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ADAPTIVE INDOMITABLE UKRAINE and Allies Must Strip Russia of its Illusions of Military Win in 2025 [1]

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Date: 2025-05-21

Seemingly every new day brings news of Russia massing troops somewhere along its nearly 700 mile long battle front with Ukraine as well as along the borders with some of its European neighbors in a woeful attempt to intimidate and dissuade them from assisting Ukraine. Apparently Putin and his minions in the Kremlin are convinced that what they couldn’t do in February 2022 and have been unable to do in over three years of war can finally be accomplished this Spring and and coming Summer of 2025 … with one more “massive” offensive. To listen to Sergey Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister, any talk of “ceasefire” is a waste of time and Russia is done with that:

Lavrov reveals new fantasies about ceasefire with Ukraine, calling it a trap set by West Lavrov’s fantasies continued during a meeting with faculty and students of branches of Russian universities in Yerevan. "Now, when they say to us, ‘Let’s have a ceasefire and then we’ll see’ — no, guys. We’ve been through these stories before, and we don’t want that anymore," Lavrov said. newsukraine.rbc.ua/...

Further that the once great “Special Military Operation” supposedly to de-Nazify Ukraine and install a national government amenable to Russia is no longer a war with “the West” but is now considered an “internal matter of the Soviet Union”. Really? Ostensibly since the 1991 legal processes dissolving the existence of that ill-fated communist paradise was improperly done and violated(by who exactly?) thus the Soviet Union still exists. Talk about illusions:

The USSR still exists — Putin has come up with a new reason to invade Ukraine The legal procedure for the collapse of the USSR was allegedly violated, and therefore the Soviet Union continues to exist. The Russian Federation's full-scale war against Ukraine is supposedly an "internal process." This cynical statement was made by Anton Kobyakov, an advisor to the Russian leader, at the final press conference of the St. Petersburg International Legal Forum. news.online.ua/...

Did they tell this to Krasnov during the recent and now infamous 2 hour telephone call? I would not be surprised if the history-challenged and uncurious Krasnov agreed with it. It has now come to this folks … Russia is still existentially dangerous in many ways to the people of Ukraine but I believe even they, the Russians, in spite of their revanchist illusions of grandeur … regarding the re-formation of the the erstwhile USSR, know that particular ship has sailed. And like their ill-fated erstwhile flag ship, the Moskva, is never to return to home port. Neither Ukraine nor any of the now independent former Soviet Republics are going to be forced by the now clearly crippled Russian arms to come back under the wings of “Mother Russia”. The Russia of today just ain’t got what it takes to do that. So now all that is left to Putin et al is brigandage, depredation, subterfuge and nuclear saber rattling, all harnessed to their long practiced art of the propagandist’s mendacity and maskirovka. Putin’s Russia with its former mask of “super power” pulled off by Ukraine is now making it up as it goes … still cosplaying the role of its former phony role of a superpower. All the world seems to know this except perhaps Krasnov, who it would appear doesn’t wanna know.

By all current and recent indications, it is now up to Ukraine and its allies, European and others, to vigorously oppose Russia’s quixotic misadventure and stop Putin’s illusions of a military conquest of Ukraine. This year, 2025, is the time for Ukraine and its allies to make that adamantine stand. The following analysis by Dr. Jack Watling of the British Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies(RUSI) is spot on and most timely. It is worth the read:

Ukraine Prepares for a Russian Summer Offensive The word ‘offensive’ conjures up visions of rapid manoeuvres by large mechanised units. The Russians lack the force quality to operate in this way. Instead, its summer offensive will likely have a soft launch with a steady increase in the number and scale of assaults across a broadening area around the main axis. Indeed, there are indications this process has already started. Russia has spent some time suggesting that it might threaten Kharkiv and testing Ukrainian defences in Sumy and Zaporizhzhia. These attacks have either been intended to fix Ukrainian troops away from Donbas or forestall further Ukrainian raids across the Russian border. The main Russian effort into the summer will once again be against the key towns of Kostyantynivka and Pokrovsk(emphasis mine). Russian forces continue to plan against orders to complete the occupation of Donetsk. www.rusi.org/...

To this end Russian General Andrey Mordvichev, the former commander of Russia’s Center Grouping of Forces which forced the capture of Avdiivka and the subsequent push to Pokrovsk, and now the overall commander of Russian ground forces, will spare no lives or resources to accomplish his orders. It is also worth noting that Mordvichev led the Russian assault on Mariupol. We can fully expect the overall daily Russian casualty tally to soon reach and exceed the 1 million mark. He will fully test the soundness and efficacy of Ukraine’s recent move to reorganize its army into the western style corps command system. He will surely test the young but battle-hardened experienced corps commanders ranged in front of him from Kharkiv and Sumy in the North all the way down to Zaporizhzhia in the South of Ukraine.

But if Dr. Watling’s assessment bears out then Mordvichev’s main thrust this summer will fall heavily on the two Ukrainian corps which find their genesis in the famous Azov Battalion/Brigade which fought off the earlier Russian push to take the city of Mariupol and later made that astonishing balls-to-the wall defense of the Azovstal plant until ordered to surrender by President Zelenskyy. The two main commanders in that defensive stand … Andriy Biletskyi who was the original founder of Azov Battalion(now 3rd Army Corps commander) and Denis Prokopenko, call sign “Redis”(now commander of the 1st Corps of Ukrainian National Guard), are now once again facing their old nemesis, Mordvichev.

Up in Northern Ukraine is the young commander Ihor Obolensky, call sign “Cornet”, commander of the Khartiya Brigade but now newly appointed commander of the 2nd Corps of the Ukrainian National Guard. Earlier placed in charge of the Ukrainian counterattack at Vovchansk, Obolensky has since been giving the Russians fits in Kharkiv oblast and parts of Luhansk. Behind Biletskyi and Prokopenko, in Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia, stands the most vaunted Ukrainian formation led by Major General Mykhailo Drapatyi who doubles as the commander of all Ukrainian ground forces(General Syrskyi’s old job) and also as the commander of the Operational Strategic Group Khortytsia. Perhaps the most decorated of all current Ukrainian commanders, Drapatyi has been universally credited with slamming the breaks on the Russian drive towards Pokrovsk and the Dnipropetrovsk/Zaporizhzhia oblast borders.

Just as General Zaluzhnyi opted to test the strongest point of the Russian defenses by going at the Surovikin Line in 2023, could General Mordvichev in his turn planning to go at Ukraine’s so-called “Fortress Belt” of Northeastern Donetsk oblast?:

Ukraine's "fortress belt" is a 50-kilometer-long line (approximately 31 miles) along the cities Slovyansk, Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka, and Kostyantynivka that forms the line of Kyiv's defenses in Donetsk Oblast, in eastern Ukraine. As of April 2024, the cities along the "fortress belt" sat between 12 and 30 kilometers (7.5 to 18.6 miles) from the front line. www.newsweek.com/...

In line with what Dr. Watling posits in his assessment, the analysts at Newsweek also believe that Russia will try, hoping for a lucky break, to breach this Ukrainian defensive line and thereby take the entirety of Donetsk oblast. But the Russians may just not have what it takes now:

This campaign to seize cities in Ukraine's "fortress belt" may be in vain as the U.S. think tank said that due to persisting manpower shortages and increasing equipment losses, "it is unlikely that the Russian military can sustain a multi-year and multi-axis campaign against Ukraine's fortress belt alongside its other offensive operations in Ukraine."

Putin and the Kremlin are all hell-bent for leather and intend to roll the offensive dice one more time this coming summer, hopefully to capture all of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts then come to the negotiating table to dictate the terms of Ukraine’s “surrender”. ADAPTIVE INDOMITABLE UKRAINE and allies must summon up all means and resources to adamantly stand up and strip Russia of its Illusions of a military win in 2025.

SLAVA UKRAINI !! PEREMOHA(Victory)!!!

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