Panic is growing in Kiev as the Ukrainian lines are collapsing in the Donbass. “Ukraine is slowly descending into a panic regarding the collapse of the Donbass front, and in fact that collapse is seemingly accelerating. Some semblance of a normalcy bias continues to grip the more obdurate observers, but the keen-eyed are seeing the writing on the wall,” wrote Simplicius in an Aug. 28 situation report. To give a sense of the panic, he quotes both a top Ukrainian military channel, called Deepstate UA, calling the situation “complete chaos” and former Ukrainian presidential advisor Alexey Arestovych, calling the situation around Pokrovsk an “operational crisis.” He added that Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada “Deputy [Oleskii] Goncharenko was beside himself, calling the situation catastrophic. He added that after Pokrovsk, the road to the entire Dnieper will be wide open.”
Simplicius cited several locations where Russian forces had made rapid advances, but noted that events on the front line were moving so fast that his review of those was probably already out of date by the time he was writing. Then he warned:
“In light of the ongoing collapse, the potential for dangerous escalation rises because Zelenskyy gets increasingly desperate to engineer some kind of black swan event that could overturn the table and upend events. With this in mind there continue to be a slew of rumors for what Zelenskyy’s next move might be.” Rumors of a Ukrainian buildup in Zaporozhye might be one indication of one possibility. However, the nuclear threat looms large here as the Kiev regime’s backers are “on the final precipice of potentially” giving Kiev permission to strike strategic targets inside Russia with intermediate range weapons.
Simplicius cited the Russian Telegram channel “Pint of Reason” complaining that “Moscow has chosen the tactics of the notorious ‘red lines,’ which are now gradually turning into an incomprehensible vinaigrette. That is, they are slowly being crossed and moved on.” Therefore: “The only way to change the situation now is through an escalation that is ahead of schedule. That is, the stakes will have to be raised sharply, unilaterally, and higher than the U.S. and EU countries have done.” That is, Russia will have to declare that, in the event of such strategic strikes, “Russia will immediately and without fail strike military facilities of countries supplying weapons to Ukraine. And if the North Atlantic Alliance reacts in response, it will respond with nuclear weapons (initially limited, in a tactical manner),” testing “NATO’s own red lines.”
Simplicius noted that, while he doesn’t fully agree with this viewpoint, he presents it as appropriate for reflection.
