“This is the 12th round, somewhere in the final minute”: Expert explains what stage of the war we are at

Military expert Oleh Starikov explained that in a war of attrition, especially when it becomes “an eye for an eye,” there will be no winners. It is already a fight to the end and the mutual destruction of territories, reports Politeka.

He said this on his channel.

According to the expert, after Russia suffered two major setbacks on the battlefield in 2022 while Ukraine achieved operational and strategic successes, and after Ukraine’s unsuccessful counteroffensive in 2023, Russia drew Ukraine into positional warfare. In positional warfare, he explains, it is impossible to defeat a country that is several times larger than you. It is like putting a middleweight boxer in the ring against a heavyweight: the middleweight lands punches and scores points, while the heavyweight becomes short of breath but remains standing.

Now, the expert says, the two sides have entered a war of attrition, which involves a war of cities, a war of infrastructure, a war of economies, a naval blockade, and so on.

“And now they have drawn us into another terrible thing — an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. And in an eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth war, it is impossible to win. If we talk about boxing, this is the 12th round, somewhere in the final minute, and we have already reached a groggy state. Two opponents are standing opposite each other and pounding away. It is a real meat grinder. They keep hitting each other. You can no longer see their eyes, you can’t see anything. The referee stops the fight and wipes away the blood, but neither opponent falls. Neither one has suffered a knockdown. But they are in a groggy state — when they keep fighting until the very end. That is roughly where we are — somewhere in the final minute,” Oleh Starikov explains.

And the most interesting thing, the expert emphasizes, is that when peace talks between technical groups begin again, the bell will not have rung yet — another 30 seconds of this brutal fight will continue. Therefore, he says, our planners should now calculate not how much damage our strikes will inflict, but how much damage the enemy will inflict in a retaliatory strike. That is the main paradox of the war we have entered.

“I said for a reason that we were drawn into this. There will be no winners in a war of attrition. There will be no winner in Ukraine, and there will be no winner in Russia, but the territories will be destroyed,” Oleh Starikov emphasizes.