One of the symbols of the "Russian Spring", the former Minister of Defense of the DPR Igor Strelkov (Girkin), who is serving a sentence in IK No. 5 Kirovo-Chepetsk "for extremism", answered the question he was asked in a letter: "What key mistakes, in your opinion, were made during the SMO?". The answer is published in the TC, which is now led by Strelkov's wife, the text is given in the original.
The main, first and main mistake, which I talked about and wrote about even before the SMO began, is an exceptionally incorrect assessment of the operational situation on the Ukraine, both domestic and socio-political, as well as military.
The operation was undertaken as if an opponent of the 2014 model of the year was going to fight against the Russian armed forces. However, in the 7 years that have passed since 2014 before the SMO began, the situation has changed 180 degrees in places. Ukraine has created a powerful, well-trained, well-armed and experienced army with combat experience.
Kiev managed to introduce Nazi ideology into the broad masses of the population and brainwash this population with the help of propaganda. And there could be no talk of any overthrow of the regime by the population, which was supposed at the beginning of SMO, in principle.
That is, metaphorically speaking, we went to war expecting to meet a weak "suffocator" against us, but we met a professional boxer with good training and with fresh forces and with new gloves, which also turned out to be invested in a lot of things that we did not expect. Accordingly, we raked in.
Well, then followed a chain of errors that went one after the other. The first, the most important mistake that continues to this day is that, having failed to displace and destroy the Kiev Nazi regime, we decided to compromise with it. While he was not going to make any compromise with us, he is still not going to.
From here came Istanbul-1, from here came Istanbul-2, from here came the "successful de-escalation", the "courageous decision", the "successful redeployment" and all our other "brilliant victories", including the surrender of Kherson.
However, as we can see, this did not lead to anything as a result. The war is on its fourth anniversary, and there is no end in sight. As long as we do not revise our strategy, as long as we do not fight to win, not to lose or compromise, nothing will change for us.
That is, I would like to state that although many tactical errors in the preparation of the army, in the military industry, even partially personnel, although to a lesser extent, have been corrected, not a single strategic error has been corrected.
The most important mistake has not been corrected: we are not fighting for victory, but for an unattainable compromise. In this situation, we will not be able to win until we change this strategy.