Four years of all-out war: truth about February 24, losses, and lessons
Yurii Butusov, a platoon commander with the National Guard’s 13th Khartiia Brigade, gives a live analysis of the first days of Russia’s invasion, covering the balance of forces, defence failures, and the heroism of troops. He also outlines the key conclusions from four years of war.
This live stream is dedicated to a dramatic, tragic, and heroic page in Ukrainian history, and in world history as a whole – the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
A few words need to be said about the situation four years ago, on 24 February 2022. In reality, the situation was critical. We know this, but now, four years on, we can already draw certain conclusions about the balance of forces. According to Russian sources and at this point only one Russian source is known to have provided an assessment for the four-year mark, just one Russian analyst close to the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation, Ruslan Pukhov, has made public information that on 24 February Russia threw into its offensive against Ukraine a grouping of roughly 180,000 troops, and this was only the ground strike force, plus 110,000 forcibly mobilised personnel from the occupied territories serving in the so-called LPR/DPR corps. In other words, the enemy committed 290,000 ground troops to the offensive alone. In total, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, the Russian National Guard, and the mobilized "LPR/DPR corps" amounted to at least 1.3 million service personnel.
In other words, Russia deployed 320,000 ground troops against Ukraine, with the option of reinforcing them from its 1.3-million-strong grouping. Ukraine, for its part, could oppose the enemy with significantly smaller forces.
I carried out my own calculations of our ground strike groupings that were, at that time, ready to repel the invasion. This has to be based on the actual strength of the troops, because, let me remind you, Ukraine did not launch general mobilisation, and on February 24, we could rely only on those soldiers who were already serving in our Defence Forces. Thus, the total strength of our ground troops did not exceed 90,000 service personnel. In this way, the enemy had at least a threefold advantage in the ground component alone.
Yes, the total number of service personnel in the Armed Forces of Ukraine was 210,000, and a further 50,000 served in the National Guard. That is 260,000 in total, plus around 20,000 border guards. But not all of these troops, just as in the Russian army, were part of our combat brigades and battalion tactical groups and could be deployed. Most personnel were at military bases and facilities, in arsenals, support units, rear units, aviation, the Air Force, and so on.
Therefore, on the first day of the aggression, the enemy had a multiple superiority in forces. That numerical superiority was further reinforced by the enemy’s absolute advantage in situational awareness. At that moment, the Ukrainian army had not yet been deployed along the border on designated defensive lines; most units simply did not have time to reach them. Deployment in Ukraine began only on 21 February, and even then, not for all units. Nevertheless, Ukrainian units were deployed on those lines where they essentially went straight into battle, without being able to organise their defences properly. Unfortunately, some units were overstretched; for example, the 58th Infantry Brigade had its subunits spread along a 150-kilometre front. Other brigades, such as the 59th Brigade in Oleshky, Kherson region, unfortunately, were not deployed to their positions at all, but were either on the move or in their base camp. The enemy knew all this and acted with utter brazenness.
All the bridges, unfortunately, all five bridges from Crimea, including the four bridges at Chongar, were captured by the enemy. Only one bridge on the Arabat Spit was, regrettably, partially blown up. We all know this as the feat of Hero of Ukraine Vitalii Skakun, a sailor. There is an investigation by Iryna Storozhenko about this act on my channel. In fact, only two of our sailors, on their own initiative, around 11 a.m., brought up a trailer loaded with explosives and managed to blow up one of the spans of that Henichesk bridge. Unfortunately, the enemy was able to use the other bridges, six dams, and the four Chongar bridges almost unhindered that day.
A similarly tragic situation developed in the northern sector, where not a single bridge was blown up either. As a result, the reckless Russian assault on Hostomel – when reinforcements reached the Russian airborne troops who had looked like a suicide squad, and they were not wiped out to the last man. The enemy reached Hostomel within a single day, covering up to 200 kilometres on the march because there was no resistance and the bridges had been left intact. This is what led to such tragic consequences, to the fact that the enemy was able to advance very quickly.
So the reasons here are complex: the absence of mobilisation, the lack of timely deployment of troops on designated defensive lines, and the lack of engineering preparation and demolition of engineering structures.
It is shocking that on the very first day of the war, the enemy managed to seize three bridges near Kherson. This led to extremely tragic consequences. The enemy captured the Kakhovka dam literally within a few hours and drove there in APCs the very same day, also within a few hours, without a fight. Enemy helicopter-borne assault troops landed there without hindrance, and their landing was successful because there was no security at the Kakhovka dam at all. Likewise, the railway bridge near Kherson was left without any guard.
The same goes for key infrastructure, including the now notorious Antonivskyi bridge, which our troops later had to fight their way across because no guard had been posted there either. And through the railway bridge, the enemy was able to break through via the Kakhovka dam and then turn its offensive towards Voznesensk and Mykolaiv.
On the second day of the war, the enemy captured one of the largest cities in southern Ukraine, Melitopol, almost without fighting. And on the fifth day of the war, it reached Mariupol from the rear, having seized Berdiansk on day three. This is simply a shocking story. There are still no assessments; yes, there is a criminal case, generals are being questioned, of course. And yet, whatever all these generals have been saying, by the fourth anniversary, the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) has still not told us anything.
All testimonies have long since been given, everyone has given evidence: the soldiers who tried to blow up the bridges and pressed the detonators, but they did not work. And the officers and generals who were responsible for all of this – absolutely everyone has given their statements. And yet we still do not know from our official sources what happened on 24 February 2022.
The fact that this information is not being made public means that no one is drawing conclusions from it. And perhaps no one intends to. That is why many of those dramatic failures continue to this day. Unfortunately, without such conclusions, progress is extremely limited.
All the more monumental, in my view, is the genuine feat of those Ukrainian soldiers who, in the face of the enemy’s overwhelming superiority, fought to the death from the very first minutes of the invasion. According to eyewitness accounts, even when they saw the enemy simply driving unhindered across the bridges, over the bridge at Chonhar, racing straight into the checkpoint at full speed, some of our soldiers still chose to engage in a hopeless yet heroic fight.
According to the testimonies of our POWs who were at Chonhar, one of our soldiers – we do not know who – fired a grenade launcher and hit one of the Russian fighting vehicles crossing at Chonhar. I very much want to investigate and find out who these people were, who these heroes were who were killed at Chonhar, by name. Because just imagine: a column is racing at full speed, stretching out seemingly without end; no one is firing at it, it is rushing across a bridge that has not been blown up, no shells or missiles are raining down on it. This armada is advancing, and one of our fighters fires a grenade launcher even in such hopeless conditions. There are tens of thousands of such feats; they are what caused the Russian war machine that had been racing forward to be halted and ultimately smashed.
But there is a lot of talk about the Russian leadership having underestimated the situation. I want to say that, from what I see, the Russian invasion was in fact quite well prepared; there was a very clear calculation behind it, which, unfortunately, was borne out in some sectors – first and foremost in the southern sector. The enemy did not manage to achieve all of its objectives in the south; it was stopped near Zaporizhzhia and near Volnovakha. But in the south, the Russians did manage to achieve all of their objectives, I believe, even ahead of schedule. And all of this happened, unfortunately, on the very first day of the war. The heroes who then, in hasty meeting engagements, without weapons, without communications, were stopping and routing this well-prepared, mobilised and equipped Russian army – an army that at that moment had absolute superiority in the air, absolute superiority at sea, a huge, many-fold advantage in armoured vehicles and artillery, and at least a threefold numerical advantage in ground forces – the fact that all this was stopped is a monumental feat that will need to be researched, studied and written into the annals of Ukrainian history for many decades to come.
Because those people who, under those conditions, went into such battles are giants of spirit; the memory of them is sacred, and I am happy that many of these heroes are still alive, and that a large share of them are still fighting on. It is this strength of such people that truly makes Ukraine unconquerable.
Question from the audience
If they had not been allowed through from Crimea, how do you think the front would have developed?
If all the bridges in the north and the south had been blown up in time – that is, on 23 February, the Russian offensive would have stalled at the border. The enemy would have had no chance of reaching Hostomel, Irpin, Bucha or Moshchun in the north, nor of advancing towards Brovary via Sumy. The Russians would not have had a chance to break through to Melitopol and Kherson. The large number of dams and bridges in the Kherson region would have severely restricted the movement of Russian forces. There is one very important example that has also been little studied here, and which became known to me from Russian sources. On the morning of 24 February, Russian units of the 503rd Motor Rifle Regiment of the 19th Motor Rifle Division were advancing at high speed into Ukraine. Their route of entry through Chonhar ran across the well-known Kutaran dam. At an unknown time, possibly as early as 2015, the dam was rigged with explosive charges and anti-tank charges. On the morning of 24 February, two lead BMP-3 infantry fighting vehicles from the 19th Division crossed the dam, entered Ukrainian territory, and immediately detonated those charges. Both vehicles were completely destroyed along with their crews. To this day, I do not know which Ukrainian combat engineer did this or when, but it was an effective action. Enemy sources note that as a result, the advance of that regiment along this axis through the dam was halted for an entire day. Just imagine: there is no shelling, no aircraft, no missiles, no artillery fire, not even small-arms fire from our side – and yet the enemy is forced to spend a full day clearing mines on that dam. Later, incidentally, units of that regiment were redeployed to attack on another axis. This is a serious indicator of what would have happened had the two bridges near Kherson been blown up. All of that territory would have remained Ukrainian, and we would have been able to manoeuvre across those bridges ourselves. It would have meant that Ukrainian Melitopol would have had time to prepare its defences. The enemy simply would not have been able to seize it, becoming bogged down in fighting at Chonhar while attempting to cross all those dams and bridges. The terrain there is quite complex. If those structures are destroyed, you cannot simply race across them in a tank or an APC. The course of the war would have been different. We would not have had to batter head-on into the Russian defensive line in the south in 2023.
We would not have had to suffer losses in Mariupol. We lost two of our very best combat brigades there; they were encircled a week after the invasion began. Of course, everything would have unfolded differently. When will this be examined and called by its proper name?
Please tell us, have you learned anything new for yourself in the military? Brag about something you have managed to do that is new.
Friends, at the moment, I am simply a UAV platoon commander, and I cannot say that we are doing something uniquely new that has never been done before in other units. I think what is new is that you have to bring people together. Because whatever you may know about war – and since 2014 I have come to know quite a lot of people in the army – when you are building your own unit, when you have to look for people, bring back AWOL personnel, find people through transfers, call friends, work with mobilised troops and volunteers, and do that every single day, when you are personally responsible for specific people, that is a completely different level of workload and a completely different understanding of the situation. And when you go out as a journalist to film a report, that is one story; when you go out as a commander responsible for conducting reconnaissance and establishing positions, for example near Kupiansk, and you are working there not in order to film something, but in order to carry out a specific combat mission, that is a completely different level of motivation, a completely different level of work, and you focus on different things or stop focusing on other things. So all of this is new to me in this role.
As for this new war itself, it is what it is: it is becoming more technological, and it is becoming more complex in terms of equipment. When I went out near Kupiansk, I want to say that several reconnaissance missions I carried out to establish our positions were, of course, new every time, because when you are confronted with a large number of drones in the air, you cannot help but be struck by it. On some axes, the enemy’s kill zone starts roughly 10 kilometres from our forward line, and enemy drones are literally monitoring every section of terrain. It gets to the point where the drones see you, and you can no longer hide.
Near the railway station in Kupiansk, when I was going in, Russian drones repeatedly spotted me and tried to hit me. During one reconnaissance mission, an enemy FPV struck the vehicle I was in. It was coming in on our driver-mechanic; I was sitting directly behind him in a Novator, and I was lucky, because the FPV hit the mount for our net on the windscreen. If it had hit the net itself, I think, unfortunately, the RPG-type warhead would have punched through the armoured glass. This is the level of density of strike systems you feel on yourself during every single outing; it is impossible not to be impressed by it.
There are now very large numbers of drones, and it is impossible to avoid their observation 100%, no matter how careful you are. This is genuinely a new factor that has emerged since the second half of 2025 and into 2026, and it is only increasing.
So, according to the calculations I made, the Russian army had at least a threefold advantage over Ukrainian forces on 24 February 2022. Russian propaganda, incidentally, claims that there were supposedly huge numbers of people in Ukraine who immediately mobilised, and that someone in the Kremlin underestimated the situation, that intelligence failed to report something. I want to say that I calculated the figures for Russian mobilisation that were officially published in various Russian sources, primarily by the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation. I also looked at the officially declared strength of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and other Russian military formations, including mobilised personnel. From what I have observed throughout the war, Russia maintained a numerical advantage on the front. Even during Ukraine’s first wave of mobilisation, Russia still retained numerical superiority. Perhaps in the initial stage of the war, the advantage was closer to two to one, but it remained nonetheless. Because, even despite that mobilisation wave, and I know the figures, I will be publishing them soon, including the first numbers from February–March showing how many people actually joined Ukraine’s Defence Forces, the queues outside enlistment offices still could not significantly increase the strength of Ukraine’s Defence Forces. The necessary weapons were lacking. There was no time for cohesion and training of completely unorganised units that were being formed from scratch, without command cadres, without any established core or any established core. Meanwhile, Russia continued to reinforce and rotate its regular battalions and battalion tactical groups into Ukraine, to stand up third battalions in its combat brigades and regiments, increasing contract recruitment under the backdrop of propaganda, effectively drawing in volunteers at the initial stage, then introducing short-term contracts for volunteers in Russia, which also had a significant effect, and subsequently announcing mobilisation in 2022. If you calculate it all, throughout 2022, Russia in fact maintained a numerical advantage in combat troops on the front. The period when Russian forces were worn down to near parity was very brief, essentially in September 2022, when the regular Russian army had been ground down to the point that its losses exceeded its ability to replenish them. That is precisely why Russia was forced to declare mobilisation. Incidentally, a similar situation exists now, four years into the war.
What is known about Russian losses over this period?
The Russian outlet "Mediazona" has published a name-by-name list of Russian losses over the four years of the war. This list is based solely on obituaries in social media and Russian media, and only covers citizens of the Russian Federation – it includes over 200,000 names. This is a minimum estimate. I believe it is smaller by roughly a factor of 2.5 to 3 than the real number of Russian losses; if we include those missing in action, that is more than 100,000 people. It is also known that in Russia, a large number of obituaries are simply not printed, and this information is not made public. The figures for losses among those mobilised in the occupied territories are also unknown, and Russia conducts mobilisation there much more harshly than on the territory of the Russian Federation itself: literally hundreds of thousands of able-bodied men have been mobilised there. All of this cannon fodder has been thrown into the front line. There is also a significant number of foreign mercenaries – we do not know their numbers either. So the overall Russian figures amount to many hundreds of thousands of people, and these losses are undoubtedly higher than Ukrainian losses; Russian sources themselves acknowledge this.
Ukraine’s losses
According to the Russian portal Lostarmour, which maintains a name-by-name tally based on Ukrainian social media posts, enemy sources have recorded the deaths of about 85,000 Ukrainian defenders. I will not cite the official Ukrainian figures here: the President of Ukraine has said that 55,000 have been killed, and that may also be a credible number, depending on the methodology used. Those officially recognised as killed, whose families may have received posthumous payments. There is also data on those whose deaths appear in obituaries. In addition, based on missing-persons data, around 85,000 to 90,000 Ukrainian defenders may be listed as missing in action. These are the figures published in the Interior Ministry’s statistics on missing persons. Again, unlike Russia, Ukraine does not conceal its missing-persons statistics. The numbers are horrific, immense.
We can see that the enemy is taking losses at a ratio of at least one to three, at least one to three in terms of irrecoverable casualties. And we know that if you add up all those mobilised in Russia and all contract soldiers called up over these years, that amounts to at least 3.5 million people. Meanwhile, 700,000 remain in the so-called "special military operation" (SMO) zone, according to Russia’s official statements. The figure of 3.5 million is the minimum I have calculated simply by adding up, from Russian sources, the size of the Russian army, the mobilisation waves, the waves of contract soldiers, and those mobilised in the occupied territories across the Russian Armed Forces, the National Guard, the FSB border troops – the large number of forces that have been committed. Of those, 700,000 are currently deployed at the front in the SMO zone.
On top of Russia’s very high irrecoverable losses, there is, of course, a huge number of severely wounded and disabled, plus those written off for medical reasons. The same is true for us.
This is a horrific war that Putin has unleashed, a war that is causing terrible losses to the Ukrainian nation and is turning into a war "to the last Russian". While Putin is disposing of Russians on an unprecedented, industrial scale, Russia is bringing in people from Asia to settle the country. And when we talk about losses in Ukraine, a large share are wounded; there is also a large number of troops who go AWOL, people who lose their combat capability, and are discharged for various reasons. In the Ukrainian army, personnel are discharged because they have a third child, because they are caring for parents, because of illness, and so on.
That is why there is a large-scale mobilisation in Ukraine and a shortage of people. I am not talking now about the military aspect, I have spoken about that many times, I am speaking exclusively about demographic indicators. There are not enough people; we are seeing what I consider the shameful practice of "busification" (A colloquial Ukrainian term describing individuals transported to recruitment facilities by van - ed.note), but without it our authorities have found no other way to mobilise people and, unfortunately, for now do not know how to do it differently. Ukraine’s losses are explained by the fact that, unlike in Russia, a large number of Ukrainian defenders are able to leave the Armed Forces. In Russia, the only grounds for discharge are mutilation, loss of limbs, or severe injuries that essentially make a person severely disabled and unfit for service. Even lightly wounded soldiers with serious injuries, men on crutches, are still sent back into combat. So, of course, this different attitude to people leads to Russia having much higher irrecoverable losses. We do not know the exact figures, but from what we see now the ratio is at least one to three, and possibly one to four, because this ruthless expenditure of manpower means that at any given moment the Russians have more troops at the front than we do: they do not let people go, and their soldiers are constantly being driven forward at gunpoint.
In our army, the overall attitude to people in Ukraine is more humane, I am not going to go into the numerous, unfortunately, incompetent and harsh decisions that also occur, but in general, it is more humane. And this is reflected in the casualty figures, as we can see even from the statistics that have been made public.
Question from the audience
What are Russia’s plans for the next five years?
In a global war like this, Russia has no five-year plans at all. Right now, this is total war, total mobilisation of all resources in Russia, and for Russia, the planning horizon for this war is clearly no more than one year. Why one year? In both Ukraine and Russia, wartime budget planning is done on a one-year basis. Funds are allocated for a year at a time. So when we talk about the prospects of the war, it is now being planned, in both Ukraine and Russia, in one-year increments. Looking at the year ahead, we can see that Putin is trying at any cost, under the cover of so-called peace talks that he merely stages, to achieve his strategic objective: to seize Ukrainian territory by force, to take the whole of Donbas, to seize Zaporizhzhia. And if he succeeds, if the Russian offensive is not stopped, they will, of course, seek to push further.
Russia, Russia’s army can only be stopped by force. And Ukraine does have that strength even now. Despite all the problems with a shortage of manpower – I am at the front now, and I want to tell you that wherever people are managed properly, where there is real attention to the troops, where they are trained and where there is competent command, wherever all the necessary components for success are in place, the Ukrainian army, Ukraine’s Defence Forces, stop the Russian offensive and kill the occupiers. In such sectors, they cannot advance at all. Unfortunately, such a level of command, logistics, work with personnel, and training is not present on every sector of the front. That is why I have said and continue to say that, in the fifth year of the war, Ukraine’s main problems are responsibility and honesty.
Responsibility for people, for Ukrainian soldiers. And honesty. Honesty in reports, in assessing the situation, in drawing conclusions, in determining whether a practice is successful or not. Our core problem is honesty – everyone knows this, I think all military personnel know it – honesty in reporting. And the absence in Ukraine of a key NATO standard, the after-action review, is clear evidence that analysis, conclusions, scaling up successful practices, and eliminating systemic shortcomings are still not functioning properly. In a high-technology war, the advantage lies in managerial and command decisions, in the quality of execution and in the speed of closing the loop – the Boyd Loop (or OODA loop is a decision cycle used in U.S. military doctrine - ed.note), a well-known principle I have spoken about many times, a principle of U.S. Armed Forces command and control. There are four components of decision-making in which you must outpace the enemy. Four elements of the command cycle in which commanders at all levels must stay ahead of the adversary. This has been, remains, and unfortunately will continue to be a major problem for us in the fifth year of the war, a problem that must be remedied.
How, with the bridges destroyed and the Kakhovka dam gone, can the Kherson region now be liberated? Is it possible to push them back from the riverbank, and to what distance? How can one force a major river like the Dnipro?
This is an extremely complex technological task and, in the conditions of a fully established, dense defence, a very costly one. I do not think this can be viewed as a near-term prospect; we have to be realistic while the enemy is on the offensive. The enemy can be pushed back from Kherson to the effective range of our drone operators. Around Kherson, there has been an intense battle of drones, electronic warfare systems and air defence systems for years now. That battle continues, and we unquestionably need to achieve a decisive advantage in it – one that, at present, we do not yet have at the level required to push the enemy back 20 kilometres. I believe that 10–15 kilometres from Kherson is a realistic objective. To create a kill zone on the opposite bank of the Dnipro, so as to prevent the enemy from continuing its terrorist attacks and drone strikes.
What is happening with the Foreign Legion? Is it being dismantled or reorganised?
As far as I know, several Foreign Legion units have been subordinated to assault regiments of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The situation varies. One of the Foreign Legion units, the second one, was dissatisfied with being attached to one of the assault regiments, and public disputes arose. At the same time, for example, I have spoken with fighters and commanders of a Foreign Legion unit that was integrated into the 475th Assault Regiment, CODE 9.2. There were no problems there at all. On the contrary, the people are motivated; they became part of a powerful, effective combat team. Where there is adequate treatment and understanding, they received support and cooperation. I think everything ultimately depends on implementation. In this story with the Foreign Legion, there are also positive examples. If decisions about reorganisation or the creation of new units were in any way evaluated – if at least someone at a senior level, drafting such directives, tried to coordinate them or at least consult the personnel – such issues would not arise at all. Unfortunately, our approach to working with people often consists of first making a decision and then instructing someone to manage the scandal from above. And typically, it is not those who made the managerial decisions who are tasked with dealing with the consequences. So, for those serving in the Foreign Legion, I would recommend looking at the 475th Regiment under Hero of Ukraine Oleksandr Nastenko. It is a unit where one can fight effectively and in a modern way.
Did you believe four years ago that a full-scale war would begin, or did you expect the invasion to be limited to Donbas?
Frankly, I expected it. I said so on air and in my streams — all of that can be checked. I believed the enemy would strike in Donbas and advance along the left bank of the Dnipro, attacking from two directions, attempting to move along the river and reach the Dnipro. Why did I think so? I saw the force groupings and commented on them. I saw the threat posed by Russian formations north of Kyiv and Chernihiv and in Crimea, and I spoke about that threat. But I repeatedly said in my streams that it was difficult for me to imagine that the enemy would complete its deployment and effectively trap its own strike grouping in Crimea. I was certain that the Ukrainian command, as had been done in 2015, would completely destroy the bridges. This had been discussed for years. Every year, imagine that, every year since 2015, the Southern grouping of forces conducted exercises on demolishing bridges and dams. Every single year. The last time was two weeks before the invasion, on 14 February, when the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, attended anti-terrorist exercises in the Kherson region. This was also checked. I could not imagine that the bridges would not be blown up anywhere. That the enemy would manage to clear everything. Even the bridge into the town of Shchastia in the Luhansk region was not blown up. Not at all. I was sure the enemy was preparing and deploying. Our intelligence saw all of this. The head of the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine, Kyrylo Budanov, said that he had warned of the invasion and its timing. At 2:00 p.m. on 23 February, he informed the country’s leadership that the invasion was inevitable and that the enemy would strike in the morning. Budanov has spoken about this more than once. He is now head of the Office of the President, so I am confident he was telling the truth. Otherwise, it is unlikely he would have been appointed to the Presidential Office. At least, that is my hope. So everyone knew about the invasion. I expected that all those charges, all those detonators on the bridges that did not go off, would be used immediately. Not waiting for the enemy to attack, but as soon as the sound of tank engines warming up was heard, as soon as enemy aircraft began taking off from airfields, the bridges should have gone up. I was convinced that because of this, the enemy would not be able to advance far through the forests in the north or across Chonhar in the south. Everything favoured this: narrow roads, forests in the north that completely restrict manoeuvre, deep rivers that were not frozen and could not be crossed by heavy equipment...I was convinced the enemy would get stuck right there at the border, and that in Donbas our army would hold it back. Yes, there was a serious risk regarding the Dnipro – that the enemy would push towards Mariupol, breaking through via Volnovakha. There was a serious threat to the Kharkiv region – Izium, Barvinkove. But the enemy could not achieve large-scale breakthroughs. Our front in Donbas was strong enough that it could not be quickly breached. Any breakthroughs could be reinforced; we had sufficiently combat-capable personnel, and I said so. I have many posts and streams where I specifically stated that the Russian blitzkrieg would fail and that Russia would not be able to seize Ukraine quickly. I had no doubts about that. You can look at my interview with Radio Liberty from 30 January 2022. I have answered all these questions in detail before. There would be no blitzkrieg; Ukrainian infantry had an advantage over the Russian army and would stop any rapid breakthroughs by Russian columns. But I could not imagine that there would be entire sectors where the enemy would simply drive through, where there would be no fighting at all. That it would just, knowing there were no mines and no obstacles, get into APCs and cover 150 kilometres in a single day. Simply without resistance. And even land helicopter assault troops on the Nova Kakhovka dam. I remember 2014. In March 2014, we had very few combat-capable battalions. And those troops were not sent to Donbas; instead, several airborne battalions were immediately deployed on alert to Nova Kakhovka. In March 2014, special forces units were transferred there, including the 3rd Regiment, as well as airborne assault units. Because the Nova Kakhovka dam and bridge are among the most strategic objects in southern Ukraine, key ones. I could not imagine that they would simply be handed over to the Russians. That there would not even be basic guards with rifles, and that Russian helicopters would calmly fly in, as if on exercises, and land assault troops. And that all of this would be filmed. I was shocked when I saw Russia landing troops and, at the landing site on 24 February, there was a so-called Belarusian journalist from the outlet Minskaya Pravda, who that very day posted his video from the Kakhovka dam in Nova Kakhovka. I was shocked, first, that there was no shooting at all and the enemy was calmly landing as if on manoeuvres, APCs driving up; and second, that a Belarusian citizen was present at a strategic facility, where he was absolutely not there by chance – I can guarantee you that. And he was not transmitting information to his newsroom, but to the enemy. So yes, I will say frankly: I was wrong about this. I simply did not see any operational logic in such a scenario. Unfortunately, it happened. Yes, I expected that the main fighting would be for Donbas. I thought the enemy would strike in the Luhansk region, try to cut off and encircle our forces there, and primarily encircle Mariupol. I did think the enemy would commit forces and advance from the Kharkiv region as well. And in Crimea, there would be fighting, but the enemy would get bogged down there. I believed the battles would be heavy and prolonged, that they would come out of Chonhar, but that it would take them a long time.
…I am from Nova Kakhovka, we are all in shock.
When did the Russian columns enter the city? From what I saw in the video, no later than about 1 p.m. It is simply shocking. They just drove through Chonhar; everyone went through there without problems. Later, our pilots, heroic ground-attack pilots – there is a well-known video of that strike – our hero attack pilots, flying two aircraft, bombed a Russian column of a Russian combat engineer regiment that was heading towards Kakhovka. They were probably going to repair the dam, but the column was destroyed right on the march. Unfortunately, both of our pilots were killed in that strike. This video is well-known. The enemy was being stopped by such unconventional means.
…The situation with Nova Kakhovka is similar to Enerhodar, to the nuclear power plant. There were no weapons in Enerhodar.
Yes, this was the consequence of effectively giving up Chonhar: there were no troops there, and the enemy simply drove on to Enerhodar as well. Only there did fighting finally break out, though unfortunately it was brief, because our forces there too were going into battle straight from the march.
The war will go on. It is 2026, the fifth year of the war.
There is talk about peace talks between Russia and the United States. I see no prospects there; there is no sign that the Russian Federation has any desire to make peace. I do not see any indications at all. So I believe that war in 2026 is our reality. I think we have to prepare for war in 2027 as well, and adjust our life plans, our view of life, our place in life and in the world accordingly. This war may be very long. Personally, I see no logic in planning for more than a year ahead. We look at the situation. The enemy is pushing forward. The enemy needs the whole of Donbas. This is an absolutely critical issue. The battle for the Sloviansk–Kramatorsk area will be fierce. And the enemy will try to capture this military line, this key district in Donbas, the gateway to Slobozhanshchyna and central Ukraine, by force.
The enemy will also try to seize Zaporizhzhia. In fact, the offensive will continue along the entire front – in Sumy region, in Kharkiv region, in Dnipropetrovsk region. But it is obvious that Donbas and Zaporizhzhia, which the enemy has declared to be territory of the Russian Federation, will be the main focus. And Putin will not spare a single Russian; he will drive as much cannon fodder there as he possibly can. Mobilisation rates have dropped for them now, but Russia is a totalitarian state, and every month they come up with new methods of driving cannon fodder to the front, hunting people down and forcing them to sign contracts. In Russia, once you sign a contract, that is it – you are not getting out. Even if you are wounded, even with shrapnel injuries – and we have many POWs with large amounts of shrapnel in their bodies, serious blast injuries – they are mercilessly thrown into meat assaults. The enemy is acting in the spirit of the NKVD and the KGB; it is a repressive machine, and they will keep throwing Russians into the fight until the last man. Russia can be repopulated: there are Caucasians, there are Asians. Putin is driving everyone into this war.
The war will continue, and we need to understand that we need change, that we must draw conclusions and understand what to do next. Only the Ukrainian nation can end this war. Money and weapons alone will not bring it to an end. This will be decided when every commander at the front, every commanding officer, takes responsibility for their sector, reports honestly on the situation and draws honest conclusions – about successes as well as mistakes, about effective as well as ineffective actions. And that is the core issue. The key issue for 2026.
Drones, weapons – all of that can be bought. You cannot buy people, and you cannot buy commanders. Training soldiers, growing fighters, shaping commanders is the task of the state – and of a state that must be helped by the Ukrainian nation to influence and support this process. It is precisely qualitative superiority that is the only guarantee that we will be able to stop the enemy and force Putin to see the futility of this war and the need to move towards peace, to agree, to be compelled to peace.
Thank you to everyone, because for 12 years now we Ukrainians have been walking this road together. We have chosen a common destiny, we are walking a common path, we are fighting for our freedom, and for us, the Ukrainian nation, the Ukrainian state, Ukrainian freedom are not empty words. These are things we are ready to give our lives for, and very many of us already have. This day is, above all, a day of remembrance – remembrance of the true Ukrainian heroes who accomplished the impossible, what the whole world did not believe in. What was impossible in terms of tactics, strategy and armaments, what was impossible on the map, on paper, in the figures, became possible in action. It became possible because our heroes went forward with what they had – with rifles, with grenades, and sometimes without even those, just with Molotov cocktails and bare hands. This is the day, this is the feat that will live forever. Thank you for watching this stream, and glory to Ukraine!
