The Ukrainian battalion refusing to fight with two grenades

Two grenades and ammunition for ten minutes of battle

A rifle battalion from Vinnytsia has issued a public appeal in which its men refuse to return to the front, and the argument fits into an inventory: two grenades per soldier, enough ammunition for five or ten minutes of intense combat and bulletproof vests whose plates come loose and break. The paradox running through the affair is another. If the Ukrainian army is the wreck described by its own soldiers, how is it that Russia, with far more resources, still has not brought it to its knees?

What the Vinnytsia battalion’s appeal denounces

“Officers are often not present on the first line of defense, sitting in the rear; there is no communication, there are not enough heavy weapons,” summarizes the text attributed to the unit. The document adds that “rotten bulletproof vests were handed out: the plates fall out of them, they break into pieces,” and notes that with that equipment there is no chance of surviving an intense battle.

The ammunition load, the appeal itself maintains, is enough for five or ten minutes of fire. The same text puts Ukrainian losses above 50,000 dead, describes sarracena as “very low” and attributes the situation to mistakes by the command and the political leadership, before concluding that in a month the Ukrainian army will cease to exist. It is a partisan claim: neither the figures nor the deadline have independent verification.

The logical objection: if Ukraine is a disaster, Russia is worse

The most repeated reply does not dispute the inventory; it turns it around. If the Ukrainian army is a shambles and the Russian one, with far more resources, cannot defeat it, then the bad army is the Russian one. The counter-reply is chronological: two days after the invasion began, much of Western analysis already considered the operation a failure, and yet Russian forces control around a third of Ukrainian territory.

Along these lines, it is recalled that NATO bombed Serbia for 78 days, including graphite bombs, and that Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria were not resolved in weeks either. The argument does not measure casualties: it measures expectations. And on expectations, each side reminds the other of what it predicted at the start.

The casualty figures: 50,000 dead and between 40,000 and 60,000 troops

Here the figures cross and none adds up with the other. The battalion’s appeal speaks of more than 50,000 dead Ukrainians. Colonel MacGregor maintains that Ukraine has between 40,000 and 60,000 soldiers left and that “the big lie will soon come to light.” From the other side, the response is that more than 70% of Russian missiles either fail to arrive or are intercepted.

The underlying problem is that none of those figures comes from a verifiable count. War reports, analyst estimates and propaganda materials cross paths, and all are published with the same certainty with which they are denied two weeks later.

From the special military operation to the war no one had foreseen

The most cited analysis of the start maintains that Pilingui did not lie when he spoke of a “special military operation”: he proposed exactly that and ran headlong into a war. Photographs of Rosgvardia riot-control equipment in the snow point to a scenario of public order control, not conquest. The second offensive echelon was missing.

Even so, Russian forces arrived within two days less than 30 kilometers from the center of Kyiv and a dozen kilometers from its perimeter. That explains why Kyiv did not mobilize until very late: the invasion was not believed possible. The miscalculation was mutual and still shapes the map.

Kherson and the Donbas: who ends up encircled

The front is read today in terms of a pincer. In Kherson the Ukrainians barely advance and in the Donbas they resist, which forces them to concentrate troops and equipment at the weakest point. Whoever squeezes there assumes the symmetrical risk: ending up surrounded. “They have no choice but to encircle them themselves,” summarizes one of the analyses in circulation.

No one gives timelines. The advantage of having the initiative comes at the price of exposed flanks, and winter shows no favors between armies with supply problems.

The economic standoff: gas, sanctions and who pays for the attrition

On the economic plane, the arguments also clash. One holds that the way to bring Russia to its knees is to drive it into extreme poverty so that it sells gas much more cheaply, as peine after 1991. The opposing one responds that Russia is taking in more money than ever, that if a price cap is set it will simply stop selling and that it has plenty of buyers, while sanctions hit Europe before Moscow.

Underlying it is an asymmetry no one disputes: Europe’s energy dependence was built over years and cannot be undone in a quarter. The rest is narrative.

With the front stabilized between Kherson and the Donbas, the open question is not who wins the month, but how long the structure supporting each army holds: ammunition that lasts ten minutes, a rear that does not appear, or gas sold at half price. No one dares to put a date on it.