UKRAINE'S VICTORY IS COMING

Do you still think that we are “one nation”?

Do you still think that you can scare us, break us, make us make concessions?

You really did not understand anything?

Don't understand who we are?

What are we for?

What are we talking about?

Read my lips:

Without gas or without you?

Without you.

Without light or without you?

Without you.

Without water or without you?

Without you.

Without food or without you?

Without you.

Cold, hunger, darkness and thirst are not as scary and deadly for us as your “friendship and brotherhood.”

But history will put everything in its place.

And we will be with gas, light, water and food

and WITHOUT you!

President Volodomyr Zelenskiyy, September 11, 2022

It is a truism that what happens on the battlefield is rarely what decides a war. The planning and preparations beforehand determine the result of the fighting.

In a few days the Ukrainian armed forces have liberated about as much territory as Russia captured in a few months. In a matter of hours, Ukraine appears to have changed the whole complexion of the war.

This stunning advance was anything but sudden. It is the result of a patient military buildup, incredible operational security, and most important, the use of disinformation to divert some of the Russian army’s most powerful units from the planned battlefield. It ranks with the Allied disinformation campaign that after the Allied victory in North Africa convinced the Germans the next target in the Mediterranean would be Sardinia rather than the obvious Sicily. The overall planning by Ukraine worked well on so many levels it has produced one of the greatest military-strategy successes since 1945.

A week ago, all reports were that the most important engagement for Ukraine was the battle for Kherson. For months, President Zelensky, his senior aides, and other sources had publicly proclaimed the goal of liberating the politically and strategically important city and the Russian- controlled territory on the west bank of the Dnipro River.

What they said made sense militarily: Kherson was a much better place than Donbas or Kharkiv to engage the Russians, since the city is deeper into Ukraine and Russian supply lines depend on a few crossings over the Dnipro. If Ukrainian strategists wanted to keep wearing down the Russian army, they would rather deal with its most powerful parts in Kherson than the Donbas, which is much easier for Russia to protect by air. Stories circulated that the Ukrainians were being cautious in their plans because U.S. officials had dissuaded them from bolder maneuvers.

They backed up the public discussion by taking all the necessary preparatory steps, using the American-supplied HIMARS to destroy bridges, ammunition depots, and other targets up and down the Russian lines near Kherson, making clear that the Ukrainians would focus on this area.

Ukraine wrote the script, that Kherson was the highest priority, and Putin played his role perfectly, rushing forces to the area; in the process redeploying well-armed Russian units from the Russian- occupied Donbas.

Ukraine has been conscripting soldiers since Putin started this war, and now has an army larger than the Russian invasion force. Putin, meanwhile, is terrified of upsetting the Russian populace and has avoided conscription, deploying mercenaries and taking volunteers from prisons and mental hospitals. When Putin took the bait in Kherson, a shrinking Russian army moved forces away from the area that Ukraine wanted to attack and toward an area where Ukraine was waging a war of attrition.

The Ukrainians were easily able to break Russian lines, which were held by poorly motivated and trained forces. They have built up a substantial, fast-moving strike force. Without allowing details of their preparations to leak out, they seem to have created several specialized combat brigades with lighter, faster wheeled vehicles which give them a crucial mobility advantage over their enemy.

Thus, during the past six days, in one of history’s most remarkable military campaigns, Ukraine’s armed forces have broken through the Russian lines in the northeastern part of the country, swept eastward, and liberated town after town in what had been occupied territory. Ukrainian troops joke that they are running low on their supply of blue and yellow flags to raise in the liberated towns and villages.

First to fall was Balakliya, then Kupyansk, then Izium. To we in America, these names won’t mean much, but they are places that have been beyond reach for Ukrainians for months.

Now, Ukrainian forces are said to be fighting on the outskirts of Donetsk, a city Russia has occupied since 2014.

The biggest shock is Russia’s response. “What really surprises us,” Lieutenant General Yevhen Moisiuk, the deputy commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, said in Kyiv on Sunday, “is that the Russian troops are not fighting back.”

It’s more than that: Given a choice of fighting or fleeing, Russian soldiers appear to be escaping as fast as they can. Photographs of hastily abandoned military vehicles and equipment, as well as videos showing lines of cars, presumably belonging to collaborators, fleeing the occupied territories have flooded Ukrainian media over the weekend.

The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian soldiers were ditching their uniforms, donning civilian clothes, and trying to slip back into Russian territory. The Ukrainian security service has set up a hotline that Russian soldiers can call if they want to surrender, and it has also posted recordings of some of the calls.

The fundamental difference between Ukrainian soldiers, who are fighting for their country’s existence, and Russian soldiers, who are fighting for their salary, has finally begun to matter.

This - this! - this is what always makes a difference, whether it was Americans fighting British “Lobsterbacks” in our war of national liberation, or Vietnamese fighting Americans turned “Lobsterbacks” 200 years later. As a fellow Vietnam veteran once said, “We were fighting to stay alive and get home, and they were fighting for their country.”

Ukrainian soldiers may be better motivated, but the Russians - like the United States in Vietnam - still have far larger stores of weapons and ammunition.

They can still inflict misery on civilians, as in today’s attack on the electrical grid in Kharkiv and elsewhere in eastern Ukraine. The nuclear plant in Zaporizhzhia remains inside the battle zone.

The fighting may still take many turns, but a new reality has been created: Ukraine could win.

Back in March, a Ukrainian victory could be defined quite narrowly: Ukraine remains a sovereign democracy, with the right to choose its own leaders and make its own treaties.

On Sunday in Kyiv, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said that victory should now include not only a return to Ukraine’s borders as they were in 1991, including Crimea and Donbas, but also reparations to pay for rebuilding the country and war-crimes tribunals to give victims some sense of justice.

These demands are not in any sense outrageous or extreme.

Russian forces in occupied territories have tortured and murdered civilians, arrested and deported hundreds of thousands of people to Russia, destroyed theaters, museums, schools, hospitals. Missile strikes on Ukrainian cities far from the front line have killed civilians and cost billions in property damage.

It is difficult to imagine Russia meeting any of these demands so long as Vladimir Putin - who put the destruction of Ukraine at the center of his foreign and domestic policies and at the heart of what he calls his legacy - remains alive.

When Russian elites finally realize Putin’s imperial project - his restoration of the USSR - was not just a failure for him personally but also a moral, political, and economic disaster for the entire country, themselves included, his claim to be the legitimate ruler of Russia melts away.

Whatever happens will be difficult. There is no mechanism for succession. We have no idea who would or could replace Putin, or any idea who would or could choose that person. Putin has refused even to allow Russians to contemplate an alternative to him and his juvenile delinquent’s seedy and corrupt brand of kleptocratic power.

The West has no tools that can affect the course of events in the Kremlin; any attempt to intervene would assuredly backfire.

Russian soldiers are running away, ditching their equipment, asking to surrender. How long until the men in Putin’s inner circle do the same? What happens when a gangster state implodes?

In their hasty retreat, presented by Russia’s Defense Ministry as a “regroup,” the Russians abandoned tanks, armored vehicles and ammunition that Ukraine plans to refashion and use on the battlefield. Military analysts said the equipment losses could be a significant blow to Russia — and that Ukraine will use its recent success to lobby for even more security assistance. The West must provide it.

“We have learned not to be scared,” Reznikov told his Kyiv audience on Saturday. “Now we ask the rest of you not to be scared too.”

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