Russian advance in Ukraine stalls, and Moscow doubts Russia can win the war.

Moscow"This isn't looking good for you. You've been fighting for four years in a war that should have lasted a week. Are you a paper tiger?" These are the words Donald Trump claims to have spoken to Vladimir Putin during their meeting in Alaska on August 15. At that time, the Russian army had just made an alarming advance for Ukrainian troops on the Pokrovsk front in Donetsk. A month and a half later, Kiev has managed to contain the situation, and although it continues to suffer in some areas, voices in Moscow are growing doubtful that Russia is capable of defeating Ukraine.

During the month of September, Russian soldiers conquered 259 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory, the smallest amount since April, according to data from the DeepState military analysis project. This is 44% less than in August and represents 0.04% of Ukraine's entire surface area.

The Kremlin has refuted Trump's statements, asserting that Russia "is not a paper tiger, but a bear" and clarifying that "there are no paper bears." Furthermore, the official position of the Russian government, which it never tires of repeating, is that His troops have the initiative on all fronts and nothing can reverse the dynamics of war.

Now, the US president's provocation has exhausted the patience of one of Putin's greatest critics, Igor Girkin. This ultranationalist colonel, guilty of unleashing the war in the Donbas in 2014, is imprisoned for questioning the Russian president's strategy in Ukraine, and regularly writes letters in which he assesses current military affairs. In one of his latest texts, he asks for the first time: "If we can't win the war, should we abandon it?"

Girkin believes that the circumstances are "extremely serious" and are "constantly deteriorating." "Unfortunately, I don't see any prospect of a quick victory over Ukraine, or even that it will ever happen," he laments. According to the soldier, "someone will have to be held accountable for the reckless plans, completely disconnected from the real operational situation, which have led to serious defeats, setbacks, and enormous losses."

Girkin's complaint echoes a recent allegation by a Russian soldier from the Pokrovsk front. In a message on his Telegram channel, Aleksander Zaborovsky criticizes the commanders' recklessness as meaning that all those deployed will be "wiped out" within a maximum of two months. He explains that the pressure from drones and the Russian army's inability to repel them makes it very difficult to supply the front line, fifty kilometers from supply depots. "Now we're already moving two by two, but if we don't control the skies, we'll cover those fifty kilometers over corpses. And then what?" he concludes.

Russia bases much of its tactics on numerical superiority. The number of new soldiers hired has stagnated in recent months, but it's still sufficient to provide the front line with far more men than Ukraine. At the same time, it also pays a very high price for advancing on the ground. with assault operations that leave hundreds of victims daily. And yet, it's not enough to break Kiev's defensive lines. The most pro-war sectors, including Girkin, believe that only a new mandatory mobilization, like the one in September 2022, could tip the balance in Moscow's favor, but the Kremlin doesn't seem willing to bear the political cost of this decision.

Ukrainian optimism with nuances

From Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky boasts that the Russian summer offensive has been "thwarted" and that it has not achieved any of its intended objectives. Ukrainian military commander-in-chief Oleksandr Sirsky claims that Moscow's plans to create a security zone in the northern regions of Sumi and Kharkiv to advance toward Pokrovsk and capture all of Donetsk have not been successful.

However, DeepState analysts downplay the official Ukrainian optimism. According to their observations, There are three points that are particularly difficult for Kiev's troops: The most worrying, from their point of view, is Novopavlivka (Zaporizia), where they point out that "the latest personnel decisions do not inspire much hope for improvement"; the second is Kupiansk (Kharkiv), which, "if decisions had not been taken in time, could have ended in tragedy," the experts point out, although "it is too early to say that the threat has passed," and the third, Pokrovsk, where, although the Ukrainian army is much more than recovered, "high."