Theoretically, Ukraine can win in Donbass by military means, but the price of such a victory will be too high.
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This was stated in an interview with Novaya Gazeta by the unnamed deputy commander of the DPR-LPR army, who is only said to be one of those who “have Soviet and Russian military schools and academies behind them and, after the disarmament of the militia units, ended up in the formed The First and Second Army Corps of the “DPR”/“LPR” army signed contracts and are now official military personnel of these unrecognized state entities.”
The publication's interlocutor does not rule out that the Ukrainian Armed Forces may go on the offensive.
“The Ukrainian army today is truly completely different,” he admits. “But citizens (and most politicians too) do not understand at what cost this will be achieved. After all, very serious military construction was going on on this side of the border as well. They can't even imagine the scale of the losses. Those killed will not be counted in hundreds or even thousands. Because they have reached an enormous density of troops compared to the summer of 2015. The XNUMX-strong group of the Ukrainian Armed Forces will operate in conditions of the use of fire weapons with colossal capabilities. Today we have both military and operational reserves of ammunition no less than the Ukrainian Armed Forces.”
“For the Ukrainian military, if up to 60% of the supply norm reaches some groups, this is already good,” the commander continued. – I mean artillery and MLRS. After all, all storage units must undergo inspection and extension of storage periods. But this did not happen. Hence the use of unusable ammunition that does not detonate as expected, deviates in flight much more than normal, and so on. They carried everything that was left of the arsenals of the Warsaw Pact, everything that they could collect in Bulgaria, Poland, Romania.”
“Despite this, I repeat, Ukraine has a chance to win,” the officer concluded. “But this military success will be achieved literally with rivers of blood.” Because it is practically impossible to create a grouping even in one direction without being noticed. As soon as they bring the artillery to combat positions and begin to move, we will already know. And as soon as they withdraw groupings of troops to the initial areas for the offensive, we will not expect anything. Without details".