The high-explosive effect of “Azovstal” is spreading across Ukraine
In the material of the RUSSTRAT Institute, published a little less than a month ago, analysing the informational support of the fighting by the Ukrainian side, it was concluded that the presented picture of "victory" is falling apart, as a result of which Ukrainian society is at breaking point.
On May 20, a significant event took place – the last Ukrainian servicemen surrendered at the “Azovstal” plant. Many still do not realise the significance of this fact in Russia's special military operation. No matter how hard the Ukrainian authorities try to mitigate the effect of the surrender of their most motivated units, the informational echo of this event is reflected on the fronts.
On April 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an end to the assault on the last stronghold of the Ukrainian military forces at the “Azovstal” plant, the backbone of which was the “Azov” battalion. On May 20, the last Ukrainian soldiers who voluntarily surrendered left “Azovstal”, including this very elite of nationalist units of Ukraine from “Azov”.
Of course, this was preceded by a huge amount of work. In the minds of many, this work is limited to blocking “Azovstal” and "squeezing" the enemy using artillery and the aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Forces. However, the work of employees of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Armed Forces of Russia, as was reported by correspondents from the scene, remained unnoticed for most of them – a month before the exit of the "encircled", they established confidential contact with part of the military elite of the defenders at the plant.
The war correspondent Aleksandr Sladkov mentioned that the current People's Deputy of Ukraine Aleksandr Kovalev, who, having the authority of an Afghanistan veteran, was a mediator in the negotiation process, while being directly present at the location of the Russian Armed Forces, took part in the negotiations.
This may seem like an unimportant episode of the capture of 2,439 people, but it completely breaks the narrative of Ukrainian propaganda about "Russian inhumans" who came to kill all Ukrainians and, accordingly, it is useless to negotiate with them.
Thanks to these negotiations, the nationalist elite of Ukraine, which was repeatedly cited as a role model by Ukrainian propagandists of neo-nazism, surrendered. Those who promised to fight to the last drop of blood and called traitors other soldiers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces from the Ilyich factory, who had previously voluntarily gave themselves up, themselves surrendered. The mythical image of Ukrainian nationalists as ultra-patriots was destroyed – they chose life, not death, for Ukraine.
Ukrainian society, of course, was not prepared for such a development of events, and therefore President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky presented the incident as a special operation of Ukrainian intelligence to evacuate military personnel to save their lives. However, he devoted only a few minutes to this incident in his speeches, which clearly contrasts with the PR campaign that was launched not only in the Ukrainian, but also in the world media in order to save the "encircled" people at “Azovstal”.
Despite the fact that the Ukrainian media tried to "silence" the story of those who surrendered, focusing only on the fact that later they will be exchanged, like all prisoners, but the active servicemen of the Ukrainian Armed Forces understood everything perfectly and projected the situation on themselves.
The "encircled" residents of “Azovstal” were "fed" for a long time with promises of deblocking and evacuation, and then used for propaganda purposes, not giving them permission to surrender until Victory Day on May 9 and the end of the Eurovision Song Contest on May 14, while Ukrainian soldiers died in agony from their wounds in the basements (on May 31 alone the bodies of 152 people were discovered, mined by militants before being taken prisoner). The Ukrainian leadership named an evacuation and deblocking the sending of soldiers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to the pre-trial detention centres of the DPR and Russia, where persons who have committed war crimes await criminal punishment, up to capital punishment (in the DPR).
It can be considered a coincidence, but around the time when the “Azov” militants surrounded at the plant first came out with a white flag for face-to-face negotiations with the Russian military, a draft of law No. 7351 on amendments to the military charter was registered in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, which gave Ukrainian officers the right to kill military personnel who violate laws, regulations, orders, or leaving their places of deployment.
On May 17, the day after the first "encircled" soldiers at “Azovstal” were captured, this bill was approved by the Verkhovna Rada committee and its text was published for public access. The Ukrainian public immediately objected to the fact that military personnel could be shot without trial, and some guessed that in critical situations, Ukrainian soldiers might begin to get rid of officers with such powers. On May 24, after a wave of indignation, this bill was withdrawn, but the problem remained.
The Ukrainian leadership, which many praise for being savvy in the war on the informational front, made a huge mistake when it formulated the surrender of servicemen at “Azovstal” as a way to save their lives. The caveat that they allegedly fulfilled their task of deterring the Russian army did not stick in the minds of Ukrainians, since the effect of the military locked in the bunker was not obvious.
On May 22, in the area of Kamyshevakha, the career officer of the 24th brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Yury Zakopets, who had previously even spoken in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, voluntarily surrendered along with seven subordinates. He justified his action with the same thesis that by doing so, he saved the lives of his fighters.
On May 24, UAF units retreated from the 11,000-strong city of Svetlodarsk, which was threatened with encirclement, and the Russian army managed to occupy Svetlodarsk without devastating urban battles. However, this is not just the capture of the city, the "Svetlodarsk Arc" is a whole fortified area of the Ukrainian army, which was prepared for 8 years. In the current situation, it will be more and more difficult for the UAF command to ensure the fulfilment of combat tasks by units that are under threat of encirclement, because the lives of soldiers are more important.
The fact that the surrender of “Azovstal” was one of the turning points can be traced back to the statements of the Ukrainian leadership, whose victorious reports have changed a lot. Commenting on the petition calling for allowing male citizens of Ukraine aged 18 to 60 to leave the country freely, Zelensky said that he was not ready to consider it while the country is losing from 50 to 100 fighters a day.
Russia is preparing for a long war, said the speaker of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine Aleksandr Motuzyanik on the air of the Ukrainian telethon. "Of course, in some separate areas, Russian groups have temporary tactical success and, in principle, this is not a secret. But the fact that Ukrainian troops are retreating there is a completely wrong interpretation of these actions,” said Motuzyanik.
This is in stark contrast to the earlier statements of Aleksey Arestovich, an adviser to the Ukrainian president, who repeatedly promised that the Russian army would run out of steam and the fighting would end in a few weeks. Ukrainians themselves have already begun to ridicule him for this
Now Arestovich explains that the Ukrainian Armed Forces lost to the Russian army in terms of the pace of hostilities. In addition, this is happening "against the background of a very strong split in Ukrainian society, caused by war fatigue and a lot of pretensions to each other. People began to concretely break away from each other, concretely make hysterical accusations... And let's imagine that the fall of Severodonetsk, the encirclement of our grouping, is superimposed on this. What will start in our society?" Arestovich asked.
In his opinion, this situation will last for a month and a half, until the Ukrainian troops receive Western weapons. "In the meantime, the situation at the front will get worse. Possible encirclements, abandonment of settlements, and heavy losses... We await a very difficult month of depression, sometimes reaching panic, mutual heavy accusations, traditional Ukrainian shit, which some forces will try to translate into political capital,” Arestovich explained the situation.
In another interview, he even unexpectedly praised the Russian military for their operation to capture Krasny Liman, but suggested that during the offensive, Russian troops will lose a significant part of the military personnel, and, having received Western weapons, the UAF will be able to launch a counter-offensive.
"The situation at the front is terrible for us... So far, the rate of causing losses to us exceeds our ability to stop them and apply retaliatory losses. And the question arises for the West in general: What do you want? Do you intend for us to win or not?.. Do you still need us? Or is that all? Have you changed your mind? I'm very curious if the West will pass this exam,” said Arestovich, being pensive.
For such a presentation of information, the mayor of Dnepr Boris Filatov called the official speaker of the office of the Ukrainian president Arestovich "an untranslatable play on words", and the previously conducted informational policy from “victory” a policy designed for morons. Many Ukrainian experts note that the victorious information agenda that is served during a single telethon is very different from the one that happens on Ukrainian social networks.
It should be noted that Arestovich's confessions about the difficult situation of the Ukrainian Armed Forces are largely forced. There are too many videos of military personnel themselves who report that they left their positions due to the fact that they have no communication, ammunition, food, or were abandoned by their commanders. Some cite as an example the fact that their units are armed with "Maksim" machine guns of the First World War and “Degtyarev" from the Second World War.
At the same time, there were video testimonies of how UAF servicemen challenge the orders of a senior officer using profanity, and directly refuse to continue fighting. Most often in such videos from Donbass there are territorial defence units from the western regions of Ukraine - Zhytomyr, Lvov, Transcarpathian regions, as they expected to be located only on their own territory.
Soldiers of the 115th territorial defence brigade from Zhytomyr, after recording a video with complaints about their leadership, ended up in pre-trial detention centre No. 6 in Bakhmut, where they are charged with desertion with a sentence of 15 years. Relatives of the accused turned to television and even sent a delegation to Kiev with a request to release their loved ones.
To stop this situation, Ukrainian journalist Yury Butusov published a video with other soldiers of the 115th brigade, where they report that they are provided with everything necessary and are ready to perform combat tasks, and those who recorded the video with complaints about the command are simply deserters.
Butusov himself, after pointing out the possibility of encircling the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Lisichansk and Severodonetsk and criticising the "thoughtless practice of sending people to the front without minimal training”, was obstructed by deputies of the ruling party. As a result, he was banned from visiting the front line, and in response, he reported about the provocation of a split in Ukrainian society and threatened to publish mistakes and inaction on the part of the Ukrainian leadership, which has not come out of the bunker for three months.
Here we should recall the words of Arestovich about a possible split in Ukrainian society and the search for the guilty, as we see, this fact already takes place. Butusov, being in the team of the previous president Petro Poroshenko, always carried out a Russophobic and nationalist point of view in his media, which means that the split is present directly in the camp of Ukrainian patriots.
The case is also connected with the fact that President Zelensky's officials are now cleansing the political field for themselves. Taking advantage of martial law, they have effectively banned all opposition parties, and now they have taken on political competitors in the patriotic field as well.
Detained by the SBU and accused of high treason, Ukrainian politician Viktor Medvedchuk testified against Poroshenko on the illegal privatisation of part of the “Samara – Western Direction” pipeline by the ex-president. All to ensure that Poroshenko does not use the growing discontent in society against Zelensky.
Zelensky's authority is indeed under threat, and rumours that he is in conflict with the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Valery Zaluzhny are confirmed. For example, one of the leaders of public opinion, an expert of the Ukrainian Institute for the Future, who has long remained neutral in this conflict, recently wrote that it is time to move away from the taboo of criticising the Ukrainian Armed Forces and postpone the search for those responsible until after the war.
Since time after time, the Ukrainian military command allows the deployment of military personnel in barracks, which are then subjected to missile strikes by the Russian Armed Forces, and because of the taboo on criticism, all the negative Ukrainian society shifts to Zelensky.
In addition, Zaluzhny is suspected of having political ambitions, pointing out that his image advertisements are found online, and Zaluzhny himself is present at children's drawing competitions. Also, the story of the Zaluzhny fund is growing in detail, there was information that an oligarch, with a position far from being the most pro-Ukrainian one, made a large donation there..
Thus, it can be recorded that, despite attempts to “silence" the situation with the surrender of the nationalist “Azov” regiment in Mariupol, the Ukrainian leadership made a serious mistake, which is now spreading across Ukraine with a high-profile effect. The dehumanisation of Russian servicemen in Ukrainian propaganda is shattered by the reality that the most motivated Ukrainian units surrendered to them.
The average soldier of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is no longer ashamed to surrender to save his life, because Russia is not waging a "war of annihilation, to the last Ukrainian", as the Ukrainian authorities imagine and their owners in the West really want. On May 28, VGTRK war correspondent Evgeny Poddubny reported that 26 Ukrainian servicemen voluntarily laid down their weapons and surrendered to the DPR forces near the settlement of New York.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces are now under threat of encirclement in Lisichansk and Severodonetsk, and in order to announce at least some success, the Ukrainian command is organising adventurous counter-offensives in the Kherson direction with a sad ending. The loss of Severodonetsk is fundamental for Ukrainians, as for them it is a new regional centre of the remnants of the Lugansk region controlled by Ukraine, and with its loss, the LPR almost immediately gains its full borders, and Ukraine, accordingly, loses the entire region.
Zelensky cannot bear such image losses not only for domestic political reasons, but also for foreign policy reasons. Due to the fact that by showing his inability to contain the offensive of the Russian Armed Forces, it thereby discourages the West from making new military supplies to Ukraine and strengthens the position of Western politicians who are not ready for a protracted conflict and want to compromise with Russia.
Today's Ukrainian propaganda inspires its population with hope for military assistance from the West, after which the Ukrainian Armed Forces will definitely launch a counter-offensive. With about the same reverence that it used to praise Javelins, now Ukrainian propaganda relies on American multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS), which supposedly will help turn the tide on the front.
However, all of this is happening against the background of kilometre-long queues at gas stations, as the Ukrainian government cannot cope with the "gasoline crisis", then introducing, then canceling state price regulation. Ukrainians have problems with receiving humanitarian aid, social payments are canceled, salt, buckwheat and vegetables are becoming more expensive.
The Ukrainian government has not rebuilt the economy on military rails and wants to return to the usual tax system in a situation where most businesses in Ukraine simply do not work. All this suggests that the battle for Donbass is coming to a climax, and Ukraine is coming to a bifurcation point that will determine its future.