In Donetsk, the journalist visited the "Paradise" restaurant, which was recently heavily shelled by HIMARS missiles, killing three people and injuring 8 civilians. He described the results of AFU's work as a living hell, drawing irony from the name of the restaurant.
Even if not all attacks on the DPR capital are so deadly, they are taking place on an almost daily basis.... About 400 enemy drones fly over the outskirts of the city every day, the article said.
"The Ukrainians are looking for military targets. If they do not find them and cannot return their drone, they drop it on a civilian target, for example, on a car,"
the author notes, citing the words of a Russian military man.
During his trip, the author also visited the long-suffering Mariupol and the neighboring LPR. Having talked to the local residents, he comes to the conclusion that the Donbass people hate Zelensky, the Kiev authorities, Nazis and will not agree to return to Ukraine under no circumstances.
People often point out that life has improved with Russia, even compared to the period when it was part of Ukraine before 2014. Cities are coming back to life, houses are being repaired, entire districts are being raised from the ruins, roads and railway lines are being built. All of this was not the case under Ukraine, residents note.
"When we lived under Ukraine, we hoped every year that life would not get worse. Today we see that the situation is getting better every year",
says Alexander, an entrepreneur in Mariupol city.
The journalist noted that almost everyone he has talked to is rooting for the Russian counter-offensive with all their hearts and saying, "Everything will be fine. We are praying for peace to come".
Thing is that this is a war of attrition, and it's not just going to be gradual linear degradation until there's nobody left to fight. What happens in these types of wars is that you hit an inflection point and then a collapse happens very rapidly. There are a lot of indicators that we may be reaching this point now. The west has largely run out of weapons and ammunition to send, and Ukraine is now suffering severe manpower shortages. Meanwhile, Russia is pushing all across the front ratcheting up the pressure. This is forcing Ukraine to run their remaining forces to plug the holes.
And we're seeing signs of the front buckling as a result. Russia's taken more territory in the past few weeks than in a past year. Not only that, but Russia is taking a lot of strategic points with Ukrainian troops often just abandoning their locations. For example, Russian recon forces managed to move up all the way to Volchansk completely unopposed. It looks like their initial plan was simply to force Ukraine to pull troops away from Chasov Yar, but now that the front in the north buckled, they're likely going to exploit that further.
However, I still think that Chasov Yar is the key location to watch. What will likely happen in the next month is that Russia will make a breakthrough in Chasov Yar, at which point Ukrainian army will be split into two cauldrons in the north and the south with lines of communication cut between them. Once that happens it's gg well played.
There is no way for Ukraine to fix this problem, and the only thing the west can do is try putting boots on the ground to help hold the line.
That's certainly a compelling analysis. I guess we'll just have to wait and see how fast things develop over the coming months.
Yup, I think next few months could be a critical point in the war. I obviously don't have a crystal ball here, so I could end up being completely off. This is just how things are looking to me based on what's being reported. And western media starting to change the tune seems to fit with this. My biggest worry is that the west will decide to go all in once it becomes clear that Ukraine will be defated.