© Aleutie/iStockThe Herd
Propaganda and outright disinformation continue to masquerade as 'Russia analysis' across the West and Ukraine. This is proving fatal for Western policy and the survival of the Ukrainian state. For example, in summer 2023 Michael McFaul tweeted "Ukraine is winning". Now: "Russia is not 'winning' in Ukraine. In the last year, Putin has sent to be slaughtered tens of thousands of Russian soldiers and tons of equipment all to take 2 villages. Ukraine is enduring losses too, but Russia is not achieving major victories". McFaul's
claim that over the last year Russia has taken only "2 villages" is a bald-faced lie or the product of unbounded ignorance.
McFaul here is calling Bakhmut and Avdeevka 'villages'. These have been the loci of Russia's two most important offensive victories over that last year; its most important defensive victory was the defeat of Ukraine's summer 2023 counteroffensive —
an endeavour doomed from the start precisely because of the inaccuracies and falsehoods being purveyed as military, political, and economic strategic analysis in the West. Bakhmut, for example, had a pre-war population of 76,000, and the latter — 32,000. These population sizes are not those of villages but of small towns, as any third-grader would know. Moreover, Bakhmut was an important transport hub, in particular for moving troops between north and south Donbass and eastern Ukraine, and Avdeevka was the most powerful Ukrainian stronghold in Donbass and eastern Ukraine, reinforced for over eight years since the Donbass civil war began. It was a key centre for ultranationalist and neofascist Ukrainian units, which routinely fired on civilian centres in pro-Russian Donetsk. Its fall opens the way for a Russian march to the Dnepr River over the next year or so. Villages never have such strategic significance.
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