Author: Cheng Mo
Executive summary: Today's main comments are on the two topics of Russia single-handedly withstanding the siege of the entire Western camp and the loss of positions by the Ukrainian army due to lack of ammunition. The article is a bit long, but definitely easy to understand.
Recently, the Russian media and pro-Russian media have publicized a lot that "Russia has single-handedly withstood the siege of the entire Western camp", the domestic economy is booming, and the battlefield situation is very good. At the same time, whether it is pro-Russian media or pro-Ukrainian media, whether it is Russian officials or Western camp and Ukrainian officials, they all claim that the United States stopped military aid to Ukraine in the early stage and other Western countries did not provide adequate aid to Ukraine, resulting in a shortage of ammunition for the Ukrainian army, so it lost Avdiivka and led to the occupation of many defensive positions by the Russian army, and the Ukrainian army is facing a rout.
I have repeatedly and clearly pointed out that the above two statements are actually part of the propaganda and information war between Russia and Ukraine. These two widely circulated statements, partly reflecting the complexity of the Russia-Ukraine war, are actually outright lies and are 108,000 miles from the truth.
Let me begin by expressing my opinion on "Russia has single-handedly withstood the siege of the entire Western camp."
After Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean peninsula in 2014 and took control of parts of the Donbas in eastern Ukraine, the Western camp imposed a series of economic sanctions on Russia, and since then, NATO member states have systematically trained and transformed the Ukrainian army.
After Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the Western camp actually regarded Russia as a hostile country, and implemented a series of extremely severe economic sanctions, including freezing Russia's overseas assets, while continuing to provide a large amount of military, economic and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine in addition to not directly sending troops to the war.
(Ukrainian army fiercely shelled Russian targets)
For more than two years, Russia has faced the economic encirclement, diplomatic hostility and continuous military aid to Ukraine in the face of almost the entire Western camp, although there has been a short-term crisis such as the "mutiny" of the Wagner Group in Russia, the economic depression and soaring prices, resulting in a sharp decline in people's living standards, but on the whole, the society is stable, and Putin's support rate has risen instead of falling.
Militarily, although the rapid occupation of the entire territory of Ukraine, the big goal of "demilitarization" and "denazification" of Ukraine has not been achieved, and the complete annexation of Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhye, Kherson, Odessa, and Mykolaiv 7 oblasts, turning Ukraine into a small landlocked country is also far away, but the Russian army opened up the land passage from Crimea to the Donbas region, also known as the "land bridge", and completely occupied the two Donbas oblasts (Luhansk, Donetsk), which seems to be being achieved step by step.
In this regard, it is not entirely unreasonable to say that "Russia has single-handedly temporarily withstood the siege of the entire Western camp" – it does shatter many people's illusions that Russia will collapse quickly, or that Russian society is more resilient and resilient than many expected.
However, if we really think that "Russia can withstand the siege of the entire Western camp for a long time on its own", it is a revolutionary optimism that defies all enemies, or blind arrogance, which is similar to whistling at night -- a lie to embolden oneself, which can easily encourage many people to be arrogant and lead to an extremely wrong perception of the current international situation. Whether the Russian economy is good or not is up to the Russian statistical department, and I will not comment. Just on the battlefield between Russia and Ukraine, I will make an objective analysis with you.
First of all, the entire Western camp has not engaged in a full-scale military confrontation with Russia, and so far no country has sent troops to Ukraine to directly engage Russia. The United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and France have only sent a small number of military advisers and technicians to help Ukraine with military training, coordinate the transportation of weapons to Ukraine, and supervise the use of weapons to Ukraine, and do not participate in any combat operations. On the battlefield in Ukraine, it is the Ukrainian army that fights the Russian army, and even a small number of foreign mercenaries are integrated into the Ukrainian army, and all of them are ground forces. The reason why the countries of the Western bloc led by the United States have won one-sided military victories in wars in recent years is mainly because they have brought into play their absolute superiority in missiles and air forces, and the army has only been the last to clean up the battlefield. This is completely invisible on the battlefield in Ukraine.
(Ukrainian fighters hiding in the jungle)
Second, in order to avoid provoking Russia to take risks and use nuclear weapons, the Western camp not only did not directly send troops to Ukraine to fight, but also adopted a gradually escalating method of "boiling frogs in warm water and stewing geese over slow fire" in military assistance to Ukraine, and compared with Russia, Ukraine is a country with weak comprehensive national strength. This means that it will take a long time for the military forces of Russia and Ukraine to come and go. As I analyzed in my article on April 27, the trend of Russia's and Ukraine's military strength declining has not changed since the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war, and it has now entered the late stage of strategic stalemate.
Many mentioned that the mileage of the F-16 fighters in the Western camp to aid Ukraine was too slow, and the Western camp responded for so long that the F-16 fighters still don't know where they are. Today I repeat a common sense again: the minimum time for training an F-16 fighter pilot is 18 months for the standard basic course, and another 6 months for actual combat operation. Now the Ukrainian army is ready to shorten the entire training period to 10 months. It's already a miracle.
To make a simple summary, Russia is a country with abundant natural resources, a large population, an extremely vast territory, a developed agricultural and a relatively developed industrial base, and as long as the extremely cruel policy of the former Soviet Union is not implemented, there will absolutely be no starvation to death; at the same time, Russia does have a huge nuclear arsenal, and it is absolutely not all scrap metal as pro-Ukrainian people say, so that the Western camp has no choice but to throw a mouse. Therefore, the Western camp supports Ukraine to defeat Russia, and can only adopt a gradual escalation approach, and it will take a long time to change the balance of military power between Russia and Ukraine, but this is definitely not that Russia is really invincible and can permanently occupy Ukrainian territory. I think that by the end of next year, by 2026 at the latest, the Russian army will be completely defeated and completely expelled from the territory of Ukraine.
Although the Russian economy is by no means as prosperous as the official statistics department says, Russia can guarantee that there will not be a mass starvation of people in the former Soviet era, so I believe that there will never be a sudden collapse within Russia that will change the course of the war until the Ukrainian army defeats the Russian army on the battlefield. Putin does have the heartfelt support of most Russians.
Of course, if someone really believes what North Korea and Iran say, they have the ability to easily defeat the US military and destroy the US imperialist in minutes, then it is logical to think that the Russian army is invincible and Ukraine can only cede land and sue for peace. I must say today that this is the equivalent of the wishful thinking of a mentally ill person.
(Ukrainian self-propelled artillery fire on the east bank of Kherson)
Next, I will talk about the topic of "the United States' cessation of military aid to Ukraine in the early stage and the ineffective assistance of other Western countries to Ukraine, resulting in a shortage of ammunition for the Ukrainian army, so it lost its city and land".
Soon after the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war, I have the impression that since May 2022, the Russian media and pro-Russian media began to hype up the depletion of weapons stocks in the Western camp by aiding Ukraine. Ukrainian media and pro-Ukrainian media, as well as Ukrainian officials and many pro-Ukrainian figures in the world, continue to hype up the lack of aid from the Western camp. Because the U.S. Congress has been stuck in the bill on military aid appropriations to Ukraine for half a year, the Ukrainian army has lost the frontier fortress of Avdiivka, and this topic has continued to ferment recently, causing anxiety among many readers.
Compared with the number of shells fired by the Russian army every day, as well as the occupation of all towns by the Russian army such as Mariupol, Severodonetsk/Lisichansk, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, etc., they are repeatedly saturated with artillery fire to destroy all possible hiding places of the Ukrainian army.
An important reason why the Western camp has failed to provide the Ukrainian army with the same artillery and ammunition as the Russian army is that in the past 40 years, Western countries have invested the main military expenditure in high-tech arms such as the air force, as well as based on the defensive strategy, focusing on the development of air defense systems and anti-tank, anti-armor and other high-tech defensive weapons. At present, apart from the United States, there is indeed no Western bloc country that has such a huge army and land offensive heavy equipment and corresponding military production capacity as Russia.
After the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war, the Western camp quickly resumed the production of traditional land weapons to meet the needs of the Ukrainian battlefield, but this is not a war of the Western camp countries after all, the government needs to persuade Congress to provide a funding budget, and the amount is limited, which determines that the Western camp's military aid to Ukraine does have a gradual increase process.
(Ukrainian troops preparing to break out of the trenches and counterattack)
Does this mean that the Russian army has an absolute superiority in artillery fire over the Ukrainian army, and the Russian army's capture of Avdiivka and its recent capture of many Ukrainian positions northwest of Avdiivka are the result of the United States stopping military aid to Ukraine, so that the Ukrainian army runs out of ammunition and food? I have said many times, absolutely not!
Even during the period when the United States stopped providing military aid to Ukraine, the number of large-caliber artillery shells fired by the Ukrainian army every day was 6-7,000 rounds, compared with the number of about 20,000 per day of the Russian army, the Ukrainian army was indeed much less. It is true that the Ukrainian army has failed to gain the advantage of artillery fire as the Russian army, but this does not mean that the actual artillery strike capability of the Ukrainian army is weaker than that of the Russian army. It should be noted that there are three major differences between Russia and Ukraine on the battlefield:
First, the Russian army is the attacker, and when carrying out the "human charge", it needs to prepare artillery fire on the positions of the Ukrainian army, and the Ukrainian army, as the defender, is to carry out precision strikes on the discovered enemy, and the number of shells required for the two is completely different.
Second, the Ukrainian army has the battlefield situational awareness ability to crush the Russian army, as well as counter-battery radar, howitzers, mortars, rocket artillery, individual anti-tank missiles, tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and armored vehicles and other Western precision strike tools for Ukraine, and the ability to detect and accurately hit the Russian army in a timely manner has an overwhelming advantage, so the strike efficiency is much higher than that of the Russian army, and the number of shells needed should have been much less than that of the Russian army.
Third, the use of drones on the battlefield of the Ukrainian army exceeds that of the Russian army by 10 times, and the performance is far superior to that of the Russian army. Not counting the number of small reconnaissance drones, the Ukrainian army currently consumes more than 1,200 small reconnaissance and combat drones every day, and at the same time dispatches hundreds of reusable large bomb-dropping drones, which largely makes up for the lack of artillery fire of the Ukrainian army.
(The Ukrainian army uses drones a lot on the battlefield)
Since in fact, the Ukrainian army's artillery fire is not weaker than that of the Russian army, why did the Ukrainian army not hold Avdiivka, and has recently suffered frequent defeats on the battlefield in eastern Ukraine? I think when everyone thinks like this, do they ask themselves in reverse: When the Russian army always has a strong artillery superiority, why was the Ukrainian army able to achieve a groundbreaking counteroffensive victory in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions last year?
In my opinion, the recent loss of the Ukrainian army in Avdiivka and several villages in the northwest is definitely not the result of the United States stopping military aid to Ukraine, because the number of shells fired by the Ukrainian army has not decreased at all during this period - although the Ukrainian army claims to have carried out artillery rationing, that is, it cannot fire indiscriminately, but as long as the enemy is found, it still uses enough artillery fire.
The main reason why the Ukrainian army lost Avdiivka is that it was originally a salient deep into the positions of the Russian army, and the Russian army has been attacking day and night for months, fearless to death, and the giant gliding bombs launched by the Russian Air Force have destroyed almost all Ukrainian military fortifications. As for a week ago, the Russian army took advantage of the mistake of the Ukrainian army to change the defense and quickly advanced northwest of Avdiivka, mainly because the Ukrainian army's defense change force has a weak will to fight, and it has nothing to do with the lack of artillery shells of the Ukrainian army.
In the current situation where Russia and Ukraine are evenly matched on the battlefield, purely in terms of positional gains and losses, as long as one side dares to sacrifice, the offensive is the best defense. This is precisely the fundamental reason why the Russian army has recently achieved some tactical victories. However, the final result of this will only accelerate the process of eliminating the military strength of Russia and Ukraine and shorten the time for the complete rout of the Russian army. To use an easy-to-understand analogy, a person who was originally in a state of dying struggle, suddenly became desperately excited, and that was just a reflection of the light before death.
It is precisely because many people cannot see the essential changes in the evolution of the Russian-Ukrainian war that they will be shocked by a small tactical victory of the Russian army and lose their objective and rational judgment.
(Ukraine launches tactical missiles for the U.S. aid Ukrainian army)
Finally, a piece of news on military aid. On April 28, the German government website announced a new batch of military aid to Ukraine. As I said before, the German government announces a batch of military aid to Ukraine almost every two weeks. This assistance is very strong, and it is necessary to share it with you.
The list of weapons aided to Ukraine this time includes two sets of SKYNEX air defense systems with ammunition, which is a short-range air defense system with a high degree of automation, which is mainly used to attack slow-flying targets such as drones, airplanes, helicopters, and cruise missiles, an unknown number of missiles used by the IRIS-TSLM air defense system, ammunition for the "Leopard 2" main battle tank, 30,000 rounds of 35 mm ammunition for the "Cheetah" air defense tank, 7,500 rounds of 155 mm artillery shells, and 10 "Weasels" Infantry combat vehicles (a total of 100 have been sent to Ukraine), BIBER bridge-building tanks with spare parts (17 have been handed over previously;D), ACHS engineering tanks (7 have been delivered previously), 11 demining vehicles (55 have been received previously), 6 M1070 Oshkosh heavy semi-trailers (used to transport tanks), a TRML-4D anti-aircraft surveillance radar (previously assisted 8), AMPS helicopter protection system (5 previously aided to Ukraine), and some other small arms equipment.
In fact, not only Germany, but more than 50 countries in the Western camp have been continuously supplying weapons and ammunition to Ukraine. Although Russia has also secretly obtained small amounts of weapons and ammunition from North Korea and Iran, it is really a drop in the bucket compared to the huge attrition on the battlefield in Ukraine. There have been rumors on the Internet that other countries have provided huge military aid to Russia, and as far as I know, I have always said that there is no such thing, and neither the Western camp nor the Ukrainian side has made such accusations. Some people like to spread sensational lies, and I can't convince them.
The Ukrainian side said that in the past 24 hours, there have been 120 battles on the front line, and the Russian army continues to carry out fierce attacks in the area west of Avdiivka and in the direction of Bakhmut-Chasiv Yar, and the Ukrainian army has repelled all Russian attacks;
The Ukrainian army continues to use tactical missiles from the United States to aid the Ukrainian army to attack Russian military targets on the Crimean Peninsula. The Russian army claimed to have shot down all incoming missiles. However, videos uploaded by witnesses on international social media platforms show a violent explosion of Russian troops at the Zhankoy military base on the Crimean peninsula. This airfield was also frequented by army tactical missiles launched by Ukraine two weeks ago.
On the 798th day of the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war, the Ukrainian General Staff announced that the battle losses of the Russian army (including Russian localities, enterprises, and separatist groups) in the past 24 hours were as follows: 1,120 Russian troops were annihilated (killed and seriously wounded), and a total of 469,800 Russian troops were annihilated; Destroyed 5 tanks, 21 armored vehicles, 1 air defense system, 33 fuel tankers and logistics heavy-duty vehicles, 3 sets of special equipment (mainly electronic warfare equipment), 13 artillery pieces, and intercepted 7 suicide drones.
(The battle losses of the Russian army counted by the Ukrainian side on May 1)
Based on various information, I roughly estimated that the losses of Ukrainian officers and soldiers were about 97,000, of which the number of dead and seriously injured was also 1:1, and more than 20,000 Ukrainian civilians were killed. The warriors of Ukraine who died defending their homeland will return to heaven with glory and be with God.
Let us continue to pray that God will give peace and put an end to wars, that the wicked may be rewarded and the good be sheltered.