Niti slučajno. Primjer, zapadno od Luganska na potezu Stahanov-Prvomajsk-Gorskoje i dalje prema Lisičansku, ili preuzimanje Slavjanoserbska sjeverozapadno od Luganska.
Sve je to daleko od ruske granice.
Their enemy has no ressources to mount successful offensives any more, for over a month, and certainly none with direct contact. All excursions have been circumventing militia positions and gone cross country so that they can "take" a deserted and undefended town in the rear, and paint their colors on a map. But every one of those, they've been chased out of as soon as the militia arrived, and it has driven them out and retaken everything. All of those resulted in massive losses in manpower and equipment, and every single time they ended in encirclement and either annihalation or routing (or both) of the attacking unit. Their last direct assault with contact attack from several directions resulted in a disaster, and every one since ended the same. The meatgrinder has done it's job. There's only so many fanatics you can find to run into death, and almost all of those fanatics and volunteers have been used up. Now they are left with very few fanatics, and a lot of people that they had to drag to the battlefield by their feet. How combat worthy they are can be calculated by a little child. Or you can just take a look at what happened in the last five days and you will have your answer.
On the other side of that, you have people who've had plenty of experience in fighting, movement, organization, aiming, effective fire, they are all highly motivated and willing to fight, and bolstered by new volunteers every day, with every regime shell and rocket that lands and murders someone's family or neighbours, and destroys someones home. And with the collapse of the frontline those numbers will grow further, no one wants to join in on the (seemingly) losing side, but a lot of people will run alongside the winning side chasing the fleeing enemy.
- Ukraine used up it's fanatics and volunteers
- They don't have the capacity (not necessarily numbers, but capability wise) to execute a successful offensive any more, all of their offensives in the past 30 days ended in disaster and haven't moved anything, they have cost thousands in troops and around 100 units of good fighting equipment and hundreds of units of regular vehicular equipement
- A fighting force that gets cleaned out of every empty settlement they occupy and can't hold on to, and gets beaten back, outmaneuvered, encircled, annihilated and routed in every assault they conduct, isn't capable to hold the front line
- With a collapsed frontline, it enables the rebels to outmaneuver them in ways that weren't possible, or even imaginable, before. A month or two ago it seemed like a huge feat to close the narrow access to the units along the Russian border, but it wasn't a forward moving encirclement where they reached around the enemy. The regime command in Amrosievka (or whatever it's called, southwest of saur mogila) could as well have been Kiev, the rebeles were never going to make it there because they were on a pullback from all of their territories. Now they are executing a forward moving encirclement, reaching around and encircling all of the units posted on their southern flank that have been attacking the past 30 months. The danger is that they could end themselves like the regime excursions have, cut off and encircled. But anyway, that capability was unthinkable a month ago when it seemed like the regime would cut them to pieces and then take them out one by one. But they didn't achieve that and have lost thousands. Now they lack those thousands, to stop the rebel advance. The rebels have advanced towards places they have given up months ago. And it's not just the direction to Lisishansk/Severodonetsk, it's everywhere, north of Lugansk, south of Lugansk, south of Donetsk, west of Donetsk, north of Donetsk, south of Saur Mogila. Everywhere.
- I remember exactly a month ago when regime forces went around Debaltsevo to the countryside north of Shahtarsk, how certain people here cheered the end of it. I remember when the next days they attacked Shatarsk/Torez from north and south, how people posted maps with Donetsk almost encircled except for that little spot, and how they said that it's a matter of hours and days, with the whole countryside eas of donetsk colored in regime colors. Where is the color now? All gone, thousands dead and crippled, and the area is colored in rebel colors again. The same happened a few weeks ago when the regime forces went cross country around settlements to go towards Miusinsk, Krasny Luch and Antrasit. Where is that color now? All back like it was before. But at least hundreds gone. Stepanovka and Dimitrovka are in rebel hands again. Even Saur Mogila is in rebel hands again. How many lives were wasted by the regime to take that hill?
- The rebels and partizan units are already attacking the regime army far in their own rear, in places they haven't had the capacity to fight them before. They have in the past day stretched the front for over 100 km´to the south alone. And even more with everything else considered, the north has also stretched quite a bit. The southern front has completely crumbled. They couldn't hold the shorter front, and now the front is longer. You do the math. There is no realistic way they can retake what has been taken the last few days when they can't even hold on to villages or take single villages when there are enemies in them. All they can do now is to escape in a narrow corridor to not fall into encirclement, sitting it out and trying to defeat the encircling troops would be a bad idea, even when they get reinforcements that attack the encircling troops from the rear. The rebels have set themselves up in a position to attack Mariupol. That is a major development. And the regime has mostly opression squads in those cities, all their serious military units are at the front.
The result is visible today and will be even more visible in 5-15 days if it continues the way it went the last few days. So unless this is an intentional strategic move by the regime, to pull back itself to overstretch the enemy and draw him out of his positions to beat him more easily, it's game over for the regime. The only question that remains is how far back will the regime forces be routed before the regime calls for an agreement and "international" negotiation. And the other question after that is, if the rebels will be stupid enough to sit down with them when they are on the advance, after the regime in Kiev rejected any diplomatic solution when it had the upper hand. And this is happening exactly the day when they were parading around in Kiev with gear that their troops don't actually have at the front. And from what I've heard from Poroshenko and other regime heads the past few days, they sound like Hitler in his last weeks. But one thing is for sure, this is the end of the Ukraine like we've known it for the past 20 years.
I've written a post like this days ago, but decided not to send it. Turns out the impression that i had was true, only that I thought it would take them a few more weeks before they could advance to Amrievska (whatever it's called, you know what I mean, the HQ place) because the regime would mount a few more fake-out assaults to bind the rebels into the defensive to win time for...whatever... because it's not like some magical huge reinforcement force is going to show up out of thin air.
Even if this rebel offensive gets stopped, or routed, they will just fall back into their positions from a month ago and that's it. It's an indestructible meatgrinder. And the more Kiev throws into it, the worse the stability of the regime in the rest of the country will be. That is the whole point. Ukraine is done. The regime and system is falling apart. Porazhenko the billionaire has spent millions to play president and imperator, and it will be over soon, and in the end, it wil have cost thousands of lives, and will carry a heavy lesson for the people of Ukraine as soon as the vuvuzelas of regime propaganda that blames everything on Russia go silent. But after they fired ballistic missiles, 152mm artillery and rocket barrages into cities, I don't think there is a future in which those lands will subject themselves to rule from Kiev and Lviv again. If they have a brain, they will realize that no promise of "democracy" will be good enough. Because they already had that, remember? But real democracy and independence isn't the intended goal for the Ukraine, democracy should only serve to legitimize Western puppets in power. And as soon as the South-Easts candidate won the election and pursued an independent Ukrainian policy, fascist thugs from Lviv staged a violent coup and overthrew the government, and continued on to persecute anyone standing up for his democratic rights, by burning them alive, shooting them on the street like a dog, beating them into a pulp, imprisoning them, or bombing their cities and killing hundreds. So if the people in the south-east wake up from their 20 year long standby-mode and their brains start working in active instead of passive mode and they remember what the reality of the past 12 months has shown them, there will be no Ukraine any more. Even if Russia sides with Germany to push for a unified Ukraine, I can well imagine that it is unacceptable and unbearable for the people. They won't accept it as they can no longer live with those that attacked them in that way, and since it has been made clear to them that they have no democratic rights and that they would always be voiceless slaves ruled by a foreign puppet government that they have no say in, and if they try to get a voice they will be beaten, imprisoned or killed. Those are appaling conditions of a reality to live under, imaginable only in few, select, lawless third-world civil-war hellholes. Now they have been brought to Europe. Democracy™ and Freedom™.