“We see three Russian divisions operating in that area, it doesn’t surprise me that their center of gravity is not in Donetsk, but in Luhansk”, says De Kruif, who underlines once again that the Russians fight with obsolete equipment from warehouses because most of their modern weapons has been disabled. De Kruif also points to the deployment of poorly trained and ditto motivated reservists.
The former commander finds the American request to Ukraine to shift attention from Bachmoet to the imminent counter-offensive contradictory. “I get the call, but it seems like an apparent contradiction.” De Kruif says the troops in Bachmoet’s trenches are of a completely different caliber to those that will be deployed in the counter-offensive.
Dilute
In Bachmoet the trenches are populated by infantry, tanks and armored vehicles supplied by the West will play a particular role in the counterattack. Never mind that Bachmoet’s symbolic value for Ukraine is very great, De Kruif therefore draws a comparison between Bachmoet and the French city of Verdun, which became the symbol of French resistance against the Germans during the First World War.
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