|
This Ukraine War Report Is One Of A Kind
This frontline report and the maps it presents are one of a kind:
Frontline report: Ukrainian drones with loudspeakers broadcast surrender instructions as Pokrovsk counterattack succeeds – Euromaidan, Nov 7 2025
General Oleksandr Syrskyi launched a focused Ukrainian counterattack near Dobropillia to divert Russian attention from the brutal push on Pokrovsk. Using drone-mounted loudspeakers to broadcast surrender instructions and exploiting autumn mud, Ukrainian forces cleared encircled Russian pockets and forced mass surrenders, while Russian reinforcements became bogged down trying to respond.
bigger
The report claims that the Russian front that did envelope Pokrovsk and Myrnograd from the north has been broken up by a counteroffensive. Resupply of the Ukrainian forces in the two cities seems to be again possible.
The report is one of a kind because no one else is reporting such nonsense.
The Ukrainian counterattack north of Pokrovsk, which was launched a week ago, has failed. The pocket is closed. Pokorvsk is to 90% under Russian control. Ukrainian forces left in Myrnograd have no way out.
That is at least what other observers of the conflict, including western media, are claiming:
Gradually, then suddenly – Ukraine’s valiant defence of Pokrovsk is nearing its end (archived) – Economist, Nov 6 2025
Twenty-one months after it began, Vladimir Putin’s assault on the small Donbas city of Pokrovsk (pre-war population 60,000) is nearing its end. A bloody surge in late October made the situation in the city and in Myrhnohrad, a satellite town, irretrievable for the Ukrainians. Now they are battling for position to extract their forces, some trapped in pockets. The loss of Pokrovsk, though long anticipated, would be a significant blow. Worse could come later: the city is a crossroads that offers Russia a base for further advances.
biggerThe Washington Post, New York Times, Le Monde and others agree.
The Ukrainian government had given order to hold Pokrovsk no matter what. The Commander in Chief General Syrsky had to push all units he could scrap together from elsewhere into the battle only to fail with his counterattack. The time for retreat from Pokrovsk and Myrnograd has past. Ukrainian troops who are still there will have to give up or die.
This has been a repeating pattern with multiple cities the Ukrainians have lost over time. For some political reason the order is given to hold on until it is too late to recover the forces. Thus many soldiers inevitably die for not good purpose.
On top of the political importance attached by Kyiv to holding Pokrovsk, the reluctance to save lives by ordering a timely withdrawal is linked to the systemic culture of “not one step back,” commonly associated with the leadership of Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi.
This, together with the associated problem of false reporting of tactical developments up the command chain, threaten to facilitate an optimistic narrative among the military and political leadership while the situation continues to deteriorate on the ground.
“The reports of the General Staff sent upwards are made up of more and more lies every day,” [journalist and volunteer Vitalii] Deineha wrote.
“In fact, we have practically lost Pokrovsk, which means that there is no point in holding Myrnohrad either. We must acknowledge this, and work to save those who refuse to leave without an order.”
It is no wonder then that many decide to flee from the army before it is their turn to be sacrificed for zero gain (machine translation):
In October, a record was set for the unauthorized abandonment of units (SOC) in the Armed Forces of Ukraine: 21,602 people left the service.
This was announced on Facebook by the former MP, and now the commander of the company of attack drones Igor Lutsenko.
“Every two minutes a man runs out of our army. This is only official data. But in fact, many cases of unauthorized departure from the unit or desertion are not registered. This is the number one problem in the army. A recoiling army is an army that is still capable of winning. The fleeing army, which loses more and more people from month to month due to desertion and flight from units, is a real danger to the existence of Ukraine,” Lutsenko wrote.
The Ukrainian army is done with. It has no reserves. It lags weapons, munitions and soldiers. It has many ragtag units and only a few competent ones. Its retreat after Prokovsk will only accelerate.
“When someone wants to compare today’s Germany to Nazi Germany, please n0tice that today’s Germany is a joke in terms of economic and military potential compared to Nazi Germany. It’s more like a wannabe nazi state which will choke itself trying to achieve their ancestor level.
“GERMANY EXPECTS LARGEST MASSIVE TAX INCREASE FOR THE POPULATION FROM JANUARY 1
At the beginning of the new year, a wave of significant tax increases by municipalities will spread across Germany, as many of them are in a pre-bankruptcy state. These will primarily cover:
waste collectionStreet cleaningSewerageParkingHoliday parks and swimming poolsPublic transportDog tax
Thus, in the city of Kassel, parking costs will increase by 424%, street cleaning fees in Freising will increase by 95%, Lübeck will increase prices for holiday parks and urban swimming pools by 59%, in Leipzig the dog tax will increase by 56%, and the average waste collection tax will also increase by 50%. Why dogs should exactly be taxed is, of course, difficult to explain.
Another thing that will increase is, of course, the amount of “meellions” that will go to a certain crackhead in Kiev.
@Slavyangrad
https://t.me/Slavyangrad/147187
Posted by: unimperator | Nov 8 2025 10:39 utc | 273
……………………..
unimperator – Germany was not that much of a “wannabe state” in 2022 though. It disposed of immense trade power – not only the trade power of the still massive German industrial sector but the trade power of the entirety of the EU plus whatever the UK could bring to the table. Plus the financial power of the US, the use of which was expected to break the Russian financial system.
Not long after February ’22 hopes in the US changed. They changed from expecting a quick victory over the RF to the expectation of wearing the Russians down. That change was evidenced by statements made by US politicians at the time. Weakening the Russians “for cents on the dollar” became the theme, not demolishing them.
But that was after early 2022. In the early days the expectation, both in the US and the EU, was that the Russian economy would collapse. I think it was in late ’22 that I put together a summary of Western expectations in that early period that show clearly those expectations of Russian collapse. Later submitted to an English site and recently copied to Canadian Dimension:-
https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/squaring-an-impossible-circle-of-peace-and-insecurity-in-ukraine
It’s the summary towards the bottom of the comment section entitled “Note – The sanctions war.” There’s an abundance of evidence showing that merely wearing down or weakening the Russian economy was not the original aim in early 2022. The original aim was to collapse it.
A couple of points on that attempt to collapse the Russian economy. The first is that Alexander Mercouris, an authoritative English commentator and well clued-up on the political/diplomatic side of this conflict, is of the opinion that the Western assault on Russia was premeditated. He senses in the Munich Security Conference just before February ’22 a mood of exultant anticipation amongst the participants. Mercouris’ intuition is not evidence and he does not claim it to be such. All one can say is that it fits with other indications, including the somewhat odd UK speech at the 2019 MSC:-
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/the-munich-security-conference
Odd because at that time the UK and the EU were supposed to be at daggers drawn: threats from both sides and the various electorates deeply engaged in the conflict. Whereas in reality, and for the European and most of the UK politicians, Brexit was regarded more as a little local difficulty, an obstacle suddenly in the way as a result of Cameron’s foolish referendum gamble and to be got over as best they could. Whilst unobserved the European politicians, including ours, focused on making common cause against the “old adversary” that was “back in the game”.
In the event what we saw was consistent with that: provoking the Russians to military action and then hitting them with long-planned economic and financial warfare was exactly what occurred.
The second point about this assault on Russia is one now seldom considered but one that stuck out a mile from early ’22 onwards. Say that assault had worked?
The result would have been untold misery. A destabilised and fragmented Russia would have been plunged back into the chaos of the ’90’s. The neighbouring regions, mostly still tinderbox regions, would have exploded in conflict. There could have been no other result had we succeeded in wrecking Russia in that sanctions war. We had already seen the misery resulting from our destabilising work in the Middle East and we were now attempting to wreak the same havoc across a continent.
It was a most vicious attempt. For me, inexcusable. I’ve been angry about it ever since. I’m glad it failed. It had to fail, if the core values I and most of my generation were brought up in are to mean anything other than empty platitudes. It had to fail even though that failure of our attempt on Russia will hit my own country probably worst of all – and of course my own pocket! The future for me and my family will not be as bright and prosperous as it might have been had that attempt on Russia been successful; but I would not have our prosperity based on the ruin of another.
………………………
But it was never going to be that bright and prosperous in any case. The undeniable fact is that by the early ’20’s England was on the skids. Economically, politically and socially. That, to a lesser extent, held good for Germany, by far the most powerful country in Europe and up until the last decade or so the only successful economy in the entirety of the West. And though the German decline in the last few years before ’22 was not as dramatic as ours, it was dramatic enough.
Put simply, because they had been and still are more prosperous than most, that only means the Germans had further to fall and their fall therefore the more painful. And since the architecture of the EU and surrounding countries was designed around a prosperous Germany – Germany was at once the paymaster and arbiter of the EU – its fall must bring with it the failure of that architecture.
That was apparent before 2022. It is not too much of a stretch to see that assault on Russia as the last Hail Mary of a failing Europe. The sapping of German prosperity seen in that italicised extract in your comment above, and seen in a thousand other instances, was under way long before. All the failure of that attempt on Russia has done is to accelerate it.
……………………
It’s in that context we must consider the military war that you mainly focus on. That military war, for all its tragic consequences for the Ukrainians and Russians, was always a sideshow to the main conflict, the sanctions war. The result of that military war was always inevitable. Once the economic and financial war had failed we were never going to avoid defeat.
If that wasn’t obvious to all in February ’22, one of our best Generals was warning almost immediately that we’d sent in a boy to do a man’s job and it wasn’t going to work. In the specific terms he used, we had not given our “proxies” anything like enough back-up. Nor had we, as a raft of German, French and even American Generals were quick to confirm.
But it was not an unimportant sideshow. Had the Russians handled it wrong – had they fought it as we expected them to fight it -it could have been a thorn in their flesh for decades.
They did not handle it wrong. If we clear our mind of Western preconceptions – what we thought the Russians were doing – and consider what they did, we get quite a different picture of the military war from the picture we in the West work to. We see a quite brilliant opening campaign from the Russians – not the failed attempt of Western myth – followed by a coherent strategy that has remained unaltered from March/April ’22 to the present day. A strategy integrated with external considerations throughout and carried out at the operational level more or less flawlessly.
More or less. War’s a chancy business and anyone who thinks it’s ever conducted without screw-ups aplenty watches too many Hollywood spectaculars. But flawless in conception and sufficiently effective in execution to put the result past doubt. Barring nuclear, the West was never going to win the military war and that meant our unfortunate proxies were always bound to be sacrificed for nothing.
Long comment. Haven’t checked yet but I bet I’m submitting a comment to a dead thread again. Doesn’t matter – you’ll read it, and later I think it’s going to be worthwhile going into the detail of that Russian strategy. But that can only be a useful exercise if the military war is put firmly into the context of the more significant economic war. As said so often, what Mr Gerasimov and Mr Shoigu got up to was important but when it came to what really ensured Russian survival in the face of our assault, it was the efforts of Mrs Nabiullina and Mr Siluanov that did the job.
Posted by: English Outsider | Nov 8 2025 17:36 utc | 320
|
