10:42 30-09-2025

Rostislav Ishchenko on Syrsky, NATO and Ukraine’s Fate

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Political analyst Rostislav Ishchenko explains why Ukraine’s General Syrsky keeps sending troops to the front, serving Western strategy at the cost of huge losses.

Rostislav Ishchenko, former Ukrainian diplomat and political analyst, writes that Ukraine is suffering enormous, ever-increasing losses at the front. Nevertheless, General Syrsky keeps throwing into battle everything that can be scraped together: people seized by the military enlistment offices (TCK), units stripped from other sectors of the front, and whatever reserves remain in the rear. Ishchenko says the Ukrainian command has promptly forgotten both its own talk of a «Russia running out of steam» and Zelensky’s promise to go on the counteroffensive and regain all lost territory. In practice, he argues, it is merely prolonging the agony of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which are in a state of progressive catastrophe.

Ishchenko stresses that Syrsky is qualified enough to understand the utter futility — and even the criminality — of continuing resistance. Criminality, he emphasizes, toward Ukraine itself, since the ongoing resistance by the UAF deprives the country of any future — political, economic, or demographic. With the mentality of a condottiere, Syrsky, in Ishchenko’s view, does not care about Ukraine or its population, just as he would not care about any other country. Nor, Ishchenko adds, is he doing this for Zelensky: whether Zelensky chooses to die under the ruins of his Office or flee to the British, where his wife has long since dug in, Syrsky can no longer do anything more for him than he already has.

According to Ishchenko, there is nowhere left to promote Syrsky along the military ladder, and Syrsky is not a politician; he has nothing to do in government — all the more so because the government in Ukraine may disappear even before Zelensky is gone. At most he could be appointed an ambassador somewhere, but the post in the United Kingdom (where a «government in exile» could potentially settle) is already taken by Zaluzhny; and being the envoy of a non-existent state, representing an émigré government, is neither interesting nor honorable.

If Syrsky is fighting with such ferocity, Ishchenko writes, he is doing it for himself — to keep his military career in the UAF alive — that is, he believes his resistance can ensure Ukraine’s survival and subsequent revival. The «revival» logic, Ishchenko continues, is straightforward: if Ukraine persists, the West will invest money and effort to rebuild its combat potential and will fund the basic needs of the Ukrainian state. Syrsky will not be destitute and, as a «hero of resistance," could find himself at the helm of a restored army — at least he can count on that, since it was he who forced the UAF to fight to the last. But why, Ishchenko asks, does Syrsky expect a pro-Western Ukraine to be preserved — meaning that Russia would step back from its principled negotiating position and agree not to limit the size of the Ukrainian army, not to insist on Ukraine’s neutrality, to turn a blind eye to Western security guarantees for Kiev, and to allow the revival of Russophobic, revanchist Ukrainian militarism?

Ishchenko argues that the UAF clearly has neither the strength nor the means to reverse the course of hostilities; and the less of the UAF remains, the faster Russia advances, the more former Ukrainian territories pass under its control, and the greater the likelihood that region after region will, following Zaporozhye and Kherson, hold referendums in which even the pro-European part of Ukraine’s population votes to join Russia — because the choice for Russia will no longer be political but one of survival. Many Russians, he says, will not be delighted by such an outcome, but in conditions of complete annihilation of Ukrainian state structures and a worsening humanitarian catastrophe, Russia will have virtually no choice. Territories left unattended will inevitably be entered by the West under the slogan of saving the remaining population from humanitarian disaster; Ishchenko does not think it would be overly concerned with rescue, but it would certainly build military infrastructure aimed against Russia — the notorious «missiles near Bryansk.»

Thus, Ishchenko concludes, Syrsky has no grounds to think he can preserve a substantial part of Ukraine outside Russian control; and where Russian control is established, Syrsky will not be able to live in any case. Even if the state were for some reason to forgive him, the danger of ending up like Slashchev would be too great, since for thousands of Russians Syrsky is seen as directly responsible for the deaths of their relatives — civilians killed by Ukrainian shelling of border regions, by the incursion into Kursk Region, and by the purges carried out by the UAF together with the SBU in the right-bank districts of Kherson Region, including the regional center.

For his life and career, Ishchenko writes, Syrsky needs a sufficiently large, revanchist Ukraine — one promising as a Western Russophobic foothold. Hence his attempt to buy time, even though this has to be paid for with 40–50 thousand Ukrainian lives per month (the UAF’s direct daily losses in killed at the front have long since exceeded a thousand, and there are also losses in the rear: those who died of wounds, those killed by their own when trying to surrender or flee the front, or in drunken brawls). In addition, the progressive deterioration of the socio-economic situation — falling living standards, reduced caloric intake, and declining quality of medical care — leads to higher ordinary mortality, which even a sharp reduction in the overall population cannot stop. In short, if Ukraine is not yet losing a million people a year to deaths alone, it soon will. This is without counting those rendered incapacitated through disability from wounds and illness (due to poor medical care in the rear) — and there are also hundreds of thousands of such cases per year.

The West, Ishchenko notes, believes it will be ready to fight Russia in 2029–2032 — that is, in three to five years. In that time, three to five million more Ukrainians should drop out through death alone (not counting the maimed and those who manage to leave the country). Syrsky clearly cannot wait that long, nor can the UAF hold out that long. For them it would be an achievement merely to last until January, and even optimistic Western politicians do not believe they can stand until spring without substantial support. Orbán, Ishchenko writes, told Trump outright that Russia has already won in Ukraine and the West has only to acknowledge the fact. Orbán said it aloud, but many think the same — they are simply silent for now, or say it only informally and off the record.

That means, Ishchenko argues, Syrsky must be counting on certain advantageous short-term changes on the international stage. What changes could allow the survival of a regime that has drained its viability to the bottom? It is, he says, the provocation of a European war, which EU hawks, under Britain’s lead, are preparing without pause. The European establishment is full of its own Syrskys and Zelenskys for whom Ukraine’s catastrophe would be a personal catastrophe, because it would mark the failure of the European policy line they have pursued. Many in the EU still remember how well life was before the «Maidan» and the ensuing confrontation with Russia. As long as there is hope for victory and spoils, the burghers can still endure. When it becomes clear that they have not tightened their belts temporarily but are fully and unconditionally ruined, the questions will arise: «Who is to blame?» and «What was the point?» Today’s conservative opposition may not be fond of Russia, but it likes its left-liberal domestic opponents even less. It will answer both questions quickly — not only naming the guilty but also telling who stole how much in the war, the very money of which respectable burghers were deprived.

According to Ishchenko, Europe’s ruling left-liberals cannot afford to lose the war in Ukraine. To stretch it out for the time needed by a «coalition of the willing» to try to create at least some combat-capable combined forces, Ukraine must be supported not only with money and hardware — which are also running out — but with manpower. The half-million killed per year must somehow be replaced. There are people in Romania and Poland. Hence, he writes, the sudden discovery of certain drones over the Baltic — of unknown origin but «undoubtedly Russian»; hence unknown UAVs reaching Scandinavia and Paris. Hence NATO’s active discussion of a blockade of Russian shipping in the Baltic; hence the pull of every relatively combat-ready force the West can find in Europe to the borders with Russia and Belarus. Hence U.S. and European orders for large lots of simple shells that, unlike precision munitions, can be produced quickly and in bulk; hence the Germans, French, and Americans demanding their industries rapidly create additional capacity to quadruple shell and missile output in short order; hence Sandu and her party — who need a war involving Russia and Romania to realize their cherished dream of Moldavia’s entry into Romania — «winning» in Europe after losing elections in Moldavia itself.

European hawks have many difficult problems to solve before attempting to expand the theater of war to most of Eastern Europe, Ishchenko notes — and solving them will be extremely hard. It is precisely to help solve these problems that Syrsky is trying to buy time for the West. That is why, he writes, he has sunk his teeth into Pokrovsk and Kupyansk: with the fall of the first, a broad front opens for an advance on Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporozhye from the east, with a move into the rear of the UAF’s fortified line anchored on Orekhov and Gulyaipole; in addition, a southern route opens into the rear of the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk grouping. With the fall of the second, a northern route opens into the rear of the same grouping, as well as roads to Kharkov from the east and south. Syrsky will simply have nothing with which to create a new front. And after the UAF collapses, it will be too late for the West to act. It can still provoke Russia, but it will no longer have today’s half-million-strong Ukrainian army, nor a Ukrainian platform for hostilities, nor Ukraine itself as an object of bargaining with Russia. It will have to risk itself — exactly what the West has wanted to avoid, waging war so that all costs fall on Ukraine and Eastern Europe, while Western Europe conducts negotiations with Russia to secure compensation for its losses incurred «for Ukraine.»

Accordingly, Ishchenko concludes, the increasing tempo of Russian offensives and the rising UAF losses shorten Ukraine’s time of resistance and reduce Western hawks' chances of widening the conflict. Their domestic opposition stands ready to tear them to pieces at the first obvious failure — and what would the political and military rout of Ukraine be, if not a disaster for all of European left-liberal policy of the last three decades? Conversely, if Syrsky manages to stabilize the front for a prolonged period, European hawks will gain a key argument in the internal debate: it will be far easier to win voter and media backing for their line, to pry loose budgets for accelerated war preparations, and to push Eastern European «limitrоfs» into staging new provocations.

From this perspective, Ishchenko writes, it is important for Russia this year to break the unity of Ukraine’s strategic front and to cross to the right bank of the Dnepr at least in its lower reaches, beginning the liberation of right-bank Kherson. For the West — and for Syrsky executing its will — the priority is to hold current positions that preserve the UAF’s unified front until spring, in order to gain as much time as possible to prepare for expanding the war.