Simplicitus's Ukraine Situation Report: Previously 'Unthinkable' Now Reality, as Zelensky Floats Resignation on SMO's 3rd Anniversary

Well, that went more rapidly than I had anticipated. Another glass ceiling has been shattered as the previously-unspeakable becomes common reality: Zelensky announces that he’s ready to resign...

By Simplicius

Well, that went more rapidly than I had anticipated. Another glass ceiling has been shattered as the previously-unspeakable becomes common reality: Zelensky announces that he’s ready to resign immediately in exchange for Ukraine’s entry into NATO.

All it seemed to take was a few tweets from Musk, and Zelensky’s already drawing up evacuation plans.

Political schemer Arestovich outlined his predictions for Zelensky’s fate:

But while I use Zelensky’s pronouncement to dress the stage, the main intention was to use this brief report as a battlefield update, given that we haven’t done a proper frontline Sitrep in a while. Part of it had to do with the slow-down on the front, partly due to weather and partly to Russian forces taking a breather. Now there are indications that higher-intensity hostilities are restarting on a number of fronts.

The most unexpected was toward Seversk, where Russian forces of the 7th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade were said to have finally captured the indomitable fortress of Belgorovka:

I call it a fortress somewhat tongue-in-cheek, as the area has changed sides many times, and is a rather small but inexplicably intractable section of the front that Russian forces have not been able to decisively break for years. Its seizure now appears to point to the long-expected flagging of Ukrainian defenses all across the frontline.

This is particularly the case given Ukrainian territorial losses elsewhere—in fact this is only the second ‘Belgorovka’ to be captured recently, as another one just northwest near the Terny front was also taken weeks ago. Russian forces, likely of the 4th Guards Tank Army and 144th Motor Rifle Division, had only just crossed the Zherebets river near Terny last month, and now are also advancing in the old Lyman direction:

The white line shows the river and reservoirs which Russians had only recently crossed. The objective is to reestablish the old Lyman line as a precursor to assaults on Slavyansk and Kramatorsk.

Meanwhile, in the Kupyansk district, Russian forces have continued expanding the ‘lodgement’ over the Oskil river into a whole new front. Further down on the Chasov Yar front, Suriyak reports modest Russian advances several days ago:

Situation on Chasov Yar front: During the last seven days Russian Army made important advance south of the town taking full control over "Krab" forest area reaching the outskirts of Stupochky village.

On the Pokrovsk front, Russian forces are expanding westward:

There are other small advances here as well, on the eastern line near Pokrovsk, with Berezovka being captured two days ago. There is no particular strategy, but rather as Ukrainian officers have recently described, Russian forces are continuously probing for weaknesses along the front, and simply making opportunistic advances wherever there’s a gap. Then they consolidate these advances and tactically decide on how to turn them into advantageous mini-cauldrons to further weaken and pressure enemy forces there.

To zoom in closer on the Kurakhove front just south of there, we can see that Russia has collapsed most of the grand Kurakhove cauldron, which is roughly shown by the yellow circle below:

The red circle is where the current advances have been taking place, into Konstantinopl, which has created another mini-cauldron between Andreevka above. For comparison, here’s an image of the region from January, showing how much Russian forces have captured there in several weeks’ time:

Just a bit southwest from there, Russian forces—after a hiatus—are again advancing on the Velyka Novoselka front. Areas north of Novy Komar were just captured, as well as Novoselka and adjoining areas to its east, all circled in red below:

A close up on Novy Komar, showing Novoocheretuvate and other areas all captured over the past two or three days:

Russian forces are essentially advancing along the Mokry Yaly river there. Not far away on the borders of Dnipropetrovsk region, the AFU is scrambling to erect defensive structures, but there’s only one problem:

There were a few other minor advances to the west, on the Zaporozhye line near Orekhov, as well as many other much smaller ones in general near Pokrovsk, north of Chasov Yar, on the Svatove front, etc.

But the last most significant advances occurred in Kursk, where Russian forces finally captured Sverdlokovo, and are now expanding a salient eastward out of it:

Yes, the Kursk front has now reached its six month anniversary, and many are mystified how or why it’s taking Russia so long to clean it up. The easiest answer is that Ukraine is feeding vast amounts of resources there, including its best remaining equipment—Challengers, Leopards, etc. Just today alone, Swedish CV-90s and Abrams tanks were again spotted there. Meanwhile, F-16s have allegedly been spotted operating in the Sumy region nearby in support of the Kursk troops, while Ukraine’s remaining powerful AD systems have been brought up: today an S-300 was just seen destroyed right on the Kursk border, potentially by a Russian Orion drone:

The density and concentration of Ukrainian troops in the Kursk region is currently the highest of any front. Drone footage regularly shows entire platoons of troops moving about, as opposed to the odd one or two-man stragglers now so common to see.

But let’s turn to a related topic. Respected Ukrainian ‘reserve officer’ and analyst Tatarigami recently rejected the notion that Ukraine would collapse in six months without Western aid:

He interestingly keeps repeating the ‘no sudden collapse’ mantra, without ever qualifying the time scale himself. Perhaps instead of six months, he believes the collapse will happen in eight or twelve instead. Either way, it’s silly to argue that the total deprivation of US supplies would not lead to a Ukrainian defeat eventually.

But this all brings up a greater point: he’s deliberately focusing on the military aspect to gin up hopes. But when most people speak of collapse, it’s not merely from the military dimension, but as a totality of the Ukrainian state. I have stated multiple times myself that it’s more likely that Ukraine will ultimately lose via internal revolution leading to some kind of capitulation, rather than military defeat. The cutting off of US aid has far greater dimensions than just military: it will result in a lot of internal political and moral turmoil, which will greatly exacerbate the potentialities for a regime collapse.

Just look at what happened now: the mere suggestion of Trump cutting off supplies and leaning on Zelensky has led to the unprecedented talk of Zelensky resigning, which has already brought regime and state collapse one step closer to fruition. Now imagine this six months down the line or so, if events continue along the current trajectory.

If the war was fought on a purely military scale, with no outside factors involved, then certainly the current pace would be on course for several more years of fighting. But things don’t happen in a vacuum like that: every political exigency affects the military, social, moral, and economic spheres. Ukraine is now in political crisis, and without the previous “optimism” of staunch US support, societal support could quickly collapse, leading to a crisis spiral that will have repercussions on everything.

The fact is, war itself is fought in many spheres and domains. It was Gerasimov, according to the West, who underlined this in his infamous ‘doctrine’ about new generation warfare, where the military sphere is just one small—and sometimes subordinate—aspect. As such, Russia doesn’t need to defeat Ukraine “purely” on the battlefield—it is already defeating the combined West on the hybrid battlefield, which includes all possible intersecting spheres and dimensions.

This is why it’s foolish to bean-count armor losses or territorial shifts by the square meter, using sterile metrics as ‘proof’ that Russia is advancing too slowly to win any time soon. Russia’s real ‘advances’ are not so easily quantifiable and are clearly paying massive dividends considering the enemy leader has literally just floated resignation. Of course, that’s not to say the war would end with Zelensky’s departure; but it could certainly enter another terminal phase favoring Russia.

That said, as the politico-social aspects take a nosedive in Ukraine, Russia is set to turn the screws by applying even more military pressure to accelerate things. This spring we can expect renewed offensives on many different fronts. In accordance with this, there continue to be persistent rumors that Russian forces are gearing up to storm the Dnieper river in order to seize Kherson.

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