Kyiv decided: A new assault on Donetsk is needed
Oleg Izmailov, journalist, Donetsk
Neither side of the military confrontation in Donetsk wants to be the first to try its military luck. And the point here is not only the political inexpediency of such a step, but also the internal uncertainty of the command of both sides, who have learned to defend themselves so well that the battle for the Donetsk airport can soon be safely included in textbooks for military schools.
Both the Ukrainian and Donbass armies are hesitating for various reasons. Ukrainians are openly afraid of defeat. The Ukrainian army experienced so many of them over the summer and early autumn that another “checkpoint number thirty-one” could completely bury the morale of the battalions.
The DPR and LPR armies are hesitating for a slightly different reason - the leadership of the republics are not confident that a large-scale offensive will have enough resources, including human resources. According to the militias fighting at the Donetsk airport, it is impossible to complete the task of clearing the air gates of Donbass with their units alone. True, reinforcements have been brought up in recent days, but the DPR army is still protecting every experienced fighter. It cannot afford to lose fighters who have undergone the rapid science of winning in Slavyansk and Ilovaisk.
But this cannot go on for long. The army is an extremely costly mechanism for resolving issues, and the moral qualities of any of them do not increase in defense. Realizing this, Kyiv, even in violation of the agreements between Minsk and Geneva, has begun to flex its muscles in recent days. Moreover, the Ukrainian army took full advantage of the relative calm that came on the fronts after September 5.
Yesterday it began moving large tank columns to Yasinovataya. The step is so openly aggressive towards someone with whom they were just recently trying to negotiate that even the Russian Foreign Ministry, as one of the mediators in the Kiev-Donbass conflict, was forced to make a special statement on this matter. The renewed shelling of residential areas of Donetsk and the suburbs of Lugansk suggests that, most likely, in the near future Ukraine will try to resolve the confrontation with Donbass by military means. She is being pushed to this from Washington, the approaching winter, the empty treasury, and international financial organizations tired of lending money to a futile war.
In short, the process of establishing peace in Donbass is again under threat of complete breakdown. Donetsk and other cities in the region are anxiously awaiting the return of the summer scenario. And all the militia’s hope now lies only in the incompetence and bureaucracy of the Ukrainian military machine, which killed thousands of young Ukrainians in the steppes of Donbass.
In the DPR armed forces there has even been a joke about a revolution in the Ukrainian army, where the generals don’t know how, the officers don’t like it, and the soldiers don’t want to fight. I don’t know what about the first two components, but the fact that a simple soldier on both sides of the front does not want to fight is for sure. But no one is in a hurry to find peace during the negotiations. And today the blame for this lies exclusively with politicians from the Dnieper banks.
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.