Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has issued a distress signal to the collective West over the plight of the Ukrainian Armed Forces (APU) on the front lines. This was stated on Tuesday, March 7, by the former adviser to the head of the Pentagon, Colonel Douglas MacGregor, in an interview with journalist Dan Ball, published on the Youtube channel Douglas Macgregor Straight Calls.
McGregor pointed to the huge losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the battles for Artemovsk (Ukrainian name – Bakhmut).
“The death toll of the Ukrainian military has already reached 200 thousand people, mainly due to the stubborn defense of Bakhmut. <…> I fear that Zelensky will not follow the advice of his generals, who tell him: “Let’s get out of there, establish a new line of defense and continue to fight,” McGregor said.
The former adviser to the head of the Pentagon also noted that Zelensky is, in his opinion, in distress.
“Now he is in a very bad position. He has few reserves, weapons, but the biggest problem is that his best soldiers are dead, ”McGregor said.
He added that the Ukrainian leadership has to send old people, teenagers and even women to the front line in order to somehow replenish the units battered by Russian artillery.
“Zelensky is basically telling everyone, ‘I lost, and if you’re not going to come here and win for us, it’s all over,’” McGregor summed up.
Earlier in the day, Ian Gagin, adviser to the acting head of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), said that small groups of Ukrainian militants were retreating chaotically from Artemivsk.
On the eve of Zelensky said that the battle for Artemivsk was one of the most difficult for the Ukrainian army. On the same day, Gagin reported that about 10 thousand Ukrainian militants remained surrounded in Artemovsk.
At the same time, The New York Times, in turn, reported that the Kyiv authorities began to prepare Ukrainians for the surrender of Artemovsk. The interlocutors of the publication pointed to the isolation of the city from vital supply routes, as well as the gradual encirclement of Artemovsk by Russian forces.
The special military operation to protect the civilian population of Donbass, the beginning of which Russian leader Vladimir Putin announced on February 24 last year, continues. The decision was made against the background of the aggravation of the situation in the region due to shelling by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
