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.
We believe the war was started by a quagmire of situations going back as far as 1991, including things like the 2014 NATO-backed coup of Ukraine and the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia. This war wasn’t some random unprovoked territory grab dictated by Putin, it’s the resolution of western interference in the region for decades. Ukraine had been shelling Donbas and Luhansk for years. NATO brought this war upon themselves, basically. Instigating and prodding at the situation for years.
Also, Russia and Ukraine, near the start of the war, floated the possibility of a ceasefire and NATO pressured them out of it. The USA saw the possibility of a proxy war and started drooling.
We don’t support Russia so much as we see them as one unfortunate reality fighting another unfortunate reality. The war’s true culprit is capitalism, and as a leftist the only conclusion you should reach is wars like this are senseless and they should immediately stop. And the only way I see this war to stop is if Ukraine immediately surrenders and loses territory, otherwise we’d just be back in 2014 all over again and the situation would repeat. I can vaguely see how that could be construed as pro-Russia, but it’s more that I believe diplomacy with Russia is strained, Russia is volatile, and nothing is gained from open warfare with them. Everyone needs to stop fighting, whatever that takes, because the only winners in wars like this are wealthy capitalists, the rest of us lose.
You say “NATO brought this on themselves” like they weren’t joyous at the prospect of a Russian invasion of Ukraine but I think this isn’t true. The west has worked closely to recreate the Ukrainian Army from the ground up since 2014 (when it was useless) because they knew this was a possibility. This war-launched idiotically by Putin-has benefitted the west alone. Not Russia, and obviously not Ukraine.
-Ukraine is now irrevocably tied to the west and will be for the foreseeable future. Before this, western intelligence agencies were worried Zelensky was too pro-Russian. Not anymore.
-Eastern Ukrainians who speak Russian in their mother tongue are now anti-Russian for the most part.
-Lots of juicy money for western MICs.
-The bulk of the Russian Army is tied down in Ukraine and so cannot be used elsewhere-massive limiting of Russia’s strategic manoeuvrability.
-Russian economy damaged (not as much as they thought it would, but it’s still damaged) and large-scale brain drain of well-educated Russians who oppose the war who have now fled to Georgia and will seek to move to the west most likely. Also Russians living in the west who are more likely to be liberal will be much less likely to come home.
-Strong consolidation and reification of Ukrainian national identity, meaning far less likely for Ukraine to see Russia as a ‘kin state/brotherly nation’ akin to Azerbaijan/Turkey.
-Exposes and emphasises the fragmentation and factionalism within the Russian state and security apparatus, (see: Wagner).
-Kills lots of Russians whose families may eventually turn against the state once this war drags on and nothing good comes from it.
What I mean to say is that NATO isn’t suffering at all-at least, the Americans and Brits aren’t. They’re overjoyed! You can’t “bring something on yourself” forlornly if you’re openly working for it, then it’s just a success! I mean I don’t think they necessarily worked only for the invasion but basically just various means to bring Ukraine into the western fold, of which this was just one (probably not the ideal) option of many.
It was not a ‘rational’ or sensible reaction to NATO encroachment. I mean realistically with nuclear weapons the idea that a land invasion of Russia could happen is ludicrous, but even removing that factor there were countless other mechanisms at Putin’s disposal to achieve his strategic aims. This invasion was a terrible choice and it only happened because (A) the Russian leadership is full of yes-men who are unable to criticise Putin, (B) because the Russian leadership has become increasingly isolated from the realities on the ground in the last few years and so VASTLY misunderstood how the war would go. They thought it would be like Georgia (though the Georgia War was a mess from a Russian perspective they won anyway because of the vastly unbalanced correlation of forces).
Yes, this is a sensible and thoughtless war, but I think expecting Ukrainians to just give up against an aggressor is fruitless. They will not do it as long as they believe they can win (see Zartman’s concept of a mutually hurting stalemate), which both sides currently believe they can. Plus if it’s a frozen conflict and more or less even, why would Ukraine ‘surrender’? Yes, I think the eventual only possible end to this war will be a surrender of some territory (more likely is simply a frozen conflict), but I don’t believe it is politically viable atm and so it is pointless to support it. If Zelensky agreed to surrender territory he’d risk being overthrown and probably killed by the far-right and ultra-nationalist sections of the army/state. The morally best situation would be a return to the status quo ante bellum and a referendum in the east and in Crimea monitored by international IGO/NGO bodies not tied to any particular state, but that wont happen.
The balance of forces is even enough that one side admitting defeat is implausible until the mutual damage from the war is much higher and both sides come to realise it is unwinnable (this is a subjective understanding even if there are objective measures of ‘mutually hurting stalemate’.
edit: formatting
good post
I’m sorry no. Every time someone tries to say “oh well Russia was just pressured by NATO” that’s all they leave it at.
How?
No really, explain. Explain how the only option for Russia was to invade their neighboring country and steal land. What negative effects would Russia be feeling right now if they hadn’t invaded Ukraine?
“Well NATO was pushing up against their borders”
So fucking what?! Just because your country is so shitty that your neighbors choose to ally with someone else is not an excuse to invade them!
Have you ever heard of the Cuban Missile Crisis? Why did America freak out that Cuba was going to get missiles from the Soviet Union? What did the Soviet Union choose to do to stop the crisis? Could it be that it is entirely normal for a nation to not want an adversary’s missiles on their border? Has there been multiple examples of conflicts stemming from this issue all over the globe? Have you ever asked yourself a question about how conflicts start, and if other nations have ever behaved similarly?
Russia has no excuse and neither does NATO. The best case scenario is both countries lay down their arms and have socialists take power. Unfortunately we don’t live in that kind of situation, so the only thing I can advocate is both NATO and Russia cease fighting. Ukraine shouldn’t ally with NATO because NATO shouldn’t exist.
What negative effects would Russia be feeling? I don’t know, personally I thought Russia entering the war was a bad call and a strategic mistake. I can see the reason why it happened while still saying it’s an open act of aggression. Russia probably could have negotiated with Ukraine about Donbas/Luhansk through better oil deals or something, no idea. Possibly could have tried straight up purchasing the land that Russian separatists occupied?
But Russia probably had reason to distrust diplomacy with Ukraine ever since 2014. For context, I believe that 2014 happened specifically because Ukraine’s previous government was becoming too close to Russia and it made NATO nervous. I could easily ask, what negative effects would Ukraine be feeling if they hadn’t had a western backed coup? Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych floated membership in the Eurasian Economic Union, which set off protests that were capitalized upon by western nations. Would it had been so negative had Ukraine entered a formal economic alliance with some former Soviet states? Who knows now.
The new president, Porochenko, was much harsher on Russian separatists in the east than his predecessors, which started the Donbas war in earnest. That’s the moment above any I can point to that started all of this. Maybe if Yanumovych had remained president there could have been a more peaceful solution to Donbas. Who knows now
Yeah but this is all speculation and we live in reality. The reality is the war should cease immediately, for the benefit of people in Ukraine, Russia, and all refugees from the region. Only way I see that realistically happening is if NATO disengages and Ukraine loses territory.
Maybe once fighting finishes something new and better can get negotiated, but I’m not holding my breath that neoliberal countries like this know how to resolve long standing conflicts.
Maidan wasn’t about NATO. Support for NATO membership of Ukraine only sky-rocketed once Russia invaded (after 2014, that is), and by now is overwhelming.
Maidan was about EU membership. Should the EU also not exist in your mind? And yes btw the EU is also a defensive alliance (it’s a gazillion of things). Russia’s invasion wouldn’t have happened had Ukraine been a member. Hence why Russia’s stooge Yanukovich was ordered to stop EU accession: Because then Russia wouldn’t be able to invade, any more. Ukraine would be as safe as the Baltics and Finland have been all this time.
Oh and btw after the 2004 NATO enlargement (including the Baltics) Putin said that he saw no threat to Russia from that, and also that every country was free to choose their alliance.
I’ve come to realize I gotta preface a lot of what I say on other instances like this: Russia is an imperialist country and I’d laugh if Putin got forcibly removed from power. I’m a communist.
No, the EU should not exist either. No neoliberal institution should exist, including things like the IMF, World Bank, USMCA, NATO, the EU. Should all become memories. Yeah except that’s not the world we’ve got quite yet.
I can’t really talk much about what should happen. Money, bosses, landlords, and banks shouldn’t exist either, but too bad, right? And yeah we can say all day what would have happened had Ukraine become an EU member nearly a decade ago, but it didn’t happen and now we’re stuck in this situation. It’s all alternate history now. Best case scenario I see right at this moment is a ceasefire even if that means Ukraine loses territory.
The EU isn’t any more neolib than its member states, in fact, often much less so. It raised worker’s rights and living standards pretty much everywhere, it’s actually doing shit against anticompetitive behaviour because Berlaymont isn’t nearly as caught up in national industry entanglements as, well, the national governments.
Is it without fail? No, no government is. But it’s kinda telling that the forces behind Brexit wanted the UK out so that they could continue to park their assets in tax havens, regress on worker’s rights, well, things nobs do.
All in all what you’re seeing from the EU, overall, is European SocDem pan-continental compromise stuff. I can definitely fucking imagine worse, especially considering our history of being at each other’s throat all the time.
Lmao
Ah fuck can’t find the right snippet right now (it was a press conference with Schroeder) but have Putin saying the exact same thing about Ukraine, not the Baltics.
And the Duma says a lot of things, but it certainly doesn’t dumat’, not in this Russia.
I don’t put a lot of stock in some YouTuber I’ve never heard of stiching together snippets of a lengthy diplomatic remark. That’s a surefire way to lose context in an environment where there is tons of hedging and caveats as a matter of course.
But taking it at face value for the sake of argument: he said Russia’s stance on NATO expansion hasn’t changed.
Putin is saying in the snipped exactly what the subtitles say. My Russian is rusty and never was particularly good but it’s still good enough to tell.
Also he’s not any random youtuber. NFKRZ is Russian, and currently in Georgian exile (the other option would’ve been to get forced to fight in Ukraine). Probably the best (not excessively analytical like Vlad Vexler) source on Russia you can get in the west if you don’t speak Russian.
I trust the translation, I don’t trust that there is no important context lost (again, diplomatic speak is filled with hedging and caveats).
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=m7MZs-QdrFI&
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
AAAAaaaa
What you just said should be a bannable offence. President reneged on his election promises, people demonstrated, president sent out goons (both criminal and police) to deal with them, more people demonstrated, president passed laws (without having the votes) to make the country authoritarians, more people demonstrated even more, NATO countries “backed” protestors by sending… politicians. Who talked and negotiated, recommending compromises, the protesters were having none of that. After a while Yanukovich fled to his masters in Russia and, being AWOL, got removed from office.
None of that was a coup, which involves toppling of the government by government insiders. It wasn’t really a revolution either because nothing fundamental about the state changed, though yes Berkut got dismantled over the egregious police violence they committed, but that’s reform, not revolution.
Then, there have been multiple completely democratic elections since then. So all in all, big picture glossing over details: President didn’t want to keep his election promises, people were opposed and wanted a different president, then they had themselves exactly those elections. Call it a special electoral operation I’m not even using that term tongue in cheek. In more mature democracies where presidents don’t take orders from foreign governments it would’ve taken the form of “presidents wants something, people are vehemently opposed, president resigns, new elections”.
I wonder how American would act if Chinese leaders showed up at protests for Black Lives Matters protests, or Russian leaders showed up for Jan 6th protests?
Victoria Nuland showed up to the protests, and she has multiple emails that basically call it a coup.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957.amp
Also 2 weeks later was the Maidan Sniper incident that has overwhelmingly evidence of a false flag operated by the Ukrainian far right.
I know it’s hard to see that the world isnt Disney level “good vs evil”. It’s actually a little more complicated
Well Russia did stoke a ton of that culture war bullshit in the US. On both and all sides, of course, they don’t care who comes out on top all they want is the US being dysfunctional (well, more dysfunctional than usual). The more controversy the better.
What makes you think they didn’t do the same in Ukraine? Just that unlike Yanks, Ukrainians actually understand how Russians operate.
Foreign diplomat is abroad doing diplomacy. Curious. Coincidence? I think not.
Coup? Where? All I see is American arrogance. Americans also still believe that they started Libya and that it had something to do with Hillary.
You mean Berkut gave Right Sector rifles, then Right Sector shot protestors (including their own people), then Right Sector gave those rifles back to Berkut so the bullets in demonstrators could be matched to Berkut rifles? Overwhelming evidence like that?
Hey but at least you didn’t claim Azov was involved who didn’t even exist yet.
Indeed.
Victoria Nuland was not a diplomat. She ran the Bureau of Eurasian Affairs in an office based out of Washington DC. She deliberately flew to and took part in demonstrations against a democratically elected government. Again if Chinese or Russian officials did the same during Black Lives Matter 2020 or Jan 6th 2021 I think it would be negatively recieved. I understand you need to pretend that’s not true so you don’t have to admit to being wrong.
Added to that, the person Victoria Nuland picked to be prime minister in the phone call about the the 3 named opposition leaders became prime minister that very same month in an UNELECTED designation by an alliance of far right parties like Svoboda. Svoboda was specifically tied to the shootings in the square on February 20th. 7 days later they were helping choose the US picked prime minister. This wasn’t some magical event of peace, it was clearly deeply effected by US interests and has led to a decade of violence in the country. I’m sorry to hear you enjoy people dying for self righteousness, but here at hexbear we just want senseless violence to end.
I read “Bureau” and thought it was a state institution, and she diplomatic corps. I have no idea who she actually is.
And, no, politicians taking part in demonstrations isn’t exactly unheard of in Europe. Also abroad. I mean for one you have to go to Belgium to protest the EU so there’s that.
She saying “yeah he should be prime minister” also doesn’t mean that she dictated that he should become one… a couple of years back I said that Biden should become President of the US. Does that mean that I putsched the US? Nah, it simply means that I think he’s a (vastly) better idea than Trump.
And in any case none of that matters as there were elections quickly after that. The interim government was in power for only a short while, and btw right-wing parties lost heavily in those elections, and elections since. Any iffiness that may or may not have existed during and directly after Maidan was cured afterwards, as befits a democracy, by elections.
I just don’t even know what to say anymore. You are an Internet poster, you are not running the US state department for Eurasian affairs. Saying what your opinions are is not the same as a Bureau Chief at the state department.
Added to that, Nuland goes out of her way to dismiss the EUs interests in those leaked phone calls. The US doesn’t want what’s best for Ukraine, or the EU. They are funding this war out of self interest. If you can’t see that I got nothing left to say.
The US isn’t funding this war Europe is. The US is sending military surplus that should largely be assigned negative monetary value because if Ukraine did not take it the US would have to pay to decommission it.
Gods the fucking US exceptionalism wafting through all that supposedly leftist talk. “Nothing ever happens without the CIA being behind it”. Guess what, beyond the brink of your burger are people making their own decisions.
And speaking as a EU citizen: Please stop worrying about us. No the US is not some imperial overlord telling us what to do. Stop the pretence.
Do you enjoy being wrong constantly?
Also I bet you can’t wait to be supplied solely by US energy companies the next century. You will really see just how wonderful of a place we are.