Velyka Novosilka Falls Without Fight, as ‘100 Day Peace Plan’ Reportedly “Leaked” – Simplicius
Mon 10:56 am +00:00, 27 Jan 2025
One of the biggest recent battlefield developments is just how quickly some of Ukraine’s largest urban strongholds are falling after being surrounded and cut off by Russian forces. At one point long ago, every little settlement was won by bitter pitched fighting, advancing one house at a time—places like Rubezhnoe, Popasna, Soledar, Bakhmut, etc. But now, nearly half of the major strongholds are falling virtually without a fight. There are some exceptions: Toretsk and Chasov Yar, for instance, were slowly contested, though in their case it had more to do with geographic features and terrain not favorable for encirclement, which forced Russian troops to assault them head on. When Selidove/Selidovo fell in October, it surprised many by how quickly it was abandoned. Kurakhove itself was mythologized by the AFU to be a critical, expansive battle that should have taken many months to conclude. And it did take long to slowly flank it—but the actual progression through the city itself, once it had begun, was relatively fast. The same went for Ugledar: it took many months to slowly flank it on the sides, but then the fabled stronghold itself fell in literally four or five days in early October. Now the triumph has been repeated in an even greater stronghold, Velyka Novosilka. After spending weeks carefully enveloping it, Russian soldiers left the city relatively untouched as Ukrainian units simply fled without much of a fight. Here the Russian 40th Marines and 5th Brigade plant their flags in the north of the town: 
On top of which, Toretsk was effectively fully seized today as well:
One thing worth mentioning which not many have commented on, is that Russia has been sneakily expanding quite an interesting bridgehead just north of Kupyansk. It started as an exploratory probing action a while back, but it has now turned into a full-on bridgehead west of the Oskil River:
You can see the Oskil River there—a lot of territory west of it has now been seized. This means in the future Russian forces could encircle Kupyansk from both sides of the river:
But getting back to the opening thought: Many Ukrainian towns are beginning to fall without a fight, merely after being cut off or partially encircled. This bodes poorly for some of the larger upcoming fights, particularly Pokrovsk, which was expected by both sides to be one of the major pivotal upcoming battles of the war, akin in scale to Bakhmut. But given these developments, it’s very possible that Pokrovsk will likewise fall much quicker than expected when its main supply routes are cut off. Russian forces are now moving closer to the second of these lines, having captured the first days ago. You can see below the main road to Udachne was captured, but now a new salient extending north has appeared toward the critical E50 and likewise critical Hryshyne, a town I had mentioned in a previous report would be key to encircling Pokrovsk:
Some now espouse the view that Russia will not get much farther beyond this because the talk of “negotiations” is running high, with some kind of ceasefire expected in the near to medium-term future. In fact, popular Ukrainian outlet Strana has now reported an alleged ‘leaked’ peace plan from Trump’s camp which calls for an April ceasefire and a total armistice by May of this year. Here is a good indepth summary of the plan’s timeline from Russian RVoenkor channel:
First: many obviously believe this is fake Ukrainian disinfo, and for good reason. There’s high chance that is likely—however, I do view it as relatively realistic as well for the simple fact that it chimes with Trump’s approach, and many of the key points above are consonant with statements from Zelensky and various US and European officials. If it was fake it would likely be a bit more flattering for Ukraine—which the above certainly is not, at least overtly so. If there’s an inkling of truth to it, we can say with certainty it will be laughed out of the room by Russia for this simple line:
Even if Russia should achieve the concession that Ukraine is not allowed to join NATO, there is simply no way in hell Putin would allow Ukraine to retain its entire armed forces and have those forces vastly augmented and rebuilt into something even more threatening by the US. After potentially 100-200k Russian troops have been killed, thousands of civilians slaughtered, etc., there is simply no way Russian leaders or the general staff could possibly allow Ukraine to remain such an existential threat—with or without NATO. In fact, at this point, the NATO issue takes a backseat and is a small concern compared to the immediacy of a nationalistic totalitarian military dictatorship armed to the teeth sitting on Russia’s borders. In short: the deal above is a non-starter should it actually appear in even a remotely similar form; it is the mere deluded fantasy of the West to even think Russia needs to stop fighting any time soon, at a time when major Ukrainian strongholds are folding like cheap lawn chairs on a daily basis. The fact is also this: Ukraine now represents something far more dangerous than previously imagined, even with a ‘neutered’ military as per the original “Istanbul deal” from April 2022. You see, for decades Russia feared NATO creeping up to its borders due to the ability to inflict various unexpected surprise first-strike attacks on Russian early warning systems and other defenses which would cripple Russia’s ability to detect or respond to a full-fledged American decapitation attack, like a nuclear first strike. Ukraine has already perversely demonstrated its brazenly unscrupled ability to hit Russian strategic level assets like Tu-95 bases, early warning systems, and other infrastructure, like targeting nuclear power plants. This means that even with a ‘reduced’ armed forces, Ukraine would still pose an unacceptable threat because launching new high-tech drones and various missiles does not require a large armed forces in the sense of a manpower pool or armor fleet. For this fact alone, no kind of negotiations is possible without Ukraine’s total disarmament or capitulation—this issue is absolutely an existential one for Russia. An armistice and Istanbul-style ‘de-militarization’ could lull Russia into a false sense of security, but then at an opportune time in the future, NATO could use their sacrificial patsy to unleash a massive drone and missile strike on Russian strategic assets, which would be followed by a large-scale NATO attack to decapitate Russia entirely. This would take place precisely upon NATO’s own ‘re-armament’ and military strengthening, which they are in the process of initiating as we speak. Russian military brains know this and as such would not allow any kind of peace deal within the bounds of the above terms. To conclude, here’s analyst Starshe Edda’s thoughts on the claimed Trump proposal released by Strana:
As stated earlier, Russia’s advantage is only increasing while Ukraine’s is dwindling with every hour, there is literally no possible reason Russia could want to negotiate now as it approaches the threshold of total victory. Just listen to Austrian Colonel Markus Reisner’s latest interview with ZDF TV, where he states unequivocally that Ukraine may not even last the three months it would take to reach the “100 days negotiations”:  What he says next is even more damning: 
As you can see, Reisner is remarking on the acceleration of the collapse of Ukrainian defenses, where major strongholds are now being taken without resistance, which will eventually allow Russian forces to likely even begin encircling them without much resistance, leading to a cascade effect. Despite the eroded resistance, Ukrainian losses in these cities have been no less severe. The past week has seen a rash of videos showing ungodly casualties on the Ukrainian side—for the brave, just take a look at these videos from only the past day or two: Video 1, Video 2, Video 3, Video 4, Video 5, Video 6, Video 7. And the Russian fiber-optic drone hits on Ukrainian units is peaking as well:  Russian channel Voenhronika details an interview with an AFU member with interesting comments:
And from ostensibly Ukrainian Legitimny channel:
The ultimate problem now—and the primary reason for why time is now on Russia’s side—is because the only thing that can possibly save Ukraine at this point is the political will and unity of Europe. But the problem is: Europe is falling apart, with anti-establishment forces and parties quickly rising to depose the incumbent globalist tyrants. As such, the longer the war goes on, the more chance that Europe cracks and solidarity gets flushed down the drain, with Ukraine being left with no hope at salvation from their ‘big brothers’ at all. Case in point from yesterday: Time is short for the globalists. |
