It’s not just the “angry patriots” of Strelkov’s ilk who feel things are not going right. “Even for a ‘dignified, non-fatal defeat’ (in which the enemies drop their plans to completely break up Russia and liquidate its sovereignty) we’ll have to fight long and hard,” Strelkov wrote on his Telegram channel, read by almost 800,000 subscribers.
Igor Girkin, aka Strelkov, a veteran of the 2014 Russian campaign against Ukraine and now a nationalist critic of the Kremlin, has just predicted for the first time in so many words that Russia will lose the war. Ukrainian troops are massing at multiple points of the overextended front - a credible threat that suggests they will attempt to cross the broad Dnieper to cut through Russia’s main conquest in this campaign, the land bridge to the Crimea. On Telegram, rumours circulate of a plan to launch swarms of first-person view racing drones, bought up by Ukrainians in China, at Russian trenches. Now, pro-war Russians await a Ukrainian counteroffensive with some trepidation.
Russian servicemen arrive to participate in the Victory Day military parade, in central Moscow on May 9, 2023. Russian cannons at the Kremlin wall are fired during a Victory Day parade in Red Square in Moscow, Russia, May 9, 2023, marking the 78th anniversary of the end of World War II. Military vehicles roll toward Red Square to attend a Victory Day military parade in Moscow, Russia, May 9, 2023, marking the 78th anniversary of the end of World War II.
Iskanders, a mobile short-range ballistic missile system launchers, roll during the Victory Day military parade at Dvortsovaya (Palace) Square on May 9 to celebrate 78 years after the victory in World War II, in St Petersburg, Russia, May 9, 2023. Russian soldiers march toward Red Square to attend a Victory Day military parade in Moscow, Russia, May 9, 2023, marking the 78th anniversary of the end of World War II. (Photo: Sputnik/Gavriil Grigorov/Pool via Reuters) Participants, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, attend a military parade on Victory Day, which marks the 78th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two, in Red Square in central Moscow, Russia May 9, 2023. Although pressed severely, Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut, Marinka, Avdiivka and Vuhledar are still, to varying degrees, holding on. There, the only more or less significant town the invaders managed to take was tiny Soledar. Putin’s biggest problem is that hardly anyone, apart from his suppressed, docile population, is scared of him anymore.Ī year and two months into its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian military is squarely on the defensive.Īfter setbacks last fall that saw it lose swathes of captured territory in the Kharkiv region in the north and the Kherson region in the south of Ukraine, it spent the winter digging in along the 1,000km frontline, with offensive action limited to an unsuccessful missile strike campaign to ruin Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and head-on attacks on Ukrainian fortifications in the eastern Donbas region. Yet Russia has rarely been as far removed from any kind of victory as it is today. This year, Moscow again celebrated it with a full-scale military parade in Red Square and a Putin speech in front of the troops - still on, despite what the Russian authorities called a narrowly thwarted Ukrainian drone attack on Putin’s Kremlin residence last week (Ukraine denies involvement). BERLIN: Victory Day on Tuesday (May 9), commemorating the Soviet Union’s triumph over Nazi Germany in 1945, is still the biggest official holiday in Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the cornerstone of its ideology.
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