you’re talking about. This war started in 2014 so its already been 9 years.

Russia also has allies in China and India

Press X to doubt.

Pentagon said last year in a press briefing that Russia could keep up this war for 40 years at current rate.

Could you link that? It goes against everything I’ve read and I can’t find it myself.

Right back at you, although I assume you’re plenty capable at learning other things.

Press X to doubt.

India ramping up trade in oil and gas with Russia while refusing to even offer the most milquetoast condemnation of Russia’s invasion on the world stage haven’t clued you in?

Call me when they do more than not get involved.

India and China are fair-weather friends to Russia. India is also an increasingly close fair-weather friend of the West. Both the West and India see themselves as adversaries with China.

Call me when they do more than not get involved.

Russia’s economy would have collapsed a year ago without India buying their gas.

So you think the neutral action would be an embargo, then? Buying gas at a heavy discount doesn’t seem very political to me, or to the Western leaders for that matter.

Nobody who has even a modicum of understanding of geopolitics doubts this. India and Russia have a very strong relationship that goes back to the days of USSR which was one of the biggest forces that helped liberate India from western colonization. Meanwhile, Russia losing the war would be an utter disaster for China. US is very openly trying to surround China militarily, and Russia acts as a shield in the west. The worst possible outcome for China would be the west managing to destabilize Russia and put a pro western government in power. If there was even the slightest chance that Russia could lose this conflict then China would step in.

I disagree. The Cold War is ancient history and China’s probably just as happy carving up Russia as living beside it.

US literally says it wants to prevent China from developing and has surrounded it with military bases, but whatever you say buddy. The brains of Chinese leaders aren’t as smooth as yours.

Every major head of state lived through the Cold War.

For example, Joe Biden was literally born when the battle of Stalingrad of World War 2 was occurring. Biden’s literally old enough to have lived in the same era as the generation that lived during the American Civil War were dying out.

Anyone that was born in the 70s, for a brief time, lived on the same earth at the same time as the last living emancipated American slaves still drew their breath.

“Ancient history” is closer to us who are alive than we can truly perceive and comprehend. The past’s heavy hands rest on our shoulders, burdening the present with the acts performed hitherto each passing minute.

A quote:

‘Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.’

Give any example or argument that shows China would want to carve up Russia

More territory is good, if the opportunity would present itself this would make China stronger. They also don’t want another Xinjiang they have to genocide, though, so I imagine they wouldn’t actually annex much. Maybe just take back the old Qing cities and puppet the rest.

What do you base this on besides vibes?

OP gave me their vibes, and I responded with my vibes. Actual facts about the future of geopolitics are hard to come by (until they happen).

Nah. That was basically Cold War propaganda, partly spread by ex-Nazis covering their asses after losing to “subhumans”. Russia fought the same way every country did in it’s recent wars.

Man I miss AskHistorians.

No, not at all; that’s a myth started by Nazi propagandists to explain why they were losing to the Soviets, and it was picked up by USA propagandists during the cold war.

Pretty much every assuming USians have about Russia comes from Nazi propaganda.

Oh, and Ukraine is also populous. It has a quarter of Russia’s population, about, so human wave wouldn’t win anyway.

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