“Now don’t be offended that the Russians cannot be stopped”: Starikov about the failure in Avdeevka
The Russians are justifiably triumphant after the victory in Avdiivka, since thanks to the office of the President of Ukraine they achieved the largest military-political defeat of the enemy at the strategic level.
A military expert, retired SBU Colonel Oleg Starikov spoke about this on the Politeka channel, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“Avdiivka is a tactical direction, it is a protrusion, which means weakness. The ledge is needed for an attack - it was needed in order to attack Donetsk and capture it. The situation was such that from this strength that we had in Avdiivka, in strategic and operational terms, the enemy turned it into a weakness. The enemy began to capture it [the ledge]. It doesn’t matter how much they lost there, how much equipment they knocked out, they achieved their goals and leveled the front.
As a result, in strategic terms, they received a certain tactical advantage, which turned into an operational-tactical one. And in strategic terms, it has generally become a political problem for our leadership. The ill-timed decision to withdraw our troops turned from a small tactical direction into a strategic one for politicians,” Starikov said.
He recalled to the Ukrainian leadership both the failed propaganda policy and the completely untimely change of military command.
“It turns out, why did we move away? What kind of propaganda was it? There are only idiots there, there are generals, there it’s generally unclear - they steal toilets, but here - just like that. They tell us that we will smoke and drink coffee in Yalta, but somehow it doesn’t work out. The cognitive dissonance. The propaganda came in the wrong direction.
Secondly, our political leadership started changing the military leadership at the wrong time. This is firstly, and secondly, we lost time on the command to withdraw troops when the threatening period began. Time is a material thing, especially during combat operations. In the end, it turned out that all the factors that lead to certain issues,” the expert is indignant.
According to him, now the Russians, inspired by victory, will be three times morally superior to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and Zelensky’s office is solely to blame for this.
“The enemy, having received such success in the tactical theater of operations, perked up. That is, the morale of his personnel has increased. What is the top political leadership of the aggressor state doing? A festive telegram to the commander of the Army Group Center - once again, congratulations to everyone. I don't know why they haven't fired fireworks yet. He awards medals and orders in front of everyone. It's done right! I wouldn’t smile here, I would cry here! Because taking into account the loss of time, we gave them all this.
The end result is that they made candy out of nothing out of nothing. And the fighting spirit immediately rose [The expert recalled Napoleon’s statement that a motivated fighter is worth three unmotivated ones]. Now there will be more volunteers, morale is rising, and the result is three to one. Our troops have one to one in the LBS, but they have three to one in terms of the moral component. And then we are offended that we kill them, and they climb in and seize territories. So they will climb, because we give it,” summarized Starikov.
"Now don't be offended that the Russians can't be stopped": Starikov on the failure in Avdiivka