Arestovich’s
analysis was eerily accurate. I’ve been following his daily conversations with lawyer Mark Feygin
since the war started,
but this is the first time I ran across what he had said three years ago.
Arestovich
is currently an Adviser
to the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine
In early July, when Russian troops reached
the borders of the Lugansk region, another phase of the war in Ukraine ended.
Two or three weeks later, the contours of a new strategic situation and,
consequently, the next stage of hostilities were outlined. More than half of
the Russian forces deployed to Ukraine are located in the Donetsk region. Their
primary task is to capture Bakhmut and the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration,
and then occupy the entire region. As a result,
they expect in Moscow, the most important strategic goal of Vladimir Putin will
be fulfilled - to include the entire territory of the Luhansk and Donetsk
regions in the so-called people's republics. The rest of the Russian troops are
engaged in positional battles in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions, holding back
the onslaught of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. At the same time, the annexation
of the territories occupied by Russia is being prepared. By declaring them part
of the Russian Federation, the Kremlin, in the event of de-occupation attempts,
can threaten to use all the means available to the country, including nuclear
weapons.
In Ukraine,
a decision was made to advance in the south. Task number one is to defeat the
Russian group on the right bank of the Dnieper and liberate Kherson. With a
favorable development of events, the offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
can be continued to liberate the entire Kherson region, the occupied part of
the Zaporozhye region and access to the Perekop isthmus and the approaches to
Chongar. But even if only Kherson can be liberated by the Armed Forces of
Ukraine, this will be the largest military and political victory for Ukraine
and a heavy defeat for Russia. In particular, plans to annex the Kherson region
will be frustrated: it is impossible to hold a "referendum" at the
gunpoint of Ukrainian HIMARS.
How
successful can the Ukrainian offensive in the south be and how will the
situation develop in the autumn-winter campaign of 2022? In recent weeks, many
articles have appeared in the West arguing that Ukraine cannot win the war with
Russia, and therefore must agree to a settlement of the conflict on Russian
terms; in other words, capitulate. Leaving aside the question of the motivation
of the authors of such statements, some of which may be quite sincerely mistaken,
I will turn to the facts.
In the
first 7–10 days of the war, as a result of the unpreparedness of the Armed
Forces of Ukraine and the political leadership of the country for war, Russian
troops approached Kyiv, Chernigov, Sumy and Kharkov, seized vast territories in
the south. However, by the end of March they were forced out of the
northeastern regions. Moscow announced the battle for the Donbass, which will
decide the fate of the war. Russia's achievements in this "battle"
are not impressive: it took more than three months to reach the borders of the
Lugansk region. Despite the superiority of the Russian troops in armaments,
sometimes multiple, the pace of the offensive turned out to be extremely low,
and the losses were very high. British Chief of Defense Staff Admiral Anthony
Radakin said that during the four and a half months of the war, Russia lost
about 1,700 tanks and 4,400 armored fighting vehicles. This exceeds the data on
the losses of these weapons provided at that time by the Ukrainian military
command.
At the same
time, systemic flaws in the Russian military system were revealed, which cannot
be eliminated in combat conditions. First of all, the Russian armed forces were
lined up like a blitzkrieg army. It was assumed that the airborne divisions and
strike formations would capture the key political and military centers of
Ukraine or the Baltic states (these countries were on the Kremlin’s list of
priority targets), reach the Polish border or even break through to the Vistula
in a few days. Moscow then intended to present NATO with "The Devil’s Alternative":
capitulation or nuclear war. Such ideas predetermined the special role of the
Airborne Forces, consisting of four divisions and four brigades, in planning
future operations and in the structure of the armed forces. An attempt to
capture the airfield in Gostomel in order to land a landing force capable of
capturing Kyiv failed. After that, the Airborne Forces were used (and are being
used) in Ukraine in the most dangerous areas as an elite motorized infantry
and, accordingly, suffer heavy losses. The share of the ground forces, which
bear the brunt of hostilities, has been underestimated in Russia to 28 percent
of the total armed forces (in the Chinese army, for example, the ground forces
account for 50 percent of the personnel). These forces are not enough to
achieve a convincing victory in any lengthy war with the Armed Forces of
Ukraine.
Perhaps,
understanding this circumstance, the Russian command planned, repeating the
experience of the Second World War, powerful tank strikes, breakthroughs in the
enemy’s defenses, encirclement and destruction of his groupings. These plans
remained on paper. The saturation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine with modern
light anti-tank weapons devalued the actions of tank units. Javelin missiles
(6,500 of them were delivered to Ukraine) destroyed the tanks before they had
time to reach the distance of aimed fire. The presence of a large number of
man-portable air defense missile systems among the Ukrainian troops made it
possible, to some extent, to neutralize the superiority of Russia in front-line
aviation. As a result, Russian forces have had to rely on missile strikes,
mainly on civilian targets, and "barrage" tactics - massive artillery
raids that wipe out one city block after another from the face of the earth.
High-precision American multiple launch rocket systems, creating serious
logistical difficulties for the Russian army, reduce the effectiveness of
artillery. As a result, in the autumn-winter campaign, Russia's superiority in
arms will, if not reduced to zero, then significantly weakened.
The first
major battles of the new phase of hostilities may begin as early as August,
when Ukrainian troops are expected to move to the offensive on Kherson. It has
a good chance of success for two reasons. Firstly, the supply lines of the
Russian group on the right bank pass through two bridges across the Dnieper:
along the Antonovsky bridge near Kherson and on the other, located next to the
dam of the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station. Both bridges are extremely
vulnerable and will most likely be destroyed by HIMARS strikes before the
offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Secondly, a significant part of the
Russian troops is involved in protracted battles in the Donetsk region. If some
of them are transferred to the south to repel the Ukrainian offensive, then the
task of occupying the entire Donetsk region will certainly not be completed.
Consequently, the main political goal of the "battle for Donbass"
will not be achieved.
The loss of
the right-bank part of the Kherson region may mean the beginning of the failure
of the entire "special military operation." How Moscow will solve the
problem of retaining these lands is not yet clear. One can, however, assume
that such a task has no real solution at all, unless the Kremlin decides to
mobilize the conscripts. But even in this case, it will take a considerable
time, at least one and a half to two months, and by this time the fate of
Kherson will be decided.
The
contours of the first stage of the autumn-winter campaign are seen more or less
clearly: the "battle for Kherson." You can design various scenarios
for the further development of events. But all of them, in fact, come down to
two main options: either Moscow is forced to negotiate on Ukrainian terms (that
is, at least leaves the Ukrainian territories occupied after February 23), or
the war of attrition continues, in which Ukraine will receive a growing
economic and military assistance from Western countries. Given the balance of
power between Russia and the "collective West", Moscow will not be
able to avoid defeat in this war.
Yuri
Fedorov is a military-political expert based in Prague
I was surprised
to find out that there is a town of New York in the Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, 40
miles south of Kramatorsk and 15 miles west of Horlivka. The interactive map https://liveuamap.com/ shows that it is a mile away from the front.
 |
| Andrei Loshak |
Translated through
google translate, with corrections:
Sergei
Medvedev: Today our
guest is Andrei Loshak, a journalist, documentary filmmaker, author of the film
Broken Ties which was
recently released on the Current Time TV channel. The film is heavy, it cuts
like a surgical scalpel into the current Russian consciousness, which for the
most part supports the war in Ukraine, shows how this war cut Russian families
in half. In this regard, the first question is: is it Putin's war or is it
Russia's war against Ukraine?
Andrei
Loshak: I don't
have exact answers. I ask myself these questions all the time. The burden of
this shame and horror, of course, leads to a state of agitation. Still, I still
believe that the ultimate responsibility, of course, lies with Putin: all this
happens based on some of his personal interests and ideas about the world
order. And then just a huge country is already involved in all this. To me,
this is more of a story about how propaganda works.
Sergei
Medvedev: But is it
purely a propaganda fight? Your film made me re-watch a lot. At first,
consciousness refused to believe: how is it that most of your compatriots fit
into this war?! Pelevin said 15 years ago: "Russia has found a national
idea - and this is Putin." It sounded like a joke at the time, but over
the years I have come to understand the greater truth of this statement. Now,
after watching this film, listening to these arguments, seeing these faces, I
understand that the war has become an important assembly point for Russia, just
as at first Putinism and the entire Putin project groped for some very
important point of identity. This is not an aberration, but a harsh reality
with which we now live.
Andrey
Loshak: I'm afraid
you are right about something, and Pelevin is right about something. This grain
fell into the prepared soil. But, in my opinion, at some point there was a fork
in the road: I don’t know, it was 1999, when Yeltsin appointed a successor, or
later, maybe 2004, when something could still be reconsidered. At some point,
Putin appeared with his own idea of how everything works, with his
authoritarian tendencies, and then the country, first the leader, and then the
people who at that moment were passionate about consumption (zero years, when
oil prices only grew ), everyone at that moment massively tried to gain this
fat, to bask in this oil feast.
At some
point, the choice was made, and then some irreversible trends began, the person
grew, sprouted, it was already impossible to move him from there, he was not
going to leave. There has always been a liberal part that looked at all this
with horror, which showed itself in 2012, received a powerful response in the
nose and fled to the corners, into private life.
It seems
like we've been going through these forks all the time and making the wrong
choices. There was Navalny. I believe that at some point we should have united
around him. The person took upon himself the courage and responsibility to try
to achieve some kind of our representation by political means; We went through
all these forks very wrong. Putin at that moment simply sprouted further,
strengthened. He, too, is in some kind of Maslow's pyramid. At first he
strengthened himself, enriched himself, then he wanted to leave some mark on
history, to conquer what, as it seems to him, was unfairly taken away.
This is a
common, collective responsibility for everything that happened. I have not yet
learned to distinguish collective responsibility from collective guilt. Look:
it seems that both responsibility and guilt, one and the same, can be presented
to everyone, except perhaps for political prisoners. As a result, this toad
puffed up on its own, and on the other hand, our inactivity, passive
participation also helped this.
Sergey
Medvedev: On the
one hand, Russian fascism, which is quite obvious to many of us, was ripening,
and on the other hand, this life was so convenient: we kind of realized civic
instincts, went to rallies, said the right things, wrote, were not afraid of
anyone he spent the day in jail. But all the same, this sliding along the
inclined plane continued, and you don’t even understand where it was necessary
to catch on in order to stop all this: maybe, really, on Navalny.
What is
your attitude towards the interviewed people - sympathy, contempt, pity? Many
of them are zombified, bitten, this is a totalitarian sect. For Ukrainians,
they will be accomplices in aggression, because they justify, for example, what
happened recently in Kremenchug. On the other hand, people write: they are also
victims of propaganda. Do you think they are victims or aggressors?
Andrei
Loshak: They are
passive accomplices. We probably feel the same way about the German layman who
continued to enjoy life, waving swastika flags while the monstrous crimes of
the regime were taking place, simply because he did not really want to go into
details where his Jewish neighbors had gone. This is voluntary blindness, they
will have to answer for it, this is a minus in karma, let's say so. It seems
that this can be explained, and from this point of view, of course, they are
victims, because for the last 20 years they have been subjected to massive
shelling from propagandistic shit-throwers, their brains are really very
polluted. But, on the other hand, there is the Internet, there are their
relatives who are trying to convey some truth, at least a different point of
view. No, they categorically do not want to hear it, stand their ground.
Sergei
Medvedev: This is a
new type of person. "Homo putinus" (Putin's man) is a continuation of
the Soviet man, but in some completely new guise. Maybe it's even comparable to
North Korea or the Soviet people of the days of sports parades - genuine
delight on the faces of North Koreans who watch Kim Jong-un, scary videos. Some
kind of anthropological evolution has also taken place here, people have frozen
faces.
Andrei
Shipilov wrote a good thing: you can watch this film without sound and
subtitles, and you can still see who speaks and how. There are suffering faces
expressing empathy, and there are people with some kind of frozen expressions,
especially the mother of a Tatar girl: she has a constantly blissful smile on
her face. This is indeed some kind of new anthropology, but it is not very new
either. I remembered your film and the famous article "No Country for Old
Men" - this is the same diagnosis, these are people who have lost empathy,
they have been replaced by propaganda clichés. There has been some very
terrible evolution.
Andrei
Loshak: Perhaps I
agree. For these people, empathy turns on only when they talk about family. And
I like this dramatic move: we take the stories of a family split. Still, when
they talk about their children, this mask comes off, as happened with Renata's
mother Venera, who sat with a strange blissful smile, and then burst into
tears, because the conversation turned to something that was close and
understandable to her. I don't understand what's going on with them, but it's
really, as you rightly noted, some kind of mask.
Yesterday I
had the broadcast of "Full Albats": Evgenia Markovna has her own YouTube
channel, and Lev Gudkov from Levada was there. I spoke there about comparisons
about the Third Reich, Albats said that it seems to her to be stretched,
because after all the same Germans during the Third Reich were a more united
nation, there really was enthusiasm, eyes burned (signs of a totalitarian
society). In North Korea, everything is also probably more monolithic, at least
it used to be. I was there in 2004 and saw it all, although it is very
difficult to distinguish the truth from facades, grimaces, masks.
Here
people, although they are not emotional, their eyes do not speak, they feel in
depth, in fact they make excuses, they have a justifying intonation, they are
not very sure of what they say. To my clarifying questions, trying to find some
logic in their words, they begin to crumble, compose themselves again, lie. In
my opinion, this is a sign that they do not believe in this chimera.
Sergey
Medvedev: Yes, it
seems to be difficult for them, but at some point a salutary propaganda formula
comes into their heads, and they seize on it with relief: yes, we were forced,
forced, we had to do this, but this is not a war, a special operation! And this
impenetrable smile appears: they found this formula, hid their inner doubt
under it.
Andrei,
when you first contacted a person, could you guess in advance what the position
would be: by social status, by age group, by profile?
Andrey
Loshak: At first I
found couples, searched social networks for the cries of the soul that "my
relatives stopped understanding me." I was internally ready for this film,
because back in 2014 I saw this split on social networks. Now, after February
24, there was an explosion on Facebook. In my bubble, of course, these were
people who were against, and who had broken relationships with those who were
for. The most difficult thing was to get the consent of those who are in favor.
Further it was an absolute random. I did not make any special social portrait,
so that it would be some kind of more or
less representative sample.
There was a
famous story of Jean-Michel Shcherbak. He is a mulatto, his mother is Russian,
and his father is black. With the outbreak of the war, he left for Europe,
wrote a very penetrating post about himself and his mother, who, a parishioner
of the Sretensky Monastery, was once fed there by Tikhon Shevkunov, found
herself in such harsh hands. They walked together, he sang in the church choir,
once there was a normal family life, but then she became completely rabid and
cursed him. I don’t have a single hero who would take it and tear it up,
saying: I don’t want any communication at all. All the same, they in my film all
suffer, somehow they try to get closer, except, probably, married couples, who
simply break up, and that’s it. And when there is blood, family ties, the call
of blood in the end still turns out to be stronger.
Sergei Medvedev: Yes, mother and daughter still hold out to
the last.
Andrei
Loshak: For the
first months they could not communicate at all. Two months have passed - the
rapprochement begins. It must be understood that the most stubborn Putinists,
who have not a shadow of a doubt, simply did not speak to me: either they did
not answer, or they wished me dead. Perhaps that is why we do not see
representatives of this section, who would voice all this without a shadow of a
doubt in a chased voice.
Sergei
Medvedev: But can
we find any obvious lines along which society is split in relation to the war?
The older and younger generation, the city against the countryside, state
employees, state-dependent people against freelancers? I look who is in favor
of the war: the head teacher, a poultry farm worker, a pensioner, a former
investigator. These are people brought up, created and nourished by the state.
Andrei
Loshak: I will
object to you: there is a programmer, and he is in Leipzig, works in a Western
company, and he really wants to return to Russia and raise it from its knees,
because "the whole world is threatened by a new liberal order", and
other nonsense.
Sergey
Medvedev: This is
from the series - Peter the pig, who moved to Paris (famous caricature). He
sits and sits, bored, and then hangs a portrait of Stalin on the wall and
starts printing. In my opinion, this is such an immigrant syndrome.
Andrei
Loshak: There is a
30-year-old entrepreneur Yakov from Novorossiysk, he has a sister in Kharkov,
and he does not believe a single word of hers. On the part of state employees -
please, Renata, a pediatrician, Galina, who works in the Samara Philharmonic,
she is also a state employee. Of course, I feel terrible for them.
It seems to
me that everything is more difficult. The Levada figures terrify me in general,
I don’t even want to believe them. According to Levada, for example, 52% of
young people support all this. This is something incredible! My field
observations do not confirm this, but I understand that young people are taken
seriously. But, of course, there are more supporters with every ten: 60+ -
more, 70+ - even more, and at some point it reaches almost 100%. This, of
course, is some kind of age thing, because the Soviet resentment of young
people is generally incomprehensible, it does not work very well with them.
Sergei
Medvedev: This is a
secondary, induced Soviet resentment. People who have not eaten Soviet ice
cream talk with nostalgia about Soviet ice cream and soda for three kopecks.
They did not see this, but with all the more enthusiasm they fit into the
ready-made myth.
Andrey
Loshak: They hear
this “boo-boo-boo” from their parents: oh, how it was in the Soviet Union, what
ice cream it was! It seems to them that this is Wonderland, where everything
was cheap, equal and tasty.
Sergei
Medvedev: It is
clear that there will still be a reconciliation in some form, the war will
somehow transform, end in two, five, ten years. Anyway, these are the people
with whom to live, one way or another. What to do next with the civil war, with
the split within society?
Andrey Loshak: How can we accept this and pretend that this
did not happen, simply because of the feeling of an intellectual mission, that
we have to explain something to these people? Of course, they cannot be left alone
with Solovyov, Simonyan and Kandelaki *, who wrote an excellent review of my
film: this is inhumane. Apparently, we must try to do something to the last, in
order to still break through to the other side. Even this film: it received a
great response, it sold very well, but, to be honest, I don’t see any feedback
from that side. Maybe there is some kind of "sold out to America",
but there is no reflection on this topic, not exactly repentance, but at least
a meaningful reaction in the comments.
Sergei Medvedev: We are all in our bubbles. In any case, this
is a very important attempt, a document for the future, a document of the era,
this film should be reviewed both in five and ten years, so that the heroes of
the film look at themselves and understand what happened to us and what can be
done to prevent this from happening
again.
* Kandelaki, who wrote an excellent review of my film” - Loshak meant her review on his facebook from
June 27, 2022
Finally a decent review:
"I watched Andrei Loshak's film "Broken Ties"
No joy writing this text. I dislike the fact that journalists who were once among the best in the country are confidently following the path Savik Shuster trampled.
Deliberate or unintentional betrayal of your country in the name of ideals that Soros, British intelligence and corrupt elites have invented for you, for whom, the people, for centuries, have been a bargain in the struggle for power.
A sad video essay that is no different from any liberal editorial show sipping wine and broadcasting from Georgia, Latvia or Poland.
To make it short:
- Russia is bad,
- it's bad in Russia,
- onions were 22 rubles
each,
- Ukrainian youth do not
see freedom of speech in Russia,
- pro-Russian old men
cannot explain why Ukrainians should kill Ukrainians (it's about Bucha),
- Families are divided by conflict: all young men and women are on the other side, and their blind, according to Andrei, are adults - here.
The girl in the frame - the same one who complains about the lack of freedom of speech and talks about "blurry stories" with Navalny - exclaims: what Nazis do we have here?!
About hundreds of tattoos and chevrons of the SS "Dead Head" division, about "Galicia" parades and the streets of Bandera, the girl is silent.
Probably didn’t leave the house.
Andrei Loshak does not understand why Ukrainians would kill Ukrainians.
Well, I would go to the Azov regiment during these 8 years of war and ask.
Maybe he would have been told what the flights to the peaceful Donbass were for, why they decided to crush people with tanks, and then, and right now, to continuously bomb.
I would go to Mariupol, Melitopol, Lugansk, Kherson, Novaya Kakhovka. I would like to listen about the violence of Ukrainian nationalists against those Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine who remained on the other side of the front in 2014.
Journalism must be about the facts. She would be good with a genuinely broad spectrum of opinions. It's really cool if such films leave room for reflection. In general, it was possible not to tire myself by sewing a patchwork blanket about bad Russia and beautiful Ukraine.
It was enough for a black screen screen screen with the text: "I am against the fact that
Russia protects people from
death."
Tina Kandelaki
Yesterday
morning at 8:00 am sharp I went for a blood test at Maccabi and started talking
amicably with the Russian nurse while she was drawing my blood about what
languages I speak since she wanted to know where I know Russian from. So, I
briefly explained and then I remembered the film Broken Ties and suggested she
see it, as I do to everyone, particularly Russians, these days. She asked me
how I know about the film, and I said I was following events closely and
explained briefly what the film was about. “You know”, she said, “it is
happening in my family too.” Then she
added – “which side are you on?”
“Ukraine”, I said. Her eyes widened, the visible part of her face went
pale (both of us had masks on) and she said “OK, that’s it, goodbye”.
I almost
laughed and said: “I’m sorry I ruined your day”, but we managed to talk another
few minutes. “What can you expect from a
comic?”, she said, to which I said that Ronald Reagan was an actor and turned
out to be one of the better presidents.
I managed
to show her the link to Broken Ties and she will watch it. Of course, the
probability that she would change her mind is almost nil, but what matters is
that we managed to talk about in a calm and pleasant way.