https://archive.li/Z0m5m

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.

  • UnicodeHamSic [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    It is a proxy war against America. You don’t win those. You just set yourself up a good position and dig in. America gets bored and leaves and then you can pick over what is left of what was destroyed. So you don’t win, you just wait for America to forfeit.

    • BigNote@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      It’s not just the US though. The European powers are far more firmly committed. It’s not at all clear that the rest of NATO will simply walk away if/when the US does. Especially the former Soviet nations; this is not a fucking game to them. The loss of US support would be huge, but I don’t see a universe in which the Europeans just roll over for Putin once the US loses interest.

      • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        The European powers are far more firmly committed.

        So firmly committed that america had to blow up one of germany’s pipelines? Are you having a fucking laugh?

        Everyone I speak to, you know, normal people, thinks this is a fucking stupid distraction from domestic politics and the consistently declining standard of living we are seeing. America has ended european prosperity with this shit and it won’t recover for 50 years. You think people here haven’t noticed that?

        • sibe@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          America has ended european prosperity

          USA invaded Ukraine? That’s news to me

          • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            The US assisted in the 2014 fascist coup that led to the fascist transitionary government, the deployment of all the fascist militias to attacking the donbas, and the 8 year long civil war that led to Russia eventually invading.

            Your mindset on this shit is that it began in 2022 which is false, the US has been stoking it since 8 years earlier. If you want we could go even further back though, Operation Aerodynamic was the US operation to fund, arm and support fascists in Ukraine in order to destabilise the soviet union. Absolutely none of this would be happening today without the US’ historic support of fascists.

    • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      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.

        • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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          1 year ago

          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.

          • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            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.

            • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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              1 year ago

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

                • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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                  1 year ago

                  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.

                  • GaveUp [she/her]@hexbear.net
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                    1 year ago

                    Like actual material evidence that China would want to do it and not just fantasy theory crafting in your mind

                    This is pure projection on what you’d do if you ran a country

              • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.ml
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                1 year ago

                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.

            • yata@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              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.

              Only if you believe your own propaganda, because none of that occurred at all.