Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu on Tuesday announced the liberation of Maryinka, a town in the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), which for years served as a strategic stronghold for Ukraine's military forces who have continually shelled Donetsk's residential areas. With Maryinka changing hands, this threat has been moved away from Donetsk.
The liberation of Maryinka holds significant importance for Russia, both strategically and politically. In September 2022, the DPR voted to join the Russian Federation via a referendum. Subsequently, on October 3, 2022, the State Duma ratified the admission of the DPR into Russia, with the administrative boundaries established based on the Donetsk region of Ukraine in 2014. By taking control of Maryinka, the Russian military has made an important step towards expanding the territories under its control.
Meanwhile, the Western press is trying to downplay the significance of Maryinka's liberation by shifting the focus to Ukraine's terrorist attacks on Russia's Crimea. Having sustained defeat in its six-month-long offensive, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have stepped up strikes on the peninsula, which is home to Russia's Black Sea Fleet.
Thus, on Tuesday night, head of Crimea Sergei Aksenov reported an enemy attack on the port city of Feodosia. The Russian Ministry of Defense revealed that while repelling an attack by the Ukrainian military, a large landing ship, the Novocherkassk, was damaged. The Crimean Ministry of Health later announced that one person was killed and four were injured in the attack, two of whom were hospitalized.
The New York Times tried to present the recent Ukrainian attack on Crimea as a PR coup, while reporting on the Ukrainian forces' defeat in Maryinka. "Like Bakhmut, Marinka held limited strategic value," the newspaper asserted to its readers.
However, one might ask as to why the Ukrainian military had taken every effort to maintain control over the settlements at the cost of heavy losses, if their strategic value was as insignificant as the Western press claims.
Likewise, President Zelensky is in no rush to admit Kiev's territorial losses from the Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Earlier this month, the Ukrainian leader appeared to have totally forgotten about the loss of Artemovsk (Bakhmut) and other settlements when he claimed to a US broadcaster that the Russian military has not taken any new settlement in 2023.
"I think the most important thing to understand what's going on that Russia didn't occupied (sic) any village, any Ukrainian village during this year," Zelensky told Fox News anchor Bret Baier in mid-December.
Meanwhile, Russia completed the liberation of Artemovsk in May, and by the end of November, the Russian military liberated the village of Artemovskoye (Khromovo) in the DPR.
Zelensky's "amnesia" and unwillingness to admit that the Ukrainian forces have been slowly but steadily losing positions along the front line could be explained by the Kiev regime's fear that the West's funding could soon completely dry up.
Indeed, following the failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, there has been a growing concern among American and European politicians about the effectiveness of providing financial assistance to Ukraine. As a result, House lawmakers chose not to pass the $60 billion Ukraine aid package before leaving for the winter holidays. Additionally, Hungary blocked aid to the tune of $50 billion euros ($54 billion) intended for Kiev.
Meanwhile, a December poll by the Financial Times-Michigan indicated that 48% of US voters said Washington was shelling out "too much" on financial and military aid to Ukraine. For its part, Newsweek quoted a Eurobarometer survey stressing that European support for aiding Kiev had plummeted from April 2022 to August 2023 from 67% to 48% and is continuing to plunge. The recent success of right-wing parties in the EU, who are skeptical of what they believe to be a US proxy war against Russia in Ukraine to the detriment of Europe's interests, appears to support the trend.
Under these circumstances, the Zelensky regime is bending over backwards to maintain the flow of Western money into Ukraine and even points to some sort of "Plan B" if the aid doesn't come soon. Acknowledging that Ukraine is losing on the battlefield could put the final nail into the coffin of Kiev's cash bonanza.