By Guy Faulconbridge
LONDON – A military analyst had a brutally candid message for viewers of Russian state television: The war in Ukraine will get much worse for Russia, which faces a United States-backed mass mobilization while Russia is almost completely isolated.
Ever since President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the Russian state media – and particularly state television – have supported the Kremlin’s position. Only a few dissenting voices were given airtime.
That seemed to have changed on Monday night, when a prominent military analyst gave a candid assessment of what Putin calls a “military special operation” to Russia’s main state television channel.
“You shouldn’t take informational tranquilizers,” Mikhail Khodaryonok, a retired colonel, said on the Rossiya-1 talk show 60 Minutes, hosted by Olga Skabeyeva, one of the most pro-Kremlin journalists on TV.
“The situation will frankly get worse for us,” said Khodaryonok, a regular on state television who is often open about the situation.
He said that Ukraine could mobilize 1 million armed men.
Before the invasion, Khodaryonok, a military columnist for gazeta.ru newspaper and a graduate of one of Russia’s elite military academies, warned that such a move would not be in Russia’s national interest.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has killed thousands, displaced millions and raised fears of the worst confrontation between Russia and the United States since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Khodaryonok and Skabeyeva could not be reached for comment.
SENSE OF REALISM
The war has also exposed the post-Soviet limits of Russia’s military, intelligence, and economic power: Despite Putin’s attempts to bolster its armed forces, the Russian military has performed poorly in many battles in Ukraine.
An encirclement of Kiev was abandoned and Russia instead focused on trying to gain control of Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region. The West has supplied arms worth billions of dollars to the Ukrainian armed forces.
The story goes on
Casualties are not reported publicly, but Ukraine says Russian casualties are worse than the 15,000 Soviets killed in the 1979-1989 Soviet-Afghan war.
“The desire to defend one’s fatherland in the sense that it exists in Ukraine – it really does exist there and they intend to fight to the last,” Khodaryonok said before being interrupted by Skabeyeva.
The biggest strategic consequences of the Russian invasion so far have been the unusual unity of the United States’ European allies and offers by Sweden and Finland to join the US-led NATO military alliance.
Khodaryonok said Russia must face reality.
“The most important thing in our business is a sense of military-political realism: if you go beyond that, the reality of history will hit you so hard you don’t know what hit you,” he said.
“For heaven’s sake, don’t wave missiles at Finland – it just looks pretty weird,” he said.
Russia, he said, is isolated.
“The main flaw in our military-political position is that we are in complete geopolitical solitude and – however we don’t want to admit it – practically the whole world is against us – and we need to get out of this situation.”
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Alison Williams)