Remember when Russia walked into an obvious trap in Kherson Oblast and everyone knew it except Russia? Well, they finally caught on. Rumors about this have swirled for the past several days, with reports of entire units abandoning their positions or of...
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Remember when Russia walked into an obvious trap in Kherson Oblast and everyone knew it except Russia? Well, they finally caught on.
Rumors about this have swirled for the past several days, with reports of entire units abandoning their positions or of Russian forces collapsing their lines closer to Kherson city, so that artillery on the other side of the Dnipro River can help support them. But this isn’t a rumor. It’s sourced to the Ukrainian military itself. So several things might be happening:
1) It’s psyops. It’s all fiction, meant to pressure Russian units in the area into quitting. If they believe their fellow countrymen are negotiating a way out, they might not want to be left holding the bag.
2) It’s true, but it’s
some units negotiating. There’s no single command for this axis—there’s Rosgvardia (Putin’s personal national guard), VDV airborne, Russian naval infantry, regular Russian army, proxy forces from Luhansk and Donetsk, and who knows what else, and all answer to different commands.
3) It’s true, and somehow, Ukraine is negotiating with that entire mishmash of an occupying force.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych thinks it’s the second option.
Assuming it’s the second or third option, Ukraine’s negotiating position should be simple: Russian forces can happily withdraw into a POW camp after handing their equipment over. Seriously, “We’re out of ammo, please let us out with all our gear” is not a particularly well-leveraged negotiating position. There’s no plausible “or else...” that is even remotely compelling to Ukraine. The only one that applies here is “or else the occupiers die.”
So yeah, this:
Aretovych says that “In places where Russian forces demonstrate resistance, Ukrainians are firing shells with leaflets calling for surrender. An unofficial report says there are 5,000 Russian POWs in Ukrainian hands.” This pause to rest, refit, refuel, and repair forces used in the Kharkiv offensive is a great time to coax Russian and proxy forces to surrender.
We’ve seen Russians overrun, and we’ve seen them run. We hadn’t seen them play dead though: