Ukrainians leading the offensive in the south of the country say Moscow troops have been demoralized but are progressing with difficulty
Dmitro Pletenchuk was born in Siberia in 1981. “During the Soviet Union, there were reprisals against my family, but my parents managed to return to Ukraine when I was very young,” he recalls. With the fall of the USSR, they were divided. “Many of my relatives were military, so most of them stayed in the ranks of the Russian army,” he says. However, he has been fighting for Ukraine since the outbreak of the war in Donbas in 2014 as a spokesman for the armed forces in the southern city of Mykolaiv.
From here, many of the counter-offensive’s operations have now succeeded in retaking Kherson, the main city in the hands of the Russians. Despite Pletenchuk’s assurances that his enemy is “demoralised”, the Russian missiles continue to rain in the area and the Ukrainian soldiers cannot advance as they did in Kharkov, where they carried out the dizzying counter-attack that surprised the world and forced the withdrawal. and the mobilization of the enemy. “Russia launches 500 kilogram bombs and attacks with artillery, but our armed forces are in control,” they added from their department.
Pletenchuk does not rule out that at some point he will have to fight against his own relatives. “We haven’t been in touch since 2008 because my cousins participated in the Russian invasion of Georgia. Even then we were warned that Ukraine would be next. I feel like my grandfather, who had to defend Mykolaiv during the Second World War. What has changed is the enemy,” he adds.
Ukraine says it is moving slowly, but Moscow is stubborn in calling the counteroffensive a failure. Both sides say they have inflicted many more casualties than the enemy: Ukraine claims it killed 400 Russian soldiers yesterday — more than 55,000 since the invasion began — and Russia replies that Ukraine has lost more than 1,700 soldiers in the first two days of the invasion alone. Kherson counter-offensive.
As both sides do their best to get their chests out, Ukraine is increasingly becoming a country in ruins. An example of the massive destruction it suffers is the headquarters of the Mykolaiv Public Administration, before whose blackened skeleton Pletenchuk speaks with EL CORREO. From the small remains of the top floor, full of rubble, the soldier points his finger at the Mykolaiv shipyards and emphasizes one of the great ironies of the war: “This is where the ‘Moskva’ was built in 1979, the flagship of the Russian Navy that we sank in April.
Despite this, the army is mainly concerned about the Russian naval forces. “The greatest threat is warships in the Black Sea. The missiles they launch give Russia a significant advantage,” he says. They are the perfect vantage point from which to attack the city and play a key role in stifling Ukrainian trade.
“Vladimir Putin’s real aim is to further spread his imperialist desire and reach Trasnistria, where he already has a certain military presence, and attack the rest of Moldova from there,” he continues. Pletenchuk is convinced that the Russian president wants to revive the Soviet Union, whose fall Putin considers “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century”. For this reason, Pletenchuk argues that the West should continue to support the Ukrainian resistance without a break. “If we don’t stop Russia now, it will continue its imperialist expansion across Europe, just like Hitler or Stalin did,” he warns.
To achieve his goal, Pletenchuk considers the weapons sent by the United States and Europe to be vital. “Since they took control of Mariupol, it is easier for the Russians to supply themselves, and they have more weapons than we do. But Ukraine has a professional and motivated army. We fight for our country, while the Russians don’t know why they are doing it. And money is not enough motivation to die,” he shoots, knowing that if his offensive fails, Mykolaiv could fall and clear the way for Ukraine’s main port, Odessa.
Source: La Verdad
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