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.

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[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (53 children)

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.

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