I suggest that the answers may not be related directly.
To 1: The ZNPP is well defended. They have been constantly attacking it, and Russia must have created strong fortifications. And even if they could get it, what would they do with it? They would be unable to use it, and threaten with it cannot really be done without also contaminating the Ukraine and its western partners.
To 2: This may have been a test. A test of NATO equipment and strategies. NATO needed to know if in today's world of drones and missiles it was still possible to use standard NATO strategies.
Ukraine HAS been attacking the Zaporozhia NPP for 2 years now, and the compliant western media has been performing all sorts of verbal gymnastics to suggest that Russia has been simultaneously defending the plant and attacking it. Most recently there was the ridiculous story about Russia 'starting fires' on the grounds of the ZNPP. Rafael Grossi of the IAEA has also been covering for Ukraine's attempts to cause a nuclear accident.
They made a mistake in fact by destroying their own Dam, because the goal was not ZNPP but avoid RF to go West to Odessa and co..or later touch blackrock new 'properties'.Probably another MI6 idea?
But why didn't Ukraine follow up on their threats to capture the ZNPP? That would have been a HUGE success for Ukraine, both militarily and politically.
The Kurchatov NPP was an opportunistic target inside a larger objective -- to move the red lines.
The ZNPP is a hard target. Yeah, it is close to the front lines. And that is exactly the problem. We saw how it went last year. It's not at all easy to get to it -- there is either a river to cross, even after the dam was blown up last year (now there are quick sands, mud, and newly grown vegetation where the dam used to be, but no roads, i.e. it is hard to cross with heavy armor), or you have really only one path to get there, i.e. a bottleneck and a fire bag. Which has been well prepared since early 2023.
Meanwhile in Kursk there were no defenses. So you could just go for it where resistance was weakest.
Then the most important factor was that it was official Russian territory.
Go back to September 2022, when the Kremlin did the annexations. What were the analysts saying? This changes everything, now these regions are under the Russian nuclear umbrella. I still have it imprinted in my mind how Scott Ritter was running his mouth for several weeks after that about "you have to understand, this is now mother Russia, forever". Then the botox midget pulled out of Kherson, once again without a fight, and didn't even have the basic decency to face the cameras, but sent Shoigu and Suroviking to take the PR damage for him. And we never heard such rhetoric anymore.
This was followed by intensification of strikes, HIMARS started hitting Crimea (despite Shoigu very publicly coming out and saying that there would be an immediate response to "decision making centers" after the first such strikes), then the Storm Shadows and later the ATACMS were rolled out too.
As a consequence, most people decided that the Kremlin is indeed, after all, treating the four new regions differently, i.e. as not really Russia. Crimea too.
Well, we were all wrong -- the Kremlin was in fact treating federal subjects 84 to 89 the same way it is treating federal subjects 01 to 83 (OK, perhaps 77 and 78, or just 77 are indeed different). That is, none of them is actually under the nuclear umbrella.
The invasion in Kursk made that a firmly established precedent. Which is the main gain for NATO here. That they didn't get to the Kurchatov NPP isn't that big of a failure once you look at it that way.
Your 'logic' implies one side is interested in the preservation of human lives and the other isn't. Which may well be true, a terrible indictment of the West.
My comment is two weeks after you posted and I haven't read all the other comments. The nuclear power plant is secondary to the primary goal of escalation of tension, which they thought would be better driving into Russia. The one single goal of Ukraine, Israel and the US and European neocons is to increase the chance of war. There are many broken window economists thinking war will stimulate manufacturing in the West, stem the hemorrhage of decline of NATO's importance and keep the people in power where they are. Apart from this fallacy being simplistic, it overlooks most of the main reasons the West is declining which is debt, outsourcing, corruption and weakening monopoly of their energy cartels.
They are simplisticly thinking a big war will do what WWII did for the US, but of course, so many of the conditions are different that this won't work. With this in mind, see everything they do as an effort to escalate and provide sources of new propaganda to their populations which are generally not in favour of massive global war.
ZNPP has international observers stationed within and reporting to people/groups independent of the combatants.
As far as anyone has reported, KNPP does not.
And besides, the Ukies have been trying to get ZNPP since the start of the SMO, and been unsuccessful with each attempt. Their losses have been big and wasteful.
I suspect KNPP was an attempt to try to do to it, what they could not do to the KNPP.
My conspiranoic contribution: The Kursk invasion was a russian Maskorivka (trap) to lure the ukrainian military leadership to send their best, elite units operating in the Donbass, away from it with the bait of the KNPP...
Facts:
1. There were no mines, nor fortifications for many kilometers.
2. The russians were certainly aware of the sudden concentration of ukrainian troops in the border.
3. The invaded area is mostly unpopulated.
4. Syrsky/Zelensky took the bait and now the russian regular army is pushing west easily in Donbass.
5. The russians sent their own elite units, chechen Akhmat (headed by their famous, celebrated general Apty Aludinov), Wagner, Spetsnaz to easily hunt those ukrainian elite units along NATO "specialists"... So far, around 9,000 have been killed and plenty of tanks, APCs, IFVs, MLRSs, destroyed... It has been quite an effective and quick attrition...
What ELSE could have the Russian Armed Forces asked for?
And what reasonable explanation could have the ukrainians give for this stupidity?
In total, during the battles in the Kursk direction, the enemy lost more than 10,400 servicemen, 81 tanks, 41 infantry fighting vehicles, 74 armored personnel carriers, 599 armored combat vehicles, 339 vehicles, 76 artillery pieces, 24 multiple launch rocket systems, including: seven M142 HIMARS and five M270 MLRS made in the United States, eight launchers of anti-aircraft missile systems, two loading and transport vehicles, 19 electronic warfare stations, seven counter-battery radars, two air defense radars, eight units of engineering equipment, incl. two technical mine-clearing vehicles and one UR-77 mine-clearing installation.
My 50 Cents: I don`t think Kursk was a Maskirovka. The chechen Major General Apty Alaudinov admitted in a recent TASS interview (Sept 4) that the situation in Kursk was very difficult in the beginning and that the Russian forces initially had problems to locate the Ukrainians.
In the meantime, most of the fertile land in Ukraine is owned by Blackrock, Vanguard & Co via the infamous land lease deals: I provide you credit for weapons and your land is the collateral. Of course, Urkaine can`t repay those loans and there we have the scheme.
Western oligarchs simply don`t want "their" new land wasted by a nuclear incident involving ZNPP. And since the 5th column (Nabiullina & Co) is still very strong within Russia and Russian army as well, they help to secure that aim.
Kursk was poor advice to Ukraine by their NATO handlers. They simply don`t understand Russian combined warfare.
Is Bank of America still the biggest shareholder in Blackrock... and isn't it interesting that Berkshire Hathaway has sold $6 billion of its shares the past 4 months. Recession coming, and those holding Ukrainian debt, like the UK, are in for a ride.
I'd imagine we're ALL in for a ride, sooner or later. But the Nasties want to take down the US, and so what better way to do it than to go to war, impoverishing the Peeps while enriching the Nasties, and killing as many birds with one stone as they are able...
My 2 cents: Kursk attack was an opportunistic attack, directed and ordered, planned? by nato (USA). Russians by some amazing sloppiness left that oblast unguarded. I don’t believe it was some sly plan and trap, simply a huge mistake.
The hope of Ukrainians was again like the last year offensive that somehow panic in Russia would ensue and dramatic shifts in the main line of contact would be possible, followed by al-in attack.
KNPP may very well be the hastily determined goal, but I still think the whole thing was opportunistic, without some grand or deep long term strategic idea. Perhaps they believed they could hold it long enough to stage a referendum and “annex” the region.
For nato it may still be a win. It increased the number of KIA. As you correctly stated, to nato all these Ukrainian soldiers are potential Human Resources of future Russia. The more people die, the bigger success for nato.
For NATO, it was a huge win. It shifted the discussion from Ukrainian defeat to Russian incompetence, all we need is one more aid package, one no-fly zone, one small NATO expeditionary force, and Victory Will Be Ours!
Hi Piquet - Re your question "Other than the desire for publicity, why did Ukraine attack the Kursk Oblast and not attack the ZNPP?" - all our responses are guesses, so here is my guess:
Tony Shafer mentions that besides the Kursk Nuclear Plant, there is also a nuclear arms cache in Kursk. I haven't seen any maps of where this Kursk cache might be, but possession of Russian nuclear arms would certainly be a great achievement for Ukraine (more so even than a NPP) - so if Tony is right about its existence, I would guess that the aim was to capture the Nuclear Arms cache in Kursk.
Because Ukraine isn't making the decisions, the US is.
And because the IDEA is to poke the bear until the bear submits to a Nuclear War, so the US and all the Nasties in it, and elsewhere, can test out their new weaponry on Humanity, which is the nuclear bomb that doesn't irradiate everything all over everywhere, it just KILLS PEOPLE.
Because that is a Very Big Part of what is going on! CULLING THE HERD.
I don't think the Ukrainians should be assaulting any NPPs. If there's another Chernobyl in Zaparozhe that will be catastrophic for the region and especially the rich farmland surrounding the Dniper.
Putin apparently does not believe the Western narrative that the Ukie motive for the Kursk incursion was to capture the power plant. Today at the EEF, he listed what he deems to be their motives and this was not among them.
It is the British faction in Nato that organized the all thing, you can see their signature on everything, pure terrorism with no result like in Syria. UK (brits) is bankrupted, even L Truss said it two weeks ago. Confirmed by bojo this week and and the new PM. Stealing RU ressources is the only way they can avoid bankruptcy. UK and EU can not print QE forever like US does and even for the US there are limits coming as when you pay more than one trillion in just interest every 2 or three months this is just unsustainable even for yankees.
Governments/Armies in Losing Wars attempt Last Resort Attacks. Germany in WW2 with the Battle of the Bulge, a Failed Attempt to get to Antwerp Belgium.
Probably because, to get to ZNPP, you have to fight through 70 km of hostile territory, with no ability to protect your supply line because you have to turn sideways to get to ZNPP, through a known well-manned and well-fortified area. While KNPP is only 60 km away, but you can bulge a salient out to it, and the width of the salient will protect your supply lines. Plus, the predpolye was unfortified, so you get 10-20 km for free. :)
We see it did have some sort of a plan or mechanism in place to halt any incursion.
Honestly, I'm at a loss to explain why Ukraine went into Kursk, but I tried to answer the question posed as best as possible - why KNPP and not ZNPP. But the Kursk incursion, on it's own merit and not when considered as the only alternative to Zaporozhie incursion, doesn't seem workable in the real world. I think no public commentator adequately explained it. So the best explanation I can offer is to quote Martyanov: they are ignoramuses and live in lala land where Patton was a military genius. :) Which is to say, to understand why they went into Kursk, we'd first have to reconstruct the headspace of people who came up with this plan (the "elites"). And that's difficult because those people live in a different reality than us normal folk ("normal folk" here includes also the common peoples of the West).
Just P R action for Harris '' look we spent hundreds of billions'' but Ukraine is winning even more ''winning'' they (we) invaded Russia,it was worth the investment...it also helps P R of lost politicians in the EU like desperate Macron, Sholtz etc...who have collapsed the economy of their country for years.
The Kursk raid was a desperate long shot gamble, but it did have a non-trivial probability of success. They did achieve the element of surprise. They did manage to assemble and deploy several armored brigades, supported by other mechanized units and some novel ECM technologies which temporarily compromised Russian communications and drone operations. And, had this operation been lead by the likes of a Heinz Guderian, it might have completed the sprint to the KNPP, surrounded it, captured it, filled it with explosives (in particular the new and spent fuel rod storage units), and then held the facility hostage while initiating negotiations with Moscow.
Would that have been a real game-changer? Nobody knows for sure, but desperate men are known to take desperate gambles when they have no other cards to play. Put yourself in Syrsky's shoes. What other options does he have other than a fighting retreat to the Dneiper? And hold there for how long? Ukraine's economy is in the toilet and US/EU funding is about to dry up.
I propose that the only rational option remaining now is a military coup to displace the corrupt bandits that have been robbing the country blind for the past decade. He still has enough firepower left for that.
You are asking two questions:
1) Why does the urkaine not go after ZNPP
and
2) Why Kursk?
I suggest that the answers may not be related directly.
To 1: The ZNPP is well defended. They have been constantly attacking it, and Russia must have created strong fortifications. And even if they could get it, what would they do with it? They would be unable to use it, and threaten with it cannot really be done without also contaminating the Ukraine and its western partners.
To 2: This may have been a test. A test of NATO equipment and strategies. NATO needed to know if in today's world of drones and missiles it was still possible to use standard NATO strategies.
Ukraine HAS been attacking the Zaporozhia NPP for 2 years now, and the compliant western media has been performing all sorts of verbal gymnastics to suggest that Russia has been simultaneously defending the plant and attacking it. Most recently there was the ridiculous story about Russia 'starting fires' on the grounds of the ZNPP. Rafael Grossi of the IAEA has also been covering for Ukraine's attempts to cause a nuclear accident.
But attacking with artillery, not ground forces.
They made a mistake in fact by destroying their own Dam, because the goal was not ZNPP but avoid RF to go West to Odessa and co..or later touch blackrock new 'properties'.Probably another MI6 idea?
But why didn't Ukraine follow up on their threats to capture the ZNPP? That would have been a HUGE success for Ukraine, both militarily and politically.
Because good defense, zero surprise effect.
...and an impassable approach. The reservoir bottom is probably still unable to support heavy mechanized equipment.
The Kurchatov NPP was an opportunistic target inside a larger objective -- to move the red lines.
The ZNPP is a hard target. Yeah, it is close to the front lines. And that is exactly the problem. We saw how it went last year. It's not at all easy to get to it -- there is either a river to cross, even after the dam was blown up last year (now there are quick sands, mud, and newly grown vegetation where the dam used to be, but no roads, i.e. it is hard to cross with heavy armor), or you have really only one path to get there, i.e. a bottleneck and a fire bag. Which has been well prepared since early 2023.
Meanwhile in Kursk there were no defenses. So you could just go for it where resistance was weakest.
Then the most important factor was that it was official Russian territory.
Go back to September 2022, when the Kremlin did the annexations. What were the analysts saying? This changes everything, now these regions are under the Russian nuclear umbrella. I still have it imprinted in my mind how Scott Ritter was running his mouth for several weeks after that about "you have to understand, this is now mother Russia, forever". Then the botox midget pulled out of Kherson, once again without a fight, and didn't even have the basic decency to face the cameras, but sent Shoigu and Suroviking to take the PR damage for him. And we never heard such rhetoric anymore.
This was followed by intensification of strikes, HIMARS started hitting Crimea (despite Shoigu very publicly coming out and saying that there would be an immediate response to "decision making centers" after the first such strikes), then the Storm Shadows and later the ATACMS were rolled out too.
As a consequence, most people decided that the Kremlin is indeed, after all, treating the four new regions differently, i.e. as not really Russia. Crimea too.
Well, we were all wrong -- the Kremlin was in fact treating federal subjects 84 to 89 the same way it is treating federal subjects 01 to 83 (OK, perhaps 77 and 78, or just 77 are indeed different). That is, none of them is actually under the nuclear umbrella.
The invasion in Kursk made that a firmly established precedent. Which is the main gain for NATO here. That they didn't get to the Kurchatov NPP isn't that big of a failure once you look at it that way.
Your 'logic' implies one side is interested in the preservation of human lives and the other isn't. Which may well be true, a terrible indictment of the West.
Of course it's true. So what does Russian propose to do about it?
Screaming "that's mean!" and "no fair!" isn't going to stop the sociopaths who rule the West and its Ukrainian puppet.
The West has been usurped by Evil Muffo Horror Show Ghouls.
My comment is two weeks after you posted and I haven't read all the other comments. The nuclear power plant is secondary to the primary goal of escalation of tension, which they thought would be better driving into Russia. The one single goal of Ukraine, Israel and the US and European neocons is to increase the chance of war. There are many broken window economists thinking war will stimulate manufacturing in the West, stem the hemorrhage of decline of NATO's importance and keep the people in power where they are. Apart from this fallacy being simplistic, it overlooks most of the main reasons the West is declining which is debt, outsourcing, corruption and weakening monopoly of their energy cartels.
They are simplisticly thinking a big war will do what WWII did for the US, but of course, so many of the conditions are different that this won't work. With this in mind, see everything they do as an effort to escalate and provide sources of new propaganda to their populations which are generally not in favour of massive global war.
It's that diabolical.
ZNPP has international observers stationed within and reporting to people/groups independent of the combatants.
As far as anyone has reported, KNPP does not.
And besides, the Ukies have been trying to get ZNPP since the start of the SMO, and been unsuccessful with each attempt. Their losses have been big and wasteful.
I suspect KNPP was an attempt to try to do to it, what they could not do to the KNPP.
My conspiranoic contribution: The Kursk invasion was a russian Maskorivka (trap) to lure the ukrainian military leadership to send their best, elite units operating in the Donbass, away from it with the bait of the KNPP...
Facts:
1. There were no mines, nor fortifications for many kilometers.
2. The russians were certainly aware of the sudden concentration of ukrainian troops in the border.
3. The invaded area is mostly unpopulated.
4. Syrsky/Zelensky took the bait and now the russian regular army is pushing west easily in Donbass.
5. The russians sent their own elite units, chechen Akhmat (headed by their famous, celebrated general Apty Aludinov), Wagner, Spetsnaz to easily hunt those ukrainian elite units along NATO "specialists"... So far, around 9,000 have been killed and plenty of tanks, APCs, IFVs, MLRSs, destroyed... It has been quite an effective and quick attrition...
What ELSE could have the Russian Armed Forces asked for?
And what reasonable explanation could have the ukrainians give for this stupidity?
Update:
In total, during the battles in the Kursk direction, the enemy lost more than 10,400 servicemen, 81 tanks, 41 infantry fighting vehicles, 74 armored personnel carriers, 599 armored combat vehicles, 339 vehicles, 76 artillery pieces, 24 multiple launch rocket systems, including: seven M142 HIMARS and five M270 MLRS made in the United States, eight launchers of anti-aircraft missile systems, two loading and transport vehicles, 19 electronic warfare stations, seven counter-battery radars, two air defense radars, eight units of engineering equipment, incl. two technical mine-clearing vehicles and one UR-77 mine-clearing installation.
Even worse that the failed counter offensive in terms of weapon, with zero result.
Wow !!!
That IS information !!!
Thank you... 👍
I was reading a report that NATO is sending numerous troops to Kursk... True?
Lot have been destroyed last night by Iskander strikes near Sumy.
My 50 Cents: I don`t think Kursk was a Maskirovka. The chechen Major General Apty Alaudinov admitted in a recent TASS interview (Sept 4) that the situation in Kursk was very difficult in the beginning and that the Russian forces initially had problems to locate the Ukrainians.
In the meantime, most of the fertile land in Ukraine is owned by Blackrock, Vanguard & Co via the infamous land lease deals: I provide you credit for weapons and your land is the collateral. Of course, Urkaine can`t repay those loans and there we have the scheme.
Western oligarchs simply don`t want "their" new land wasted by a nuclear incident involving ZNPP. And since the 5th column (Nabiullina & Co) is still very strong within Russia and Russian army as well, they help to secure that aim.
Kursk was poor advice to Ukraine by their NATO handlers. They simply don`t understand Russian combined warfare.
Is Bank of America still the biggest shareholder in Blackrock... and isn't it interesting that Berkshire Hathaway has sold $6 billion of its shares the past 4 months. Recession coming, and those holding Ukrainian debt, like the UK, are in for a ride.
I'd imagine we're ALL in for a ride, sooner or later. But the Nasties want to take down the US, and so what better way to do it than to go to war, impoverishing the Peeps while enriching the Nasties, and killing as many birds with one stone as they are able...
My 2 cents: Kursk attack was an opportunistic attack, directed and ordered, planned? by nato (USA). Russians by some amazing sloppiness left that oblast unguarded. I don’t believe it was some sly plan and trap, simply a huge mistake.
The hope of Ukrainians was again like the last year offensive that somehow panic in Russia would ensue and dramatic shifts in the main line of contact would be possible, followed by al-in attack.
KNPP may very well be the hastily determined goal, but I still think the whole thing was opportunistic, without some grand or deep long term strategic idea. Perhaps they believed they could hold it long enough to stage a referendum and “annex” the region.
For nato it may still be a win. It increased the number of KIA. As you correctly stated, to nato all these Ukrainian soldiers are potential Human Resources of future Russia. The more people die, the bigger success for nato.
For NATO, it was a huge win. It shifted the discussion from Ukrainian defeat to Russian incompetence, all we need is one more aid package, one no-fly zone, one small NATO expeditionary force, and Victory Will Be Ours!
Ukraine's follies are oft related to the UK, so I'd bet on the UK more involved than NATO generally. But USA would've helped as eye in the sky.
Hi Piquet - Re your question "Other than the desire for publicity, why did Ukraine attack the Kursk Oblast and not attack the ZNPP?" - all our responses are guesses, so here is my guess:
Tony Shafer mentions that besides the Kursk Nuclear Plant, there is also a nuclear arms cache in Kursk. I haven't seen any maps of where this Kursk cache might be, but possession of Russian nuclear arms would certainly be a great achievement for Ukraine (more so even than a NPP) - so if Tony is right about its existence, I would guess that the aim was to capture the Nuclear Arms cache in Kursk.
Because Ukraine isn't making the decisions, the US is.
And because the IDEA is to poke the bear until the bear submits to a Nuclear War, so the US and all the Nasties in it, and elsewhere, can test out their new weaponry on Humanity, which is the nuclear bomb that doesn't irradiate everything all over everywhere, it just KILLS PEOPLE.
Because that is a Very Big Part of what is going on! CULLING THE HERD.
I don't think the Ukrainians should be assaulting any NPPs. If there's another Chernobyl in Zaparozhe that will be catastrophic for the region and especially the rich farmland surrounding the Dniper.
The folks who rule Ukraine will scuttle off to their Italian villas and their Miami condos. Why shoudl they care?
Which never concerns them as it obviously will be Russia’s problem.
Putin apparently does not believe the Western narrative that the Ukie motive for the Kursk incursion was to capture the power plant. Today at the EEF, he listed what he deems to be their motives and this was not among them.
In other words, it was simply a PR stunt that killed a large number of Slavic people.
Look what we can do, give us long range missiles so we can drive to Moscow.
By now the pressure on Z and co will have made them quite insane. No point in looking for logic any more. It's desperation time.
Ukraine will get its missles.
Russian dithering has led to this.
It is the British faction in Nato that organized the all thing, you can see their signature on everything, pure terrorism with no result like in Syria. UK (brits) is bankrupted, even L Truss said it two weeks ago. Confirmed by bojo this week and and the new PM. Stealing RU ressources is the only way they can avoid bankruptcy. UK and EU can not print QE forever like US does and even for the US there are limits coming as when you pay more than one trillion in just interest every 2 or three months this is just unsustainable even for yankees.
Governments/Armies in Losing Wars attempt Last Resort Attacks. Germany in WW2 with the Battle of the Bulge, a Failed Attempt to get to Antwerp Belgium.
Probably because, to get to ZNPP, you have to fight through 70 km of hostile territory, with no ability to protect your supply line because you have to turn sideways to get to ZNPP, through a known well-manned and well-fortified area. While KNPP is only 60 km away, but you can bulge a salient out to it, and the width of the salient will protect your supply lines. Plus, the predpolye was unfortified, so you get 10-20 km for free. :)
Good point. But do you think that Russia would not anticipated that and had contingent plans to halt any incursion well short of the objective?
We see it did have some sort of a plan or mechanism in place to halt any incursion.
Honestly, I'm at a loss to explain why Ukraine went into Kursk, but I tried to answer the question posed as best as possible - why KNPP and not ZNPP. But the Kursk incursion, on it's own merit and not when considered as the only alternative to Zaporozhie incursion, doesn't seem workable in the real world. I think no public commentator adequately explained it. So the best explanation I can offer is to quote Martyanov: they are ignoramuses and live in lala land where Patton was a military genius. :) Which is to say, to understand why they went into Kursk, we'd first have to reconstruct the headspace of people who came up with this plan (the "elites"). And that's difficult because those people live in a different reality than us normal folk ("normal folk" here includes also the common peoples of the West).
Just P R action for Harris '' look we spent hundreds of billions'' but Ukraine is winning even more ''winning'' they (we) invaded Russia,it was worth the investment...it also helps P R of lost politicians in the EU like desperate Macron, Sholtz etc...who have collapsed the economy of their country for years.
The Kursk raid was a desperate long shot gamble, but it did have a non-trivial probability of success. They did achieve the element of surprise. They did manage to assemble and deploy several armored brigades, supported by other mechanized units and some novel ECM technologies which temporarily compromised Russian communications and drone operations. And, had this operation been lead by the likes of a Heinz Guderian, it might have completed the sprint to the KNPP, surrounded it, captured it, filled it with explosives (in particular the new and spent fuel rod storage units), and then held the facility hostage while initiating negotiations with Moscow.
Would that have been a real game-changer? Nobody knows for sure, but desperate men are known to take desperate gambles when they have no other cards to play. Put yourself in Syrsky's shoes. What other options does he have other than a fighting retreat to the Dneiper? And hold there for how long? Ukraine's economy is in the toilet and US/EU funding is about to dry up.
I propose that the only rational option remaining now is a military coup to displace the corrupt bandits that have been robbing the country blind for the past decade. He still has enough firepower left for that.