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.
I get that it’s propaganda for domestic morale, but I also get that if someone like Khodakovsky writes something like this then the newspapers are invariably going to print it.
Unless you’re a Ukrainian needing hope or an embarrassed worker at the Kremlin, this feels like non-news. And yet it’s such a hot point culturally, that you know it’s going to drive discussion regardless. I clicked. I read. I commented. I didn’t contribute anything meaningful to the discussion, but I felt the drive to participate, too.