Transcript of today’s NewsX World interview on Zelensky and Russia’s encirclement of Pokrovsk

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NewsX World: 4:10
–secure supply routes and push back Russian infiltration. Russian forces have been advancing towards Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region for over a year, seeking to consolidate control over eastern Ukraine and push into neighboring the Dnipropetrovsk region. We now are joined by Gilbert Doctorow. He is a Russia affairs expert, and he joins us live from St. Petersburg in Russia.

Okay, let’s start with the Vlodymyr Zelensky statement that we just heard, Gilbert. Of course, Zelensky describes the fighting in Pokrovsk and Kuryansk and says Russia is turning Ukraine into destroyed cities. Now of course Russia pitches this war as liberating the country of Ukraine. How would you respond to the claim that Russia’s operations in these areas are liberating, rather than coercive?

Doctorow: 5:13
Well, they are very destructive, of course. But the important thing to note is how this is proceeding over a long period of time. They have not staged, the Russians have not staged any massive assaults on major defended cities like Pokrovsk. They have encircled them. In the case of the latest news, they say that they have completely encircled Pakrovsk. And the remarks by Zelensky are an attempt to counter the image of a city where 5,000 or more soldiers are facing slaughter as they are surrounded.

5:53
The fact is that the war is dominated by the move to drones. Mr. Zelensky is unable to resist the Russian advances with manpower. He is short of manpower in many of the critical points of the more than 1,500 kilometer long line of confrontation and Pokrovsk is one of them. But what we see, or I see, watching the Russian state news reports from the front and interviews with soldiers at the front is that the Ukrainians are trying to prevent Russian advance not by putting soldiers on the ground, because they are short of soldiers, but by using very intensive drone attacks on the advancing Russian forces.

6:44
In fact, as a result of the ever-present “birdies” as they call them, Russian forces are using small units, not full front lines of advance. And this is the peculiarity of the present stage of the war, that there are five, six, eight soldiers forming an attack unit, not a whole brigade. The effectiveness of the drone counterattacks is considerable, let us not underestimate it. Nonetheless, it remains true that the Ukrainian forces are surrounded and if– and that Mr. Putin is satisfied that this is so and has invited Western media, Western press to come and see for themselves.

NewsX Wowld: 7:37
Gilbert, assuming Russia eventually controls Pokrovsk, what is the vision for the area? Full integration into Russia, autonomy under Russian patronage or something else possibly?

Doctoorow:
Well let’s look at the borders. We’re speaking now of a fortified town, part of the effort of the Ukrainians to have a series of retreating points as they had been pushed back by the Russians. But this is not the whole of Ukraine. This is an important city in the oblast or province of Donetsk.

8:19
Donetsk has been, is one of two oblasts or provinces that constitute the so-called Donbass, a largely industrial base that was predominantly Russian-populated when it was first incorporated into Ukraine, shortly after the Russian Revolution of 1917. So this is a Russian-speaking part of Ukraine which was being subjected to very harsh discrimination of the Ukrainian nationalists who took power in 2014. It is not the whole of Ukraine. The Russian advance from Pokrovsk will be to the next two points of fallback for the Ukrainians, which are Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.

These names may not mean very much to the global audience, but I’d like to point out an important fact. They are about halfway or two-thirds of the way towards the River Dnieper in the oblast of Donetsk. And they were, in 2014, what is called the cradle of the Renaissance of Russian nationalism. They stood for, I forget, 85 days, I think, these little towns with just local militia. They stood up against the Ukrainian army in what the Russians could describe as their version of the last stand of the Alamo.

9:53
This is a term that has great significance to any American viewers of this program. It was a show of heroism in a hopeless cause. In fact, the objective of the Russians is to return to Kramatorsk and Sloviansk from which there was a clean sweep straight to the Dnieper River and to the reconquest or conquest of the entire Donbas.

NewsX World:
Yes. Yes, Gilbert Doctorow, thank you very much for that insight and for joining us and taking the time here on News X World. And of course you can follow us here on the channel for all your Russia-Ukraine updates.

10:36
But next we move over to North America for our next update.