“The main breakthrough is yet to come.” There are many problems in the army, but there is one key one: there is no one to fight – a conversation with Yevhen Dyky

— I will probably start with the Pokrovsky and Kurakhiv directions, because everyone says that this is the most difficult direction, and I see the trend in this regard in the Western press. Everyone is counting how many kilometers are left before the withdrawal of the Russian troops to the Pokrovsk-Pavlograd road, there are about 9-10 kilometers. The Ukrainian military says that it will take a long time to overcome these 10 kilometers. What are your predictions about how Russian troops may move in the near future? Is there a threat of exiting this road, because Dnipropetrovsk region actually begins behind it?

— Of course, there is a threat, and not only going on this road.

In fact, to be honest, I have very bad information from Kurakhovo itself, where street fights have been going on for more than a week. When these street fights started there, I had a double attitude to it, to be honest. Because, on the one hand, I myself am a former stormtrooper, I know how difficult street battles are for our defenders. It really is hell. These are terrible battles.

But war is such a terrible thing, where you have to dehumanize a little, let’s say so, you have to be able to abstract a little from your feelings, even your own. But if you look from the outside, we were usually very strong in street fights. We usually held out for a very long time in street battles and, most importantly, it was in street battles that we had the best loss ratio. It was in the street fights that we gained the ratio [втрат] and 1:8, 1:10, in Avdiivka it was even 1:12 – for each of our defenders, 12 orcs lay down.

Let me remind you that they took Bakhmut for 10 months, exactly 10 months of street fighting. They took little Avdiivka for four and a half months. They entered Chasiv Yar, it seems, five months ago, and still haven’t passed it. These are street fights.

Therefore, when the fighting began in Kurakhovo, I, to be honest, behaved exactly that way, which is very difficult [буде] defenders, but this is a story for many months. And they will put it there [багато].

For our previous cities, they put the number of two or three European armies. To be honest, I expected the same from Kurakhovoy. A – no, I see that if in all these previous battles we crawled back, you could say, with battles for every entrance, not even for every house… And retreated, left these cities only when, in fact, there were no cities left. And in Kurakhovo, the orcs passed one quarter, the second, the third.

I contact the guys who are there and get a completely direct answer: “Listen, you remember, there was a lot of talk about fortifications here. We have fortifications in Kurakhovo, but they have no one to fight.”

There should be 30 soldiers at the platoon base. There are three grandfathers under the age of 60 at the VOP, how much do they earn you? Therefore, to be honest, if the situation with replenishing the ranks of the Armed Forces does not change very significantly, then the prospects for both Kurakhovo and the roads near it are very bad.

There are many different problems, but the key one is that there is no one to fight. There simply aren’t enough defenders to keep the defensive line under really huge pressure with the balance of power the orcs have pushed there.

— Yesterday I spoke with the military from the Kurakhiv direction, and with Yuriy Butusov in one of the broadcasts. They say: a situation has developed when Kurakhove is already almost completely controlled by Russian troops. Maybe there is some street left, and it is necessary to get out of there, in a good way.

— Whether it is necessary to go out, or vice versa, cling to each quarter, — I do not undertake to judge, because for this you need to be there and understand the pros and cons. This is always a very difficult decision.