Necessary losses
Zaluzhny - Russia exits stalemate? Ukraine copies costly Russian infantry tactics. Azov Fuhrer on strategy, Syrsky, Zelensky, mobilization, dictatorship.
The more things change, the more things stay the same. On September 24, Donald Trump made a ‘TruthSocial’ statement stating his belief that Ukraine and Europe could win the war against Russia.
Atlanticist militarists rejoiced, but not for long. It soon became clear that this was merely Trump’s gambit to place the burden of the war directly on the Europeans. ‘Good luck to all!’ in Trump’s words. ‘In any event, I wish both Countries well.’
Despite Trump’s grandiose promises of peace, the war has shifted into what I always thought would be most logical for any US president - continuing the festival for the American military industrial complex.
Ukrainian officials are grateful. On September 30, head of the presidential administration Andriy Yermak praised the highly ‘effective’ PURL (Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List), which the US set up to transfer weapons to Ukraine. To Yermak’s delight, six more countries have joined (Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Germany), pledging to buy a total of more than $2 billion USD in American weapons.
Donny Deals must be quite proud of his PURL. Set up in July through a meeting between NATO head Mark Rutte and ‘Daddy’ Trump, PURL is not just a ‘voluntary’ way for the Europeans to buy American weapons. It also includes a 10% markup.
The White House clearly judged the elasticity of European demand for the right to send weapons to Ukraine to be rather low. On Tuesday, ex-head of NATO and current Norwegian finance minister Jens Stoltenberg stated the following at the Warsaw Security Forum:
I know that one additional billion to Ukraine or one billion extra to national defense is one billion less to other good purposes like health, education and infrastructure. But we must remember that the highest cost is to let Putin win
This quote is at 2:45 in the video below.
For their part, the Ukrainian leadership is happy to continue fighting with whatever crumbs the Europeans can buy for them.
I said ‘leaders’ for a reason. The forcibly mobilized men fighting this war might have other thoughts. But what does their opinion matter?
Today, we’ll be examining a matter that does concern troops, though higher command is less worried about it. This is the problem of losses. Death and injury, in civilian terms.
On the one hand, ex-head of the army Valery Zaluzhny put out a rather skeptical article in late September. According to Zaluzhny, the Russians are exiting the stalemate that existed in 2022-2023. But they are only doing so through the use of infantry ‘infiltration’ tactics that necessitate heavy losses. He warns against the tendency of current Ukrainian command to copy this Russian tactic despite Ukraine’s far lower manpower reserves.
Keep in mind, of course, that Zaluzhny was removed from his post as head of the army in early 2024 after pointing out that Ukrainian counter-offensives were doomed to failure. Since then, pro-western, liberal nationalists to Zelensky have tried to craft Zaluzhny into an alternative to the current government. These same liberal nationalists, constantly draw attention to Ukrainian losses - quite hypocritically, since all they want is to ramp up mobilization and ‘win’, just under their leadership.
But not everyone is so worried about losses. Those loyal to Zelensky and his new head of the army, Oleksandr Syrsky, believe that some losses are acceptable. In a recent interview, head of the ultra-nationalist Azov ‘family’ Andriy Biletsky condemns commanders who refused to carry out suicidal orders, and refuses to criticize the unpopular Syrsky. Somewhat of an about-face for Biletsky, who until recently proudly recounted how he stood up to the ‘butcher’ Syrsky’s commands. The career called..
Though unenthusiastic about Zelensky, Biletsky isn’t exactly agitating for a coup d’etat. The ‘White Fuhrer’ Biletsky is quite content to continue his meteoric wartime rise through the military ranks, and perhaps into a ministerial seat. He paints himself as the centralized alternative to the decentralized disorder reigning in the ministry of defense, which has had deleterious results for the frontlines. And above all, he wants an end to the total lack of strategy characterizing the wartime Ukrainian state.
He also believes he has a solution to the ‘unjust’ mobilization conducted currently, which exclusively targets the poor. But fear not, he isn’t pushing for dastardly elections - instead, he believes that an Azerbaijan-style dictatorship would be preferable. The population cannot be trusted to truly militarize the state. Let’s take a look at what he said in more detail.
Biletsky
This week, Andriy Biletsky became a brigadier general. Quite the journey for a man who began his political life as a neo-nazi streetfighter. Now, the supreme Leader of the Azov ‘family’ has reached yet another height in his career. I covered Biletsky’s early political journey in more detail here.
Nowadays, especially over the course of 2025, Biletsky has been feted as the country’s main military genius. Some say the government hopes to use his Azov movement as a controlled nationalist opposition, a counter-weight to the liberal nationalists centered around ex-president Petro Poroshenko and ex-head of the army Valery Zaluzhny.
But the theory of Azov as a controlled opposition has its flaws. That very same pro-Poroshenko, liberal nationalist press constantly hypes up Biletsky as the only man capable of saving the day, given Zelensky’s incompetence.
For instance, on September 23, the Ukrainian branch of Radio Free Europe (‘Radio Svoboda’) put out a long interview with Mr Biletsky.
