The Russian military commander about the attack on Ukraine: – We are not mentally prepared

A senior officer on the Russian side in Donbass believes they are not mentally ready for a counterattack in Ukraine. Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin speaks of purely Russian flight from positions in Bakhmut.

Alexander Khodakovsky (50) was the commander of the much-talked-about Vostok battalion, and in March 2023 President Vladimir Putin appointed him deputy commander of the President’s National Guard in the Donetsk region.

And the Ukrainian military spokeswoman, Natalya Gomenjuk, already on Thursday spoke of “the panic of the Russians is obvious.”

Now Khodakovsky expresses his frustration about their Telegram account:

– The level of tension that arose yesterday and was expressed in the quality and quantity of conversations and messages indicates that we are not mentally prepared, he writes.

– This is how we prepare, prepare for the counterattack – and we did not prepare, he continues.

At the same time, he admitted in an interview published on Twitter That “Eight years of war is always a lot. So the boys keep fighting thanks to their will.”

Aleksandr Khodakovsky belonged to the Ukrainian elite unit until 2014, but switched to the Russian side in May 2014 when the war really started. At the time, he was also deputy prime minister in the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, which Russia annexed in September 2022.

In December 2022, Khodakovsky stated that the only way Russia could win over Ukraine was to use nuclear weapons. It happened on Olga Skabjeva’s talk show on the state TV channel Rusiga-1.

• The Ministry of Defense in Moscow admitted on Friday that a Ukrainian offensive had pushed Russian forces back somewhat north of Bakhmut.
• The spokesman, Igor Konashenkov, said the Ukrainian forces attacked with nearly 40 tanks and more than 1,000 soldiers.
• Konashenkov says the Russian forces have somewhat withdrawn and established new and better positions.
• Leader of the Wagner Group His name is Yevgeny Prigozhin “Unfortunately, what Konashenkov was talking about was an escape, not an organized regrouping.”
• Prigozhin asks Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to personally come to Bakhmut to assess the situation.
• Well-known Russian war correspondent Andrei Kots speaks ura.ru The Ukrainian offensive will probably start with heavy artillery along the entire front.

The Russian military leader also uses the word “panic”:

– Now they suddenly panic, allegedly the military leadership in one of the regions where Russia is conducting what they call a “special military operation”.

He also says that “the enemy’s sabotage can lead us into panic” – a reference to the fact that there may have been a number of sabotage acts from the Ukrainian side in recent weeks, both in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine and in Russia. province.