The Duran Podcast - Kharkov blackout. Russian military stretching the front lines

Episode Date: April 12, 2024

Kharkov blackout. Russian military stretching the front lines

All right, Alexander, let's do an update on what is happening in Ukraine. Let's start with the military situation. What is going on the front lines? And also, what is, what's going to happen in Hartgolf? I'm hearing talk about an evacuation now. What's the situation there? Well, I think we're now entering that stage of the war when it is not only becoming increasingly clear to more and more people, that Ukraine is losing, but it's also becoming increasingly clear to more and more people

that Ukraine is losing big. And, you know, it's not just a question of fighting for, you know, the old village here and there. That isn't unimportant, by the way. But whole big cities like Kharkov are now at risk and might at some point over the next couple of months be captured by the Russians as well. Now, let's go back to a point that we made in a couple of programs ago. Lots of rumours about a huge Russian offensive being prepared in the summer. We don't know. You and I don't know that that is going to happen. Trying to second-guess whatever it is that the Russians are going to do is very difficult to do, and people shouldn't really indulge in it to the extent that they do. But, Kharkov, Ukraine's second.

biggest city. The Russians have systematically destroyed all the energy generating plants around Kharqv. As we make this program, Kharqqv again without electric power. The city is dark. The metro system isn't working. The factories obviously can't work. And Kharqqa was a major industrial center for Ukraine. It was a key industrial center for Ukraine. and of course conditions of life becoming intolerable and more people leaving the city. And if the Russians do have a plan to capture Kharkov, then this is exactly the sort of thing that you would expect them to do. Cut off power supplies, cut off internet, which apparently is also, to all intents and purposes, ended in Kharkov. gradually isolate the city, force out its civilian population.

All of that makes the city far more difficult to defend. It makes it much more easy for the Russians if they choose to bomb Ukrainian positions inside Kharkov itself because there are no civilians there. So you could say that these events connected to Harkov. Harkov are a strong sign that they're not proof that at some point over the next few months, a Russian offensive against Kharkov is going to happen. If Harkov is captured by the Russians, by the way, that is going to be a massive event. There's been lots of attempts by all sorts of people to try to downplay that, to say that Ukraine

can survive without Harkov. Well, yes, it can. but it will be a very, very severely diminished Ukraine. It will be the loss of a city that is Ukraine's second biggest city, but one which is almost as big as Kiev itself. It'll be a loss of a massive industrial center. It will be a loss of a city that is historically Russian, just saying, I mean, the people there speak Russian.

It won't be coming back. So, you know, and the other thing, is if Ukraine loses Kharkov, then other cities like Poltava further west and Sumi and Charnikov further north, also big cities, or big towns, start to look extremely vulnerable as well.

Poltava specifically, I can't really see how it can be defendable if Kharkov were lost. So just saying, you know, this is, if this happens, it's a huge event, I don't know necessarily that this is. the Russians would need to deploy at least maybe 100,000 men to capture Kharkov, perhaps more than that.

Maybe that is what they will do. They do have that number of troops apparently available to carry out that kind of siege. Maybe that's their plan. As I said, if it is their plan, then they're taking the steps that one would expect them to take in order to execute. you do. And other areas on the front line? Chasoviar, of course. A lot of talk about Chasoviar. And the other day, there was talk about a Russian, well, you get mixed, mixed reports. Russia advancing in an area known as tyranny and then retreating and then advancing. Do you know what's going on in that area

as well? Right. Yeah. Well, first of all, I think, right, I think the first thing to say is that there is the major focus of current military operations is central Donbass and this has been true ever since October. The Russians have launched attacks in other places in Zaporosia region around Rabatina, remember that, they launched attack towards this village of Terni they had seemed at one point to be advancing towards Kupians

my own feeling about these attacks now is that these were what the Russians call pinning operations. In other words, the Russians launched these attacks, not specifically in order to achieve breakthroughs there, but in order to force Ukraine to stretch out its front lines, keep large numbers of troops away from the central area of Dombas where the big fighting is taking place and to keep the Ukrainians from building up resorts.

in the rear and reinforcing in those places which the Russians really want to attack. Now, again, I'm not a military historian of any sort, and I'm not a military expert of any kind, and I want to repeat that. But I've been reading, I've been reading books by Jacques Boer and David Gantz and others, and it seems that this is very much the style of which the Russians conduct military operations, They like to stretch the front lines. The first time they did this in a proper way, actually, was during the First World War,

an offensive that was associated with the Russian general who organized it, was a man called Brzeelov. And he attacked along a very, very extended line and stretched the German-Austrian line to breaking point. So the other side became weak in the places that really mattered, and he was able to smash through. And the Boney was one of the most successful offensives of the First World War and one of the least known.

So, I mean, this is very much from style. So I think what happened internally is that the Russians, for many weeks, slowly, gradually moved more and more closer and closer to this village on the Gerevetz River. This is west of Lehman, which is, you know, leads you to Slaviansk and all of these places. The Ukrainians became very, very, very nervous about this. They redeployed large numbers of units from all sorts of places, like the 71st Yeager Brigade, for example, which had been previously deployed to Avdewka, was redeployed to Terni.

And then the Russians stopped. And they got close to Terni. They got all of these huge numbers of Ukrainian troops there. There's fighting still going on backwards and forwards. Sometimes the Russians advance. Sometimes the Ukrainians counterattack. But the key point is for the Russians that there are large numbers of Ukrainian troops. Now, in Terni, defending this village on a river, far away from the key lines, the key position.

which are in central Donbass and I think that is what the Russians want. I think that is the Russian plan. So yes, there was an armoured advance, the Ukrainians attack with FB drones, there's all sorts of pictures, all sorts of claims by Ukraine which we should be very

careful, by the way, to accept, before we accept them about dozens of Russian armoured vehicles destroyed. But I think, as I said, from the Russian point of view, the main purpose of this was, as I said, to keep the Ukrainians over committed to defending this particular small village,

which perhaps one day the Russians will want to capture and which could have strategic significance eventually, but which is not where the main fighting is taking place. And just to come back to what you were saying, the main fighting is taking place elsewhere. In Jasifya, in Avdewka, near Bachmut, near all of these places where in central Dombas, where the Russians are breaking through. And I think this is, again, an important thing to understand.

The town of Chassefjah, west of Bahmut, heavily fortified by the Ukrainians, on a hill, apparently, another railway and logistical hub was supposed to take a very long time before the Russians were able to attack it. They did attack it. They broke in several days ago, the village to the north east of Chasofyar Bogdanovka apparently captured now. The Russians capturing the eastern suburb of Chasofiard

east of this canal that is there, but most people now accept that this canal is not an important obstacle. It increasingly looks like the Russians are working to capture Chasovya. And the Russian Air Force is very active and they're bombing Chasovya and Ukrainian positions there every day and every hour almost. And Russian paratroopers are advancing and all kinds of other Russian troops are advancing. And that situation there in Chassehya is now perhaps the one that is attracting the most attention. But west of Avdewka, the fighting is also very intense. Russians apparently very close to capturing another town called Pervomaiski, which is about the same size as Abderivka, by the way.

That, it seems, is about to fall. The Russians on the brink of capturing two other important, small towns to the west of Avdavka, Yombolevka, and Uzmansky, I'm probably getting the name wrong. Anyway, the Russians continuing to advance there, and the Ukrainians suffering terrible losses in all of these places. It's in central Dombas at the moment where the big fighting is happening, and the Russians are breaking through.

Okay, a final question. What about the ammo situation and the, Patriot air defense situation. As Olensky came out with a statement the other day and he said that Ukraine needs 25 Patriot air defense systems. So we actually put a number on it. Yes. What's going on there? Yes. I mean, what has happened and I mean this comes back to the air defense situation right across Ukraine. It's now quite clear that the air defense situation is critical. The air defense system has to all intents and purposes collapsed. I even read a report somewhere

that the Ukrainians no longer try even to shoot down Russian missiles. They just don't have enough missiles, air defense missiles to do that. They occasionally tried to shoot down drones, which seems waste, actually, but the air defense system is in a terrible situation. And that means that the Russians can hear

any place they want in Ukraine. and they're doing this on an ever-escalating scale. It means that they can attack factories and industrial facilities. They can attack warehouses, ammunition dumps. They can attack the energy system. And they're doing that every single day. So Zelensky does what he always does in these situations. He says, I need help.

I need you to supply more patriots. The Patriot missile has not been a great success in Ukraine. The Russians have already destroyed between five and seven launches, depending on how you count them. It's not been a great success in Ukraine. The Patriot system is not able to intercept Russian hypersonic missiles. It certainly can't intercept these new hypersonic cruise missiles that circled missiles that the Russians are using. But, you know, that never deters Zelensky. He comes along.

He demands 25. batteries, 25, sorry, 25 brigades of Patriot missiles. That would be about 150 batteries, apparently. And that's about double the number of batteries of Patriot systems that exists in the world. So, I mean, he's asking for something that is impossible. Now, whether he knows this himself, I really don't know. But the fact is that Patriots are not going to be supplied. to him. In those kind of numbers, it's again Zelensky looking at a desperate situation

and coming up with something equally desperate. With artillery and shells, well, we're getting a of reports in the media, the public media, about how desperate the shell situation is, that Ukraine is desperately short of shells. There's even a report somewhere that things are so bad that they're having to send teams of people into the swamps and bogs and the rivers to find unexploded shells so they can reuse them. That does seem a most extraordinary situation. but all the reports suggest that there aren't many shells being used. Now, I got a private email with someone who suggested, I think you probably received it as well,

that Ukraine might actually have received rather more shells from the West than we've been hearing about. And these are presumably the shells that President Pavel of the Czech Republic has been finding places like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, all sorts of other places. I don't entirely know what to make of that claim, by the way, because I said it is not supported by the situation on the ground. The shell shortage still looks terrible.

And this same source provided production numbers and estimates of the number of shells that the West might optimistically be able to supply on a monthly basis to Ukraine next year. And it is still far less than what the Russians are using on any particular day. So, I mean, in any particular month, I'm sorry. So, I mean, the disproportion between the Russians and the Ukrainians is growing. And again, there doesn't seem to be anything much that the Western powers can do. There is something else, and that is that it's not been widely commented upon, but the Russians, over the last few weeks, but especially over the last few days, have been systematically destroying Ukraine's artillery systems.

Every single day. Now, they hunt and destroy Ukrainian artillery systems. as the Ukrainians have been pushed back in central Dombas from the sort of fortified areas. They're having to relocate their artillery in the fields, the open fields. That makes them very vulnerable to Russian artillery strikes. And every day now you read about roughly a dozen Ukrainian artillery pieces being destroyed. and Ukraine didn't have that many to start with. So it's also become clear that they're running short of artillery pieces. And this unequivocally, the West is not in a position to replace

because production of artillery pieces in the West is basically at a standstill. And it is very slow. I read somewhere that it takes 15 months, 15 months for France to make a single Caesar Howitzer, for example. Yeah, yeah, all right. The Duran. Notlocals.com. We are on Rumble Odyssey.

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