War in Ukraine

Avdeyevka is now in Russian control. After the fall of the meat grinder Artemovsk [the Kiev regime calls it Bakhmut] into Russian hands last year, Avdeyevka, a former Ukrainian stronghold north of the city of Donetsk, is Russia’s biggest battlefield gain. The Kiev forces made a chaotic retreat from Avdeyevka, reported The New York Times, which cited Western and Ukrainian sources. The ill-planned retreat, according to The Telegraph (UK), may be more significant.

Liberating Avdeyevka, the coke plant town, by Russia appears beginning of a long, devastating retreat by Kiev forces; and, also, the kickoff of a wide collapse of the Ukrainian defense along the entire frontline. It is now being calculated that Russia would force forward its operational advances.

The first victim of the retreat from the heavily fortified town would be loss of Kiev force’s morale. Over the last nine years, the industrial town was held by the Kiev forces.

The Ukraine War, actually NATO’s war against Russia, is not limited to the battlefields of Ukraine. Like other major wars, it has political, economic, and diplomatic faces also. In these areas, Kiev is also losing ground. Over the entire warscape, the shadow of a losing war by its instigators – the imperialist camp – is visible.

Elon Musk has a recent forecast: Ukraine will lose the conflict; and with each passing day; Kiev’s position in any future peace talks is weakening; panic is brewing among Kiev’s backers in the US; a peace deal should have been done a year ago; since then, thousands of boys died for nothing, and Kiev’s position grows weaker by the day.

The tone of defeat or pessimism was also heard from Admiral Rob Bauer, a senior NATO commander chairing NATO Military Committee. Bauer told the Financial Times: The West grossly overestimated Ukraine’s chances of battlefield progress against Russia last year; the Western powers had been overly optimistic about the war in 2023; the West believed Kiev would win if training and ammunition are given to them.

Among the ardent hopefuls about Kiev’s victory over Russia were the imperialist media. Now, that hope is fading. The NYT painted an interesting picture of the Munich Security Conference (MSC) in February 2024: In the same event in 2023, there was talk of how many months it might take to drive the Russians back to the borders that existed before February 24, 2022. Now, that optimism appeared premature at best, faintly delusional at worst. The FT said: There was unremitting gloom in the MSC. Last year, in the same event, there was optimism.

Reality is taking away last rays of imperialist optimism about the Kiev regime’s victory, and that reality is being created by Russia and the imperialist camp. Russia is creating this with its strategy while the imperialist camp is shaping the reality by its strategy. The imperialist strategy was wrong in many areas – beginning from its high hope on “invincibility” or “efficiency” of its war machine, to its political, diplomatic and economic tools, to Russian “weakness”, “incapacity”, “stupidity”. Now, imperialist strategists and tacticians appear miscalculating, novice-planners, tactless diplomats, or, fools. Kiev’s much touted, but, ultimately, shamefully failed counteroffensive in the last summer made the war-realty appear foolish in the imperialist camp. The Zaluzhny-Syrsky drama was another show of the disheveled condition of the Kiev administration.

So, Politico cited officials who sounded far from certain about what a victory might look like for Ukraine even with renewed US aid. Citing several US politicians and foreign officials, Politico’s observation: Now, the West’s plan is simply to keep the Ukrainian military from collapsing. The NYT said in another report: Ukraine faces cascading frontline collapse; its troops are exhausted; there’s battle fatigue; there’s lack of ammunition.

‘The war’s third year opens with Ukraine on the defensive and struggling to hold the line as it finds itself outmanned and outgunned, much as it was in the first days of the war’.

25-02-2024

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Frontier
Vol 56, No. 37, Mar 10 - 16, 2024