Regardless, Zelensky’s latest damning admission the Orkranians are not winning:
In an interview with Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun he candidly declared that “We do not have ammunition. For us the situation in the East is not good.”
Zelensky’s admission adds credence to what the Washington Post recently reported regarding how poorly Kiev’s forces are faring in this conflict, especially its “severe ammunition shortages” that one of its sources spoke about.
If I were the Russians and remembered how Zelensky played the information game before their September counter-offensive, then I would not stake the future on the Ukrainian president’s public statement of how beaten down they are and sort of helpless.
Both sides are hoping for the same thing: get the other side to waste men and materiel, the Ukrainians to weaken opposition to a possible offensive, the Russians to forestall one. The Ukrainians have raised six new brigades, some of them with enough battalions to almost reach division strength. They are all volunteers, and they have been sending conscripts or second rate troops to hold ground in Bakhmut, at least until recently, because the troops there have been complaining about it. A cruel strategy, but it may be effective. How well trained and equipped the new brigades are I don’t know.
The Ukrainians won
Against the Russian’s first plan - to decapitate Ukraine and create a vassal state - the Ukrainians defeated Putin’s army at the battle of Hostomel and of Kyiv
Against Putin’s plan B to create a landlocked Ukraine - this failed in June with the failure at Mykolaiv
Against Putin’s plan C to take the east bank of Ukraine - with failures at Kharkiv pushing the front-lines back - in September
Against Putin’s plan D to control Kherson - when the Russians retreated in November
Right now it is Putin’s plan E to keep the DPR, LPR and the land-bridge to Crimea. The jury’s still out on that