She tried to point out that support from China and India was just as good as support from Europe, that professional soldiers may have been superior to conscripts, and that Russia “had no choice”, presenting the Kremlin’s standard justification for its invasion of Ukraine as a threat .
War between Russia and Ukraine: important developments
In Mariupol. The bloodiest battle of the war in Ukraine ended in Mariupol, when the Ukrainian army ordered fighters to surrender at a steel factory in the city. Ukraine’s decision to end the fighting gave Moscow complete control of a vast area of southern Ukraine stretching from the Russian border to Crimea.
Mr Khodaryonok appeared to be careful not to say anything openly critical of the Russian side, repeatedly emphasizing that the whole situation was “not normal”. When it came to morale issues, for example, he went back into history and noted that Marx and Lenin had said that high morale was an important factor for success on the battlefield. He did not directly refer to recent indications that the Russian military is facing moral problems.
In March, Russia criminalized denouncing its war effort, even calling it a war rather than a “special military operation.”
Mr Khodaryonok has criticized Russian military operations in the past. In an unusual column published in early February before the invasion, he warned against it, saying it would not be the cakewalk many Russian analysts had expected and that it was not in Russia’s “national interest”.
He accurately predicted that the Ukrainians would fight hard to defend their country and that the West would provide extensive weapons. “There will be no blitzkrieg in Ukraine,” he wrote in Nezavisimoye Voyennoye Obozreniye, a Russian weekly magazine supplement on military affairs.
Even earlier, about a year after Russia sent its army to Syria in 2015 to support President Bashar al-Assad, he wrote a column for an internet news service, Gazeta.Ru, suggesting that the Syrian army was an unworthy ally. the lack of military success and corruption.
Regarding the war in Ukraine, however, he has previously praised the Russian commitment.
In comments on his Telegram channel posted just a week ago, he said military theorists would study the special operation as something “unique” for years to come. He said Russian progress in the eastern Donbas region was due to the discipline, training, morale of its army and the effectiveness of its artillery. He also reiterated the baseless Russian claim that the Ukrainian side harbored Nazis.