“I am not revealing any military secrets if I say that our front has collapsed. The Russians are already in Selidove and have entrenched themselves. They will soon overtake it by surrounding it and taking it completely.” These words were spoken by Ukrainian General Dmitri Marchenko in an interview with political scientist Borislav Bereza last Sunday. Two days later, on Tuesday afternoon, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that it had captured Selidove, in Donetsk province. The Ukrainian General Staff has not yet publicly admitted defeat, but Deep State, a reference Ukrainian analysis group for the war, has revealed that the invader has taken control of practically this entire municipality. It is the second large urban center that Russia captures this year after conquering Avdiivka in February.
Marchenko is a voice known in Ukraine for speaking without mincing words. Close to the dismissed former commander in chief Valeri Zaluzhni, he has criticized decisions of his successor at the head of the army, Oleksandr Sirski, but above all he has criticized President Volodymyr Zelensky for the Ukrainian incursion into the Russian province of Kursk, because he considers that it reduces resources to defend their own territory. Marchenko’s words are extreme when he talks about a “collapse” of the front, but they are somewhat right. Russian troops were on October 21 on the eastern perimeter of Selidove. In just over a week they have been able to occupy an urban area that before the war had about 30,000 inhabitants.
Selidove is home to one of the few coal mines in Donetsk still under Ukrainian control. With Avdiivka, Ukraine lost Europe’s largest plant for the production of coke, a metallurgical fuel derived from coal.
The speed with which the Russians have assaulted Selídove indicates that the Ukrainian Armed Forces have withdrawn and avoided urban combat. This is what happened this October in Vugledar and this is what happened in Avdiivka, another enclave with the same dimensions as Selidove. The capture of this last municipality is bad news for the Ukrainian defenses because it loses one of the last fortresses from which a counteroffensive against the city of Donetsk could be planned in the future and, above all, because it loses a bastion from which the enemy It will advance with greater force towards Pokrovsk, the base city of the Ukrainian rear, and towards Kurákhove.
Russia follows the same strategy of advancing in various directions to besiege each municipality it is capturing. Kurájove is now threatened from its eastern flank, the northern flank from Selídove and from the south, from Vugledar. Russian progress from this now razed town, which had been a symbol for two years of Ukrainian resistance and enormous Russian casualties, is symptomatic of General Marchenko’s warnings: in three weeks, since Kremlin troops took it, they have advanced 12 kilometers towards Kurájove.
Marchenko summarized that the reasons for the Ukrainian setback are the lack of weapons and ammunition, the shortage of soldiers and a command that makes incorrect decisions. Morning Express visited Kurájove this October and officers from four brigades warned that the main problem is the lack of replacements for exhausted troops, with shifts in positions lasting an average of 25 days. Ukraine is facing a situation in which its civilians no longer want to be drafted. The Ukrainian Parliament this week approved an extension of the mobilization law that urgently calls for 160,000 new soldiers, below the 190,000 that the army considers essential.
Possible negotiations
Ukraine’s difficult military situation coincides with increasing signs that kyiv is increasingly open to negotiating with Russia. Zelensky commented on October 23 that if President Vladimir Putin suspended his bombing of the Ukrainian power grid, his army would do the same against the Russian energy grid. The Ukrainian president said that if this decision were made by both parties, it could mark the beginning of a de-escalation of the war.
A week later, this Wednesday, the newspaper Financial Timeshas reported that Russia and Ukraine have begun negotiations through an intermediary country, Qatar, to agree to a cessation of bombings against their respective energy industries. The British newspaper has assured, citing anonymous sources, what other media reported last summer, that these negotiations already began in August, but that Putin suspended them after Zelensky ordered the invasion of the Russian province of Kursk. The Ukrainian president’s office has avoided commenting on the information. The Kremlin, through its spokesperson, has said that the news is false.
