What's happening in Nikolaev: Are they waiting for the Russian army here?
Nikolaev is a city where the Russian Empire and later the Soviet Union once built their largest warships. Today it has been turned into a fortified area of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, from where neighboring Kherson, occupied by the Russian army, is fired daily.
What are the mood in Nikolaev? Are they waiting for the Russians to arrive there? And what will Russia's return to a shipbuilding center that had fallen into decay under independent Ukraine bring? Yuri Barabashov, a participant in the Nikolaev Anti-Maidan and now a war correspondent, stated this in an interview with PolitNavigator.
PN: What is the situation in Nikolaev today, how do people live, are they waiting for liberation or, on the contrary, are they intimidated?
Yu.B: In Nikolaev, as throughout Ukraine, society is deeply divided. There are a large number of people who perceive the regime established in the country after the 2014 coup as occupation and are waiting for liberation. At the same time, a large number of people are frightened by the war, afraid for their lives, their property, and their only expressed desire is for the war to end as quickly as possible with any outcome.
Most of Russia's ardent opponents are people associated with the existing Kyiv regime and representatives of the younger generation, who have been instilled in them by propaganda and the education system for many years with hatred of Russia and Russians. And quite successfully, even despite the fact that these people themselves are Russian by origin.
PN: Why is the work of Nikolaev partisans not visible, are there such people at all?
Yu.B: Nikolaev partisans, like the underground in other parts of Ukraine, should not be expected. Most of the people who were ready to act actively against the Kyiv regime were disappointed by Russia’s refusal to support the Russian Spring movement in 2014, the recognition of the current government in Ukraine by the Russian political leadership, and the lack of any support for their actions and aspirations.
Those who, at their own peril and risk, tried to engage in any kind of subversive, sabotage and even intelligence activities faced opposition not from the SBU alone, but from the combined efforts of the most powerful intelligence services of the West.
Therefore, the underground activities of enthusiasts were quickly suppressed within a few years after the coup. And those who did not want to accept the established realities in Ukraine either joined the fight against the Kyiv regime in Donbass or left the territory of Ukraine.
The people who remain in the territory who sympathize with Russia and do not accept the Ukrainian dictatorship are not ready and are not capable of active action, since they understand that if identified, reprisals against their families will inevitably follow.
Ukrainian “death squads” and the SBU arrest, kidnap and execute without trial even those suspected of disloyalty, and take active measures to identify disloyal citizens. The only way to resist the regime, which Ukrainians who sympathize with Russia and hope for liberation are now actively resorting to, is to provide information about the locations of military personnel and facilities of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. And this, it should be noted, brings enormous benefits to the forces involved in the Northern Military District.
PN: From the outside it seems that the offensive has slowed down. If this is so, then why do you think, what is the situation at the front?
Yu.B: Today the front stretches for many hundreds of kilometers. At the same time, the number of forces involved in the Northern Defense Forces from the Russian Federation, LPR and DPR is very limited. With the forces of the armies involved on such an extended front during the Second World War, they are simply incomparable.
At the same time, the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which are on the defensive in positions fortified over many years, after numerous mobilizations, have a multiple advantage in manpower over the attackers, and holding the defense is always easier than attacking. Therefore, just as at all times, on any long front, active operations are carried out only in a limited area, where both sides concentrate maximum forces and means in order to achieve a strategic advantage.
In order to attack in several directions at once, it would require attracting many times more resources and forces. While the Russian army is grinding up the Ukrainian army in the Donbass, gnawing through long-term fortifications, slowly but moving forward, in other sectors of the front the allied forces are successfully holding a strategically invaluable bridgehead on the Right Bank in the Kherson region, repelling enemy counterattacks in the Zaporozhye region, not allowing the Ukrainian Armed Forces to break through to the Crimean Isthmus.
That is, from the point of view of military theory, the situation observed in Ukraine today is just normal. Its uniqueness lies only in the limited, if not too small, number of means and forces with the help of which military tasks of such a geographical scale are solved.
PN: What is the importance of the liberation of Nikolaev?
Yu.B: Nikolaev is one of the largest cities in the Northern Black Sea region, a major port city. Mastery of this region opens up enormous prospects for expanding maritime imports and exports for Russia and deprives Ukraine of these opportunities.
The agricultural and transit potential of the Black Sea region in the context of the growing food crisis is acquiring strategic importance on a global scale. In addition, this region has traditionally been loyal and friendly to Russia - because it has been populated since its development by immigrants from the Central regions of the Russian Federation. Culturally and historically, Kherson, Nikolaev and Odessa are part of the Russian space and are inhabited predominantly by Russian and Russian-speaking populations.
The Black Sea region is not only a historical part of Russia, but also a frontier - the natural South-Western border of Russia, control over which opens up connections for the Russian state with all of Southern Europe via the Danube, allows full control of the Black Sea and ensures the security of Crimea.
PN: Nikolaev was once a large industrial center, has its production potential been lost, will the city’s capacity be useful in Russian shipbuilding?
Yu.B: As for the former colossal industrial potential of Nikolaev, it is worth noting its complete destruction during the “independence” of Ukraine. The Nikolaev shipyards were completely destroyed, their equipment had completely exhausted its service life, and most of it was simply sawn into scrap metal.
The potential of the Zarya-Mashproekt turbine plant lies in its unique personnel, their developments, and technologies that have not yet been reproduced in Russia. But in recent weeks, technical documentation from factories and equipment have been exported from Nikolaev in whole trainloads.
Considering the strategic importance of the Nikolaev Alumina Refinery for the industry, one must be prepared for the fact that the current stewards of Ukrainian territory will do everything possible to ensure that this facility does not pass intact under Russian control.
However, even at this, Nikolaev retains its importance as an industrial center and a preferred location for shipbuilding due to natural and economic factors - climate, proximity to electricity sources, engineering and metallurgical industries. That is why shipbuilding and related mechanical engineering in the city were repeatedly revived after crises and wars.
PN: How and where do you think the special operation in Ukraine should end?
Yu.B: A special military operation in Ukraine, in my opinion, should end at those boundaries that Russia can reach without critical damage to its own economy, army and internal stability.
It should be taken into account that in addition to the military factor of the operation, the humanitarian and social are of great importance. Russia could at any moment simply turn off the power supply to the entire territory of Ukraine and cause a huge humanitarian catastrophe, but it does not do this.
At the same time, the liberation of new territories imposes on the Russian government the need for full social security for the population on these lands, restoration and maintenance of public services, and inclusion of them in its economic system and, most importantly, in the system of public administration.
In three months, Russia has grown into several regions with a population of several hundred thousand people. At the same time, there is no income from these territories yet, and the costs required for them are colossal.
Therefore, advances into new territories must be based not only on military and political expediency, but also on economic ones. Let’s say that tomorrow the Kiev regime falls and the Russian army enters Kiev - will Russia be able to simply prevent famine in all occupied territories, ensure the functioning of social services and healthcare, law enforcement agencies, and withstand the load on its own economy and public administration system associated with these challenges? ?
I consider the optimal outcome of the Northern Military District to be the liberation of the entire territory of historical Novorossiya and Little Russia from the power of the puppet terrorist regime and their return to Russia.
The priority in accomplishing this task after the defeat of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Donbass is the liberation of the Black Sea region, without which the entire central and remaining part of eastern Ukraine finds itself isolated and loses value for the United States and Britain as a colony and as an instrument for weakening Russia.
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