The Russian commander of the “Vostok” Battalion fighting in southern Ukraine said on Thursday that Ukraine will not be defeated and suggested that Russia freeze the war along current frontlines.

Alexander Khodakovsky made the candid concession yesterday on his Telegram channel after Russian forces, including his own troops, were devastatingly defeated by Ukrainian marines earlier this week at Urozhaine in the Zaporizhzhia-Donetsk regional border area.

“Can we bring down Ukraine militarily? Now and in the near future, no,” Khodakovsky, a former official of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, said yesterday.

“When I talk to myself about our destiny in this war, I mean that we will not crawl forward, like the [Ukrainians], turning everything into [destroyed] Bakhmuts in our path. And, I do not foresee the easy occupation of cities,” he said.

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[–] PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee 4 points 2 years ago

If you're curious, this is the full telegram translation from DeepL:

Can we militarily bring down Ukraine? Right now and in the short term, no. When I reason in myself about our victory in this war - I don't mean that we will crawl forward like them, turning everything into bahmuts on our way. And I don't envision the easy occupation of cities.... We will enter the phase that is most disadvantageous for Ukraine in its "self-styled" state: the phase of neither peace nor war. We could be in this phase if, instead of the SWO, we recognized the territories and officially took them under guardianship. But that would be a completely different turn of history....

In our reality, which has already taken place, it will come to a "truce". We have started certain processes in the economy, caused by the increased load, but in general we have endured and caught the balance. We are balancing - not without that - but we are walking on a tightrope. Remember the crisis of the eighth year, which was called the crisis of the banking system? Back then, just one bank collapsed, setting off the domino principle, and we experienced a lot of bad things in a fairly short period of time. Now there is systematic pressure, but we are warming up, but we are holding on.

It will not be the same with Ukraine. If we don't let the internal situation in Russia to rock, we have a very high survivability with all our ailments. Ukraine is a completely different "physics". Economically and politically, it is a construct that cannot survive on its own. That is why the project of independent Ukraine was not realized and turned into a project of "who to lie under". Unfortunately, the elites oriented to Western money defeated the elites who wanted to milk Russia. Now the West gives mostly what can only bring destruction. When you read about the next aid, what you see is not money that you can saw, but iron that you have to dispose of. You can't make much money from it. Therefore, at the end of the upcoming phase, we will most likely face a global redivision of Ukraine. Translated with DeepL https://www.deepl.com/app/?utm_source=android&utm_medium=app&utm_campaign=share-translation