Over the Christmas break the western MSM got a real stiffy repeatedly celebrating the downing of 4 Russian bombers over Crimea. It helps the narrative of “more western missiles, tanks, planes and hard cash and Ukraine can win.” But Western taxpayers, paying tax at 70 year highs and facing a cost of living crisis, should look at the real data and it may come as a bit of a shock.
2023 was the year of the great Spring, no it was delayed, Counter offensive by Ukraine. So, what happened. According to @suriyak, a twitter fed that tracks the frontlines with remarkable detail, in 2023 the Russian army took control of 504 km2 of Ukrainian land, mostly on the eastern front and in the North. On the other hand, the Ukrainian army managed to take 336 km2 of 2022 Russian gains mostly around Kerson in the South. In other words Russia made net gains.
And worse still, in the final quarter of the year, Ukraine gained almost nothing while Russia made material gains to the west of Bakhmut, to the west of recently captured Marinka, the encirclement of Avdivka grows ever tighter and then there is the area around Robotyne. Back on August 29 Ukraine captured what was described as an important settlement, or even a town, on a major arterial road. It was in reality “a one horse town”, a village, several miles from the first line of Russian fortifications. But still the western political and media GroupThink bigged it up as did Ukraine as it asked for more cash and weapons in its big push. Here is how the Daily Mail reported it:
Ukraine’s troops pick off Putin’s soldiers one-by-one in brutal close-quarters combat footage as Kyiv’s counter-offensive makes more gains into Russia’s Zaporizhzhia defences
Ukraine confirmed on Monday that its armed forces had captured Robotyne
It is the latest in a series of villages liberated as soldiers continue to push south
Ukraine’s forces have pushed deeper into Russian defensive lines in the country’s south, Kyiv said today, as footage emerged of intense close-quarters combat between Ukraine’s armed forces and Moscow’s invading infantrymen.
Kyiv launched a grinding counteroffensive in June after stockpiling Western-supplied weapons and building up assault battalions. Unlike two rapid assaults last summer, Ukraine’s armies have made slow progress through dense defences and minefields.
Nevertheless, gains have been made, and on Monday Kyiv confirmed the Armed Forces of Ukraine had liberated the village of Robotyne on the southern front – the latest in a series of villages liberated as Ukraine pushes towards the Sea of Azov.
Robotyne is six miles south of the frontline town of Orikhiv in the Zaporizhzhia region on an important road towards Tokmak, a Russian-occupied road and rail hub
Compared to Ukrainian offensives last year in the Kherson and Kharkiv regions, this time Kyiv’s forces are crashing into Russian defensive lines of trenches and minefields that are kilometres deep. But analysts say the capture of Robotyne is evidence that Ukrainian forces can puncture Russian lines as they push south.
Tokmak’s capture would be a milestone as Ukrainian troops press southwards towards the Sea of Azov in a military drive that is intended to split Russian forces following Moscow’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Kyiv’s generals want to reach the city of Melitopol, around 40 miles southwest of Robotyne, in order to cut Russia’s ‘land bridge’ in two.
Ends
Well, that was all fantasy but perhaps it persuaded you that Ukraine was almost at the point of victory. The hard reality is that, at a horrific cost in men, Ukraine only just breached, just the first line of Russian defense, and has now lost even those gains. It did not reach Tokmak (despite erroneous reports in the Western press that it had) and it is still 40 miles From Melitopol.
In fact things are getting worse, it is getting further away. In recent days the Russians have advanced to the West, East and South of Robotyne. Its battered ruins are now less than 2 km away from Russian units who are advancing on all fronts. Ukrainian troops have abandoned the brief stretch of Russian defensive lines captured in August and are in retreat.
As I have warned repeatedly, the issue now is manpower. Both sides in this appalling war have probably lost 350,000 combatants either killed or severely injured. But Russia’s population – including refugees from the Donbas – is 4.5 times the size of Ukraine. The average age of a Ukrainian combatant is now 44 and climbing. Ukraine cannot pull soldiers from one area to reinforce another because Russia is now attacking on pretty much all fronts.
When the battle moves into Robotyne and when it falls, the press and our leaders will not tell us about it, they will ignore the defeat as being of no strategic import. That may be correct but it was also the case back in August. When Avdivka falls it will be dismissed as strategically irrelevant just as was “fortress Bakhmut” after it fell.
Every day Ukraine is losing more land and more men. This brings me no delight but folks need to accept that unless the West will bring about WW3 by putting boots on the ground, this war is going only one way. And the most appalling aspect of this is that both sides were prepared to talk about the Naftali Bennett peace plan in the spring of 2022 but the West, especially Boris Johnson, scuppered those talks. For what? For another couple of hundred thousand dead or injured men? For a net loss of yardage by Ukraine? Was that really worth it?
Maybe 2024 will be different. As missiles fall on Ukraine maybe you want to believe the same folks who said that Russia was running out of munitions in the spring of 2022? Or perhaps you might look at the hard facts of where we are. The Ukrainians are losing. Before you falsely accuse me of being a Putin apologist, I ask you what is your alternative to asking Bennett, Roman Abramovich or some other figure to start talking about peace again?