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Ukraine Isn’t Winning
There is an ongoing Ukrainian propaganda campaign to depict the country as winning the conflict with Russia.
The campaign is accompanied by drone attacks on energy targets within Russia. While burning fuel tanks at this or that of many Russian refineries may look impressive the effects on Russia have so fare been mere nuances. Ongoing drone attacks on Crimea have led to inconveniences for the inhabitants of the island.
The Ukrainian campaign is supported by the Europeans who are trying to pull the U.S. back into the conflict. The U.S. however had never left. After the meeting between President Trump and President Putin in August 2025 in Anchorage there was talk about an agreement between the two presidents but no announcement of any specifics.
After the meeting Trump had called for Ukraine to leave the Donbas area to make peace with Russia. But he never applied any pressure to achieve that outcome. Meanwhile U.S. intelligence and weapon support for Ukraine continued.
For a while Russia had seemed to believe in the ‘sprit of Anchorage’ and had expressed hope for an end on the conflict along Trump’s proposal. That view has long since gone away.
Now U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has officially dismissed any talk of an Anchorage agreement:
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump failed to secure any final agreements on Ukraine settlement at their meeting in Anchorage.
“There was no agreement in Alaska. There was a proposal in Alaska, but there was no agreement in Alaska. If there had been an agreement, we would have had an end to the war,” Rubio told journalists in Manama, the capital of Bahrain, in the course of his state visit.
Now Rubio’s underling even declares that Ukraine is winning:
Speaking ahead of the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Gdańsk, US Deputy Secretary of State Jeremy Levin said the conflict has shifted in Kyiv’s favor, Mezha reported.
“As of now, we are in a position where Ukraine is winning the war at this moment” Levin said, adding that the situation on the battlefield has shifted in Kyiv’s favor, allowing Washington to speak about Ukraine’s success as a current reality instead of a distant goal.
Levin said that the conflict dynamics have reversed, with Ukrainian troops now advancing, while Russian forces are effectively waiting for winter. The shift in dynamics has been made possible by Ukraine’s ongoing strikes on critical oil infrastructure in Russia, essentially increasing the cost of the war for Moscow and forcing it to divert resources away from the front, he said.
The facts on the ground are contradicting the view of Mr. Levin. According to Ukrainian frontline news Russian troops are slowly but steadily gaining ground (machine translation):
Russian troops have occupied most of Kostiantynivka in the Donetsk region.
This was reported by a Ukrainian fighter with the call sign “Flour”.
According to him, Russian units are already using most of the city to accumulate personnel, drones and firepower.
Only certain microdistricts at the northwestern entrance to the city remain under the control of the Armed Forces of Ukraine or in the gray zone. At the same time, the line of contact continues to change rapidly.
Another noticeable advance, according to the military, was recorded in the Sloviansk direction. Russian units have established control over Yurkovka and continue fighting for Rai-Oleksandrivka (the Russian Federation claims that this village has already been captured).
At the same time, pressure is increasing in the Mykolaivka area, where Russian troops are trying to disrupt Ukrainian logistics with strikes on supply routes through Vysokoivanivka and on facilities in the area of the Slavyansk thermal power plant.
In the Pokrovsky direction, Russian forces, according to Muchnoy, occupied the Zaporizhzhia mine and advanced along the forest belts north of it. The situation in Rodinskoye is also complicated, where the northern part of the city was actually isolated.
At the same time, it is noted that Russian units are trying to turn this area into a local “bag”, controlling supply and movement routes with the help of drones and firepower.
The Ukrainian army is in its ever worst position. Moral is terrible, losses are high and the recruitment methods are getting more and more brutal.
The Ukrainian Commander in Chief General Syrski has long insisted on creating new ‘assault’ brigades instead of filling up the shrinking regular brigades which attempt to hold grounds.
A recent investigation by the Ukrainian outlet Babel reveals murder and torture in the recruit training camps of the 425th Assault Regiment Skala (Rock) (machine translation):
A battered head, torn hands, a chiseled lower back, dirty and broken fingers. In this state, 35-year-old Oleksandr Semenov came to the hospital in Kropyvnytskyi in January 2026. He said that he escaped from the 425th separate assault regiment “Rock”, where he was abused, beaten, tied to an ATV and dragged on the ground. In a video taken by local doctors, the man said that he witnessed at least nine suicides in the unit, briefly described their circumstances and named one of the dead. The video at Babel’s disposal was filmed on January 23, 2026, and a few days later, Oleksandr Semenov died in the hospital. The official cause of death is pneumonia.
“The Rock” is the largest assault regiment in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Unofficially, it is also called “Syrsky’s”. It is not part of any corps, but is directly subordinate to the high command. “The Rock” took part in the most difficult battles of the Russian-Ukrainian war. Despite this and combat merits, the regiment is often criticized by the military, journalists and relatives of those who got there. Due to accusations of heavy losses, the regiment has gained a reputation as “meat”. However, “The Rock” loses people not only on the battlefield, but even before combat — during military training – it counted 26 deaths.
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The newly recruited soldiers, snatched from the streets, are living in guarded tents. Going to the toilet is only allowed in groups and under the eyes of an armed soldier. Grounds around the training camp are mined. Torture is routine. People who try to flee will be shot and/or get brutalized to death.
Strana reports that the “Rock” is far from the only such unit.
The mass death of Ukrainian soldiers due to torture while in training is probably what the State Department considers as ‘winning’.
Russia has meanwhile initiated a new campaign against Ukrainian transport infrastructure and logistics. Targets are locomotives, truck depots, large post office warehouses (which run Ukraine’s military logistics), oil storage facilities and petrol stations of which more than 150 have been destroyed so far.
The slow squeeze continues. Ukraine isn’t winning.
At the beginning of this video (set to around one minute) Mercouris gives the definitive summary of the contested “Anchorage Agreement”. If Karlof1, who follows the Russian statements closely, finds this in line with those Russian statements, then it’s case closed. Runs for about ten minutes and I’m afraid there is no transcript:-
“Zelensky Again Threatens Belarus; Kharkov Crumbles Threat To Kiev Grows; Lavrov Rubio Bury Anchorage”
https://youtu.be/fxoQwJ-z9K4?t=57
Case closed indeed. “Agreement incapable” has been a cliché for years but to that must be added “Negotiation incapable”. Chas Freeman, for all he’s careful and moderate, despairs of the current handling of foreign policy negotiations by the US and rightly so.
To “Negotiation incapable”, and looking at the Ukrainian conflict as a whole, we must add “Strategy incapable.” Not only in the case of NATO, which has conducted the war in a most amateurish manner, but in the case of an American administration under both Biden and Trump that believed, here as in Iran, that going in without clear objectives and then playing it by ear can substitute for a coherent strategy.
But what of the Russians? Have they also been playing a similar game, stringing the Americans along but never intending to come to any agreement in the first place?
That can only be argued if one fails to understand the Russian approach to this conflict with the West, an approach that has been apparent from the start.
Read the ISW material or the output from the US media in general, particularly the foreign policy magazines. Read the analyses from most Western analysts, even many of those who are against this war. A fundamental error sticks out a mile. They think only in simplistic terms. Either the Russians were intending this or they were intending doing that. They can’t be doing both at the same time. Either they were only pretending to take Anchorage seriously, in which case they were dishonest. Or they were taking it seriously, in which case they were fools.
That simplistic thinking exemplified in many “dissident” blogs, often extending to accusations that you can only understand Anchorage by assuming that Putin was “selling out”, either because he’s merely an oligarch comprador himself and is looking out only for his interests and those of his clique, or because he’s a covert “Atlanticist” (or worse!) and does not have the true interests of his country at heart.
All such nonsense, either from the US journals or from the dissident sites, deriving ultimately from a failure to understand how the Russians do war. From a failure to understand that it is possible to have multiple objectives and to pursue those objectives at the same time. And to move from one objective to the other depending on the actions of the enemy.
If we look at Minsk 2, it’s “obvious” that that was never going to hold and was not holding. Obvious to the Russians as well – they could see the fortifications going up and the arms pouring in, neither of which was consistent with the West intending to hold to Minsk 2. It was still a worthwhile aim for the Russians to pursue, whilst at the same time preparing, as they did, for a seemingly contradictory aim: fighting a war if Minsk 2 failed.
So too with the early Belarus and then Istanbul negotiations. It seemed to me “obvious” at the time that the ultras could never accept any settlement resulting from those negotiations. To more percipient onlookers it might also have been obvious that the West could never accept such a settlement either, as in the event it did not. But obvious or not that Belarus/Istanbul was doomed to failure, it would have been foolish for the Russians to refuse to engage in those negotiations. Any chance of peace, however slim, was to be seized. At the same time preparing, as the Russians did in full measure, for failure of those talks.
So too with Anchorage. I doubt any Russian, from Putin down, put much faith in something useful coming from that charade. Should they have refused to participate for that reason? Of course not. Grab any chance going of agreement, work out what would be needed to arrive at agreement, and at the same time prepare for failure.
We do not understand the Russian approach to this conflict unless we understand their way of conducting it. Planning simultaneously for several alternative outcomes and preparing the plans for each outcome. After all, our standard criticism of the West, particularly of the Europeans, is that they only ever had a Plan A for this conflict and had no Plan B to fall back on should things go wrong. Are we to call the Russians fools, or even reproach them with dishonesty or double dealing, because they do not adopt that same risky approach?
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No disrespect to the indispensable Alexander Mercouris but failing the transcript, time can be saved by running his exposition at double speed.
Posted by: English Outsider | Jun 27 2026 15:58 utc | 339
Ukraine is not winning but not because of the reasons evoked here. Ukraine is losing because it is under the yoke of a totalitarian regime that is exterminating young Ukrainians, selling out all the country resources to vulture funds like Blackrock and its sovereignty to other totalitarian regimes (EU, US, UK).
Ukraine is now a puppet state used for money laundering (with US and EU taxpayers money) and as guinea pig for weapons and warfare.
The Jewish dictator zelensky is presented as some kinf “Nazi” in some Russian media. The accusation is ridiculous, Zelensky is the contrary of a national socialist, he is an ultra-zionist, ultra-globalist and has been installed in power to offer on a plate Ukraine to his globalist pupeeters.
This is where Ukraine is losing and is lost.
Now in term of actual attacks and counter-attacks, neither Russia or Ukraine is winning. Both are using their youth as canon fodder with the result of depopulation of an already dying populations (the Slavs).
Russia is now surrounded (encircled) by hostile regimes with Finland recently having changed its laws to allow nuclear weapons on its soil. Other small countries like Latvia building drones right at Russia’s broder and now even Armenia turning against Russia following another rigged election (after Molddova, Romania and Hungary) and Belarus Lukaschenko taking orders from zelensky now.
An oil crisis is developping in Russia as western missiles and drones posing as ‘Ukrainian terror attacks” are destroying refineries as far as southern Siberia.
The Russia army, as usual since 4 years is davacing meter by meter in its liberation of the Oblasts who voted for reunification with mother Russia.
Nobody can call that winning.
And what is Putin doing? Except talking?
Nothing, as if all was fine.
The US/western plans are working, Putin is more and more unpopular, elections will confirm that and Russia hasn’t achieve any of its goals in 4 years, while being now totally encircled by hostiles.
Many wonder if, after all, there is not some truth in the claim that Putin is a western asset tasked to slowly surrender Russia to his handlers.
The coming months will be decisive in this respect.
Posted by: destinus | Jun 29 2026 20:54 utc | 388
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