Frank Ledwidge
A friend of mine, usually an intensely optimistic pro-Ukraine analyst, returned from Ukraine last week and told me: “It’s like the German Army in January 1945.”
The Ukrainians are being driven back on all fronts – including in the Kursk province of Russia, which they had opened with much hope and fanfare in August. More importantly, they are running out of soldiers.
For most of 2024, Ukraine has been losing ground. This week, the town of Selidove in the western Donetsk region is being surrounded and, like Vuhledar earlier this month, is likely to fall in the next week or so – the only variable being how many Ukrainians will be lost in the process. Over the winter, the terrible prospect of a major battle to hold the strategically significant industrial town of Pokrovsk beckons.
Ultimately, this is not a war of territory but of attrition. The only resource that counts is soldiers – and here the calculus for Ukraine is not positive.
Ukraine claims to have “liquidated” nearly 700,000 Russian soldiers – with more than 120,000 killed and upwards of 500,000 injured. Its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, admitted in February this year to 31,000 Ukrainian fatalities, with no figure given for injured.
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