Putin’s big defeats in Ukraine: what else does Russia need to abandon the invasion?

Russian defeats accumulate. The last one, in Makiivka, in the Donetsk region. The Ukrainian Army launched several missiles yesterday at a Russian military building. Inside there were about six hundred sleeping soldiers and a large warehouse of Russian weapons.

Russia acknowledges 63 deaths, but according to kyiv, they would be around 400 dead and 300 injured. Very different figures, but if confirmed, this would become the biggest carnage of the ten months of conflict in Ukraine. Russia has not acknowledged such a deadly attack since the invasion of Ukraine began.

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Russia points out. He accuses the United States of aiding in the massacre. “The kyiv regime attacked with six US-produced HIMARS missiles a temporary quartering of one of the Russian military units in the town of Makiivka”. Igor Konashkov, spokesman for the Russian command, confirms that the Russian anti-aircraft defense intercepted and destroyed at least two of them. Added to the Ukrainian attack is the fact that Inside the building, there was a store of weapons and ammunition that could have exploded with the impact of the missiles.

Criticism within Russia. The figures do not add up, not even the Russians support them. The Deputy Speaker of the Moscow Assembly, Andrey Medvedev, claims that “it is dangerous and criminal to regard the enemy as a fool who sees nothing.” He asks that the data be clarified because “every soldier and officer is important.”

Igor Girkin, a former pro-Russian commander in eastern Ukraine, puts the death toll in the hundreds. Meanwhile, Grigory Karasin, a Russian senator and former deputy foreign minister, calls for “a rigorous internal analysis.” On the other hand, Sergei Mironov, a legislator and former president of the Russian Senate, demands criminal responsibility from officials and “high authorities who did not provide the adequate level of security.” In fact, he has published it on his Telegram account, where he says that “neither intelligence, nor counterintelligence, nor air defense worked properly.”

Has Russia made mistakes? Some experts admit that yes. Fernando Arancón, director of ‘The World Order’ today on Al Rojo Vivo, has listed the possible factors that have helped the Ukrainian Army carry out this offensive:

• First of all, combining an entire battalion of soldiers sleeping inside a building with explosive material, ammunition and weapons is very dangerous. A mistake for which senior Russian commanders, such as the Donetsk Deputy Minister of Information, Danil Bezsonov, are calling for those who made the decision to locate military personnel inside the same building to be brought to justice.

• Another determining factor has been the lack of protection of its location. Russia did not camouflage the buildings.

• And the mistake that for Arancón “an Army of that level cannot afford a year after starting an invasion” and that reveals the inexperience of the Russian Army, is that the soldiers used personal mobile devices. Something that revealed the position of the battalion, since the Ukrainian antennas could detect the signals of the Russian telephones.

This same opinion is joined by that of the Security and Defense analyst, Jesús Manuel Pérez Triana today in Al Rojo Vivo: “this same type of failure to concentrate the troops in a barracks and the liberality with which Russia shares its position in social networks, has this result”.

It is not the first defeat. Russia has already had to withdraw on numerous occasions. The first was in Kharkiv. After several offensives, he fails to take the city. Far from it, the Ukrainian Army made the Russian troops abandon their positions within the region on September 8, but not only that, their weapons and vehicles did not leave Kharkov.

• Russia’s response to this first defeat was a partial troop mobilization that Putin announced on September 21 in order to recruit 300,000 reservists.

• On September 30, Russia annexed the Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions through an illegal referendum that neither kyiv nor the international community recognized.

• Soon after came the second Russian defeat. The Ukrainians were retaking the Kherson region village by village. On November 10, Moscow decides to withdraw troops from the port city in order to “preserve the lives of its troops.”

• This time, there were no injuries and they did not abandon their weapons and vehicles, but they filled the territory with mines and destroyed the most important connection of the city with the occupied territories on the other side of the Dnipro river. The Antonovsky bridge He was the only one who was injured in that withdrawal of troops. He isolating the city so that the closest connection to access the other shore was 70 kilometers away.

What was their greatest victory since the start of the invasion, the taking of Kherson, has ended up becoming their greatest defeat.

The case of Liman. There Russia carried out another of the greatest territorial losses. The Ukrainian counteroffensive began to outweigh the Russian advance. Putin’s troops were trapped and surrounded by the Ukrainian Army. On October 29, 5,000 Russian soldiers abandoned one of their most important logistics and transportation hubs north of Donetsk. Limán was one of the most important railway junctions that connected them with Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. The Russian Army has tried on numerous occasions to reach the political center of the country, kyiv. An impossible mission to date. In fact, Zelensky himself challenged the Russian troops, saying that he would not move from there.

Diplomatic solution? Both Russia and Ukraine have met on numerous occasions to try to end the conflict peacefully, but the terms of both are not compatible. On the one hand, Vladimir Putin calls for the official annexation of the territories that he had already illegally annexed by means of a referendum.

On the other hand, Volodímir Zelenski says that he will not sign peace until Russia abandons all the territories it has invaded, including Crimea. According to kyiv, the Ukrainian troops have already recovered more than 9,000 square kilometers and their intention is to continue liberating territories. What Russia began believing would be a ‘lightning war’ has turned into a war of attrition for more than ten months.