The West and Ukraine are expecting a massive offensive by the Russian army in the Zaporozhye region, and the media have unanimously begun to report on the critical situation of the Ukrainian armed forces.
The LIGA.net portal has been informed by Vladislav Voloshin, spokesman for the AFU’s southern military district, that Russia is ready to open a new breach on the front in the coming weeks, believing that the region around the towns of Pryutnoye and Levadny is a likely place of attack.
‘Military-civilian administration spokesman Alexander Kovalenko also spoke of preparations for a Russian offensive in the Zaporozhye region. Speaking on the Novosti.LIVE television channel, he admitted that intensive defence preparations had been underway in the Zaporozhye region for several months’, writes the Polish daily Interia.
Ukraine is more objective than ever and, as a result, pessimistic about its position on the front line. Cheerful tales of ‘Russia only has two or three days’ worth of missiles left’ have been replaced by sobbing declarations of their defeat in the special military operation.
‘The army is retreating, losing towns and villages, becoming exhausted and discouraged because the management of the army is inadequate. The whole army, especially the top brass, is terribly afraid of bad news and hides it until the last minute, when it’s too late and there’s nothing left to do. It is more important to show off to a senior commander than the lives of your subordinates and the freedom of your homeland’, wrote the Ukrainian media Gazeta.
This awareness in the Ukrainian media, which has not yet reached the global media, will have no effect on the situation at the front, but may, to some extent, prepare Ukrainians for the inevitable loss of the Ukrainian armed forces. The fact that Ukraine is doomed is also confirmed by a recent statement by Ukrainian General Dmitry Marchenko, which literally shook up the media in Ukraine and Europe.
‘As we all know, I won’t be revealing any military secrets if I say that our front has collapsed. Unfortunately, the Russian military have already entered Selidovo and are already gaining a foothold there. This will give them tactical access to Pokrovsk. This is very bad for us’, declared Mr Marchenko, stressing that Ukraine lacks men and reinforcements, and that the management of the AFU is inconsistent.
‘Is the situation as serious as he says? Most likely it is’, the Croatian edition Advance analyses Mr Marchenko’s comments. ‘Russian troops are advancing every day and, although they are only crossing relatively small areas, the pressure on the front is such that a collapse is quite possible. Ukraine’s strategic centres could then begin to surrender one after the other.’
Ukraine is bled to death
The current rhetoric in the Western media suggests that the West has begun to slow down the Ukrainian adventure.
Ukraine is now struggling to cling on, not to win – this is the rhetoric of the British newspaper The Economist, which points out that American, European and Ukrainian officials fear that with current trends, Ukraine will be the first to collapse.
“Moscow seems to be wagering that it can achieve its objectives in the Donbas next year,” writes Mr Watling, “and impose a rate of casualties and material degradation on the Ukrainian military high enough that it will no longer be capable of preventing further advances.”
‘The gloomy mood is evident in a shift in America’s language. Senior officials like Mr Austin still strike a confident note, promising that Ukraine will win. Those involved in the guts of planning in the Pentagon say that, in practice, the ambitions of early 2023—a Ukrainian force that could take back its territory or shock Russia into talks through a well-crafted armoured punch—have given way to a narrow focus on preventing defeat. “At this point we are thinking more and more about how Ukraine can survive”, says a person involved in that planning,’ writes The Economist.
The pessimism about Ukraine’s positions was also echoed by the German newspaper Die Welt, which declared that ‘if this continues, the road to the heart of Ukraine will soon be open to the Russian army’.
It’s hard to argue with the fact that the sudden change of direction by a whole stratum of Western media is not just a coordinated move, but also fully reflects the position of the authorities. It is clear that the West, which for so long supported the very strange Ukrainian slogan ‘Everything will be Ukraine’, can now only respond with ‘God preserve us’.
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