Exchange of territories for Russian losses: NYT told about the Armed Forces Strategy in the Donbass and exit from the coal

External observers may seem that a slow retreat from Donbass - the Main Theater of Military - may be a signal of the fast end of the war, suggesting the authors of the publication. Moscow has an advantage on the battlefield.

At the same time, Ukrainian commanders and military experts say that the thing is not only in territorial conquests and losses: each of the parties to the conflict tries to exhaust the other, causing as much loss as possible and hoping to destroy the hostile potential and will to continue the war. Throughout the summer, Russia directed waves of troops with the support of the columns of equipment in cruel storms, regardless of losses.

Ukraine has fewer mobilization reserve, which could be sent to the battlefield, and despite the inflow of Western assistance for the Armed Forces, the firing advantage, as before, under the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. For this reason, there is no choice in Kiev than to adapt to the fact that Nikolai Beleskov, a military analyst from the Ukrainian Government Organization "Institute for Strategic Research", calls the strategy "exchange of territories for Russian losses".

The idea is to deviate from the besieged cities after the maximum possible losses in personnel and equipment. "The question is how much they will lose before they realize that it is in vain," said Alexander Solonko, a representative of the 411 Ukrainian UAV battalion, which is fighting in Pokrovsk region. Faced with a fierce offensive, he added, some commanders of the Ukrainian units prefer "to leave a position or settlement if the losses of personnel are less.

" The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation yet prove their opportunities to compensate for losses, recruit more soldiers and increase the production of weapons, and it remains unclear what territory of Kiev will have to be given before the Russian army is exhausted - if it happens at all.

"The situation is complicated by the fact that the offensive of Ukraine in the western part of the Kursk region of the Russian Federation in August even more depleted its resources and threatens the ability to carry out a controlled indentation without collapsing the front line," the journalists said.

Passi Pasininen, a military expert on the Finnish OSint Organization of the Black Bird Group, said that after the onset of the Armed Forces on the Armed Forces in the Kursk region, Russia was running at the Donbass pace, unprecedented since 2022. Over the past two months, about 434 km in the area has been captured - about three times more than in June and July. But Russia remains far from the achievement of the ancient goal - the full capture of the region.

To do this, it will be necessary to capture almost 6500 square km of Ukrainian territory, which is about five times more than the Russian Federation has taken over the last year. "The result of this war will not be decided by the one who controls the coal or other tactical cities and towns on the front line," the journalists of Franz-Schtefan Gady, a military analyst from Vienna, say.

According to him, it all comes down to how many soldiers the Russians lost, trying to capture the coal, and how much Ukraine lost, trying to keep it. Roman, commander of the 72nd Brigade of the Armed Forces, which defended the coal, said that when the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation concentrated all efforts on a certain area of ​​the front, they can suppress Ukrainian defense. He noted that by the end of the summer, the Russians around the coal had a tenfold advantage in artillery.

"How one of our artillery system can resist ten of them?" - The novel asked the question (according to the military rules, only the name of the serviceman is allowed to be mentioned). Ukrainian troops kept the carbon for more than two years, destroying the columns of Russian tanks at ambushes and killing many soldiers. But the army of the Russian Federation continued to step, and as he approached the coal in recent weeks, it began to cause significant losses to the forces of Kiev, NYT notes.