Analysis of the Situation on the Ukrainian Front with General Pavel Macko #Alaska#Anchorage#Pokrovsk#Russia#Summit Trump-Putin#Ukraine#USA#Zelensky
Moderator: One of the cards that Russian leader Vladimir Putin might play during negotiations is the situation on the front. Our guest is Lieutenant General in reserve, former highest representative of Slovakia in NATO structures, Pavel Macko. Good day.
Pavel Macko: Good day to you.
Moderator: Looking at the front as a whole, how would you evaluate it? Where is Russia achieving certain territorial gains and where is the advance stagnating or where do Ukrainians have a slight advantage?
Pavel Macko: From a long-term perspective, the front is static when I compare the positions year-on-year. Currently, the most intense battles, where Russians are making the most progress, are in the Donbas. It’s primarily in the area around:
▪️Pokrovsk
▪️Toretsk
▪️Chasiv Yar
▪️all the way to Kupiansk
The Russians have made their largest advance in a year in recent days, when a few days ago they moved approximately 10 kilometers deep into the Ukrainian formation, breaking through the so-called defensive barrier in the Donbas. The Ukrainians are managing to stop this for now.
Ukrainians, on the other hand, have pushed the Russians back or stopped the attempted Russian incursion into the Sumy region. Fighting is taking place in practically all sections of the front, but the biggest battles are around the mentioned cities and around Pokrovsk, where the Russians are trying to encircle the city.
Moderator: What tactics has Russia been using lately? I’ve read that they use small sabotage and reconnaissance groups to penetrate between thinned Ukrainian lines, entrench themselves, and then attack from the rear.
Pavel Macko: The Ukrainians have built defensive ramparts, which means they have multiple linear defensive positions, but these are not fully manned. Ukrainians have switched to a tactic where they set up positions for drone operators and tried to create something like a drone wall.
The Russians attacked this with smaller units, as you indicated, but with high mobility, using any fast means of transportation:
▪️motorcycles
▪️scooters
▪️anything that allowed them to move quickly.
They try to penetrate into the given area as quickly as possible and gradually insert reinforcements in small groups. When they have a sufficiently concentrated force, mostly with the help of drones, possibly also air support, they make a larger strike and again try to move the line a little further.
Moderator: It looks like Pokrovsk and this entire area is now a priority for the Russians. President Zelensky claims that they are moving thousands of more elite troops, paratroopers, naval infantry, especially from the Sumy region. Does Ukraine have a chance to stop this advance? Or could the Russian plan to capture these places – Pokrovsk, Kupiansk, Toretsk and Chasiv Yar – by the end of August or September be fulfilled?
Pavel Macko: I would be skeptical that the Russians will succeed in capturing it so quickly. Of course, Ukrainians are under great pressure because they made a few mistakes in the direction of Dobropillia, which is northeast of Pokrovsk.
But we need to realize that they have prepared defensive positions there and have now also brought in a brigade from the Azov Corps. The Russians also need to regroup troops in order to advance anywhere. And when we look at it:
▪️They’ve been trying to capture Kupiansk for almost two years
▪️Pokrovsk for more than a year
▪️Chasiv Yar still hasn’t been captured.
This means, yes, they may succeed in capturing some of these cities, but I don’t expect such a breakthrough as we saw at the beginning of the war, when they were advancing tens or hundreds of kilometers a day. Of course, the pressure is increasing – it’s like a tightly stretched string, where we’re waiting to see if it will break somewhere or hold.
Moderator: To what extent is the advance on the front tied to the upcoming negotiations in Anchorage? Because on the one hand, as we said, in the mentioned area, the Russians are advancing, but on the other hand, they have at least relatively limited air strikes on Ukrainian cities, as noted by the Institute for the Study of War.
Pavel Macko: First of all, it can be expected that Putin will try to play it in such a way that he will present Ukraine as an uncooperative party, despite the fact that he himself has been refusing a ceasefire and does not comply with the ultimatum.
The reality is that the Russians are trying to gain the most advantageous positions, because even a possible ceasefire does not yet mean the end of the war. The Russians would like to have the best possible positions that would suit them in case of renewed fighting, from which they could very quickly launch back into attacks.
If there were a ceasefire, units would regroup, replenish supplies, replenish numbers, and monitor each other. So the Russians are trying to:
1) Gain the most advantageous position before negotiations
2) Send a signal and create the impression for President Trump that the situation of Ukrainian forces is untenable
3) Show that if they continue, they can achieve far better results
But three and a half years is a long enough time to have already shown their true capabilities.
Moderator: From the information leaked to the media probably from American negotiator Steve Witkoff, I got the impression that Russia is now prioritizing the rest of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, while in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions it might be willing to freeze the front. Is that so? Does it make military sense?
Pavel Macko: It makes absolute military sense, because in the Kherson region, the Russians had to retreat behind the river and preparing a large offensive there, they don’t have the forces for that. Similarly in the Zaporizhzhia region:
▪️Zaporizhzhia is a city of million
▪️the northern part of the Zaporizhzhia region is full of various terrain obstacles and canals
▪️it’s a terrain that’s easy to defend.
On the contrary, in the Donbas, the Russians are still in front of the rampart. Although they partially broke through that rampart and the Ukrainians are trying to „patch“ it in quotation marks, but if Ukraine were to withdraw – and there was a request for a part of the territories in the Kharkiv and Sumy regions to be returned to it – in exchange, the Russians would want the Ukrainians to leave the still 30% free part of the Donetsk region.
This would put the Ukrainians behind their defensive lines. The terrain there is also completely different:
▪️there are no large rivers
▪️there are no terrain obstacles
▪️Ukraine would be left with a completely open space.
I would compare it to the situation when Czechoslovakia ceded the Sudetenland and the Germans gained direct access to the Czechoslovak or Czech valleys. Something similar would happen in the case of Ukraine if it ceded these territories. This is something that Ukrainians will certainly not accept.
Moderator: Yes, and those bunkers and fortresses, basically that whole Czechoslovak line then fell into German hands, and thus the territory was indefensible.
In conclusion, I would ask: Belarus announced that Belarusian and Russian forces will jointly practice planning the use of tactical nuclear weapons and Oreshnik ballistic missiles in mid-September. Is this rattling weapons before the summit?
Pavel Macko: It’s not just before the summit, it’s part of the Russians‘ longer-term strategy. They still use that reflexive control with which they try to influence our negotiations and actions. The agreement on medium and short-range weapons (INF Treaty) has been denounced since 2019.
The Russians are now suggesting that… They have already deployed tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus and are now suggesting that they will also deploy Oreshnik missiles.
It’s escalatory intimidation. It’s no longer nuclear deterrence, but the Russians have moved to a strategy of intimidation with nuclear weapons and are significantly escalating the situation.
It’s not directly related to this, but since most agreements between the Russians and Americans have already fallen or expired, Putin indicated before this meeting that they would like to negotiate on bilateral talks and wants to offer the Americans new nuclear agreements.
Moderator: That was Lieutenant General in reserve, former highest representative of Slovakia in NATO structures, Pavel Macko. Thank you very much for your analysis and for your time. I wish you a nice day.
Pavel Macko: I wish you a beautiful summer day.
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