11.04.2023 – Translated from Ukrainian via Google
Colonel Roman Svitan believes that the first phase of the offensive has already begun and it consists of drone attacks on the logistics bases of the Rashists. In addition, within the framework of the Orestocracy project, the military expert spoke about which regions of Russia will be attacked first of all, when the second phase of the offensive will begin, and what attack strategy our Western partners offer us.
What is happening behind enemy lines today? Where are the rashists concentrating their forces, preparing for the Ukrainian counteroffensive? According to my observation, they are afraid for the north of Crimea and Melitopol…
– The last few days, certain movements have really begun among the Russians, the transfer of equipment, the transfer of personnel, equipment to the area of \u200b\u200bthe north of Crimea, mainly to crossings.
A lot of equipment, ammunition, fuel is also being transferred to Melitopol, mainly towards the airfield. Naturally, our intelligence sees this, our troops track it all, so with our long-range weapons we are trying to destroy it all before it gets to the front line. For several nights in a row there has been a defeat of these funds. Melitopol sees and hears it all, and in the Crimea it also burns.
– How do they “get” the APU there?
– Drones … we have drones that perform tasks in the Crimea. They can reach anywhere in the Crimea. Drones with a range of up to 300 km are no longer a rarity for our armed forces. Just as long as all these drones can carry small combat loads, that is, about 20-25 kg, this is a few minutes. Well, we get to Melitopol with the help of HIMARS.
– Are these regular drones or kamikaze drones?
– No, these are ordinary drones that can drop a combat load of 20-25 kg, they can return back. Large bases will be destroyed first, this started this week. The President said that this week we expect good news, and this is the beginning of counter-offensives. Always offensive actions begin with the destruction of the most remote bases of Russia, and then those that are closer and closer to the front go. That is, for about a month we will work, burning through the enemy’s supply routes and bases in the Zaporozhye, Kherson directions and in the Crimea.
– Do you know anything about performance? What is “burning” on the other side, what bases can be destroyed?
– Hitting airfields, the main task is to destroy aircraft, control systems, command posts and fuel receivers. Poultry farms are on fire in Crimea, and this is precisely the area where military supplies are concentrated. The best option is to always start with fuel, if there is no fuel, then definitely no one will fly anywhere and will not go.
– By what equipment we are supplied with today, what kind of ammunition, can we understand what offensive strategy our Western partners offer us?
– We will cancel out what we do not have, and there will be weapons that need to be attacked. We do not have aviation, which means we still have an offensive strategy using anti-aircraft missile systems, that is, a large number of air defense systems that will be pulled up to the line of contact in the place of our offensive. Anti-aircraft missile systems can cover advancing troops up to 70 km, and up to 100 km from air attacks.
The destruction of the enemy will mainly fall on the shoulders of our artillery. We need a sufficient amount of ammunition, guns, we have a lot of self-propelled guns now, artillery is being brought up, we will create a barrage of fire. 90% will fall on the shoulders of self-propelled artillery installations, and then – already depending on the terrain, the location of enemy troops – either breakthrough actions will be used with the help of tanks, heavy equipment and motorized infantry, or infantry will immediately go behind the fire shaft, they will be covered from behind.
“Biden said the Pentagon is handing over long-range missiles to Ukraine. Any information when they will arrive?
– We will be given, for example, SCALP missiles, this is a British assembly, cruise missiles with a range of 300 km or more, which can carry out tasks to destroy the enemy at long ranges. The main thing here is the number of these missiles and the methods of their launch. The military-political leadership of America says that ATACMS substitutes will be transferred to us. That is, the same level of combat defeat. As soon as we receive them, our specialists will install them. As I understand it, they will be before the offensive, the work of this type of means of destruction begins about a month in advance. Until the end of April, we will definitely have them.
– Will the Armed Forces of Ukraine shell logistic bases on the territory of Russia, in the regions neighboring Ukraine?
– We have our own means of destruction, which get the Russians. We will definitely work and are working on these military bases.
Our partners are asking us not to work with their ammunition in Russia, this is understandable, they do not want to participate in these legal proceedings that Russia can raise. It is clear that no court will accept this for consideration.
On Russian territory, at military facilities there, we have used and are using our weapons, which are produced by our Ukroboronprom.
– What is in the head of the Russian command? They understand that at least a generation, or even two, are behind the ZSU arsenal …
– The fact that they will reopen the equipment of a hundred years ago is the right action from a military point of view. The fact is that any equipment is, after all, guns, a cannon that can perform a task in defense mode quite successfully. I remember back in Donetsk in 2014 I was a military adviser to the governor, before I was taken prisoner, and we were chasing the T-34, taken off the pedestal by the Russians. In Konstantinovka, they even removed the tank from the pedestal of the IS (Joseph Stalin) and used it as a cannon. This is a serious weapon if it is used in defense. Therefore, everything that will be removed from the pedestal, the Russians can use as buried, in the defense mode, weapons. But our ammunition and kamikaze drones work very well for such targets.
The fact is that they have nowhere to go, they have hopelessness, they have no other choice. They really build defense engineering structures, based on their forces and means. They predict for themselves to take a number.
– Will the Armed Forces of Ukraine bet on the logistical hunger of the enemy?
– This is the best option, having long-range means of destruction, to destroy them before approaching the front line, which we will do. We already have HIMARS missiles with a range of 80 km, M-31 missiles, we have JDAM glide bombs with a range of 70 km. There was information about the use of GLSDB – this is somewhere at 150-160 km. These are the ammunition we will work with now. Therefore, somewhere from 150 km to the front line, the Russians will burn everything. After we are given long-range weapons, such as the same SCALP cruise missiles, it is already from 300 to 700 km, depending on the task.
– You said that in 2014 you were captured as an adviser to the head of the Donetsk military administration. How did it happen?
– I had to perform the tasks of collecting information and managing the operational headquarters. After all, after the Maidan, I was appointed military adviser to the governor of the region, Sergei Taruta. He led the operational headquarters, which included all law enforcement agencies, regions: the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the SBU, the National Guard, we created certain partisan detachments, worked behind enemy lines. At some time, I stayed in the rear to manage the partisan movement. But I was handed over by the SBU officers and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who went over to the side of the Russians.
Then I got to Bezler, after which I was exchanged for the FSB officer: I was cut, but alive.
Borodai ordered me to be shot. There was also a doctor who kept me conscious, in a tortured consciousness, so that he would not die, so that he would constantly hold on. Yuri Yevich, he is still a writer, wrote a book, and there in this book there is how they tortured me. If you type “Yuri Yevich” in Google, then the search engine will just give a link to the book that he wrote … it seems, in order to sit with Borodai in The Hague.
When I was sitting at the “Demon”, journalists drove up to highlight us before the exchange, and among these journalists was Timur Olevsky from Dozhd, a Russian journalist. They drove up, filmed, photographed, talked, broadcast it all on the air, so they saved us. The journalists were horrified when they saw me: under the nails there were marks from torture, from needles, cut.
– What would you like to know?
– There was a question about underground activities, because our partisans created a lot of problems for the Russians: they blew up, shot, destroyed Russian logistics. We immediately began to fight the Russians, got ourselves weapons from them, we even had gypsies in our partisan detachment.
– Were there many traitors among the Ukrainian security forces?
– Almost all Donetsk cops, Donetsk SBU officers changed their shoes in a jump and took the Russian side. When after the Maidan we stopped by, when Romanov was still the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Donetsk region, he told me that he personally selected these 16 thousand, this is his army, and it will be on the side of the Russians. It was clear right away. The SBU, too, almost all merged, especially Alfa. Khodakovsky is just a Donetsk “alpha”, and Donetsk “Alpha” killed us on the Maidan. When they returned to Donetsk, they realized how it would end for them, called the Russians to help them, and almost the entire SBU went over to the side of the Russians.
Although there were of course exceptions. I had a friend, we held partisan events with him, Sasha, he was then blown up in Mariupol, just the “MGB DPR” participated. He was from the SBU.
– Do you have an understanding of how the security forces in independent Ukraine built closed anti-state systems, when in fact a security clan was built on the territory of the region?
– This is still left from the Soviet Union. At the moment, the picture is even worse, each area, when it receives a leader, he begins to remake everything for himself. In each region there is a so-called organized criminal group – an organized law enforcement group. Not criminal, but it can become criminal. She takes care of the region, without the decision of this chief nothing happens in the region, he selects people for himself. After our enemies get to this boss, bribe him, force him to perform certain actions, he practically makes his entire group of law enforcement officers criminal.
Here is Vostok – this is the organized criminal group of the SBU in Donetsk, Khodakovsky directs it. “Ministry of Internal Affairs of the DPR” is the organized criminal group of Diky, former employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, nothing has changed now. After the invasion, the Russians went over to their side by entire district offices. Until now, this is true, no one has changed this system, it is dangerous for Ukraine, it must be unequivocally torn apart, broken, especially by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the SBU must be multiplied exactly by zero and its functions transferred to other bodies. By the way, this is what our Western partners demand of us. We need a reorganization of the Security Service: it cannot perform so many tasks at once. The Ministry of the Interior is a monster in general, in which the border guards, the Ministry of Emergency Situations, the National Guard, the police, certain investigative agencies are all a monster that we ourselves have raised. They must be divided into groups.
– How do you see the next 7-8 months? We have already discussed that April is the beginning of the turning point of the war. What will we have happening on the battlefield in summer and autumn?
– In late April – early May, our counteroffensive will begin, everyone is waiting for it. Optimal – the first blow to the Azov coast, and then – the cleansing of the Crimea. Such actions will need to be carried out within a few months. I think, from three to six months, that is, somewhere before the summer minimum, until the autumn maximum. So for the next six months there will be work with the Zaporozhye, Kherson and Crimean groups of Russians.
Next, you will need to deal with the Donbass. Donbass is optimally cut off from Russia along the line Svatovo – Lugansk – Taganrog or Svatovo – Lugansk – Rostov, depending on the task, and then deal with the Donetsk group. The minimum possibility of reaching the borders of Ukraine is somewhere at the end of this year with a complete sweep, this is minimal. Well, as much as possible – we will import until next year, already depending on the forces and means. We are very dependent on the supply of weapons, if everything is in sufficient quantities this year, we can end the campaign. If there are not enough funds, everything will be delayed for a year and a half.
– Is it likely that after the defeat in Ukraine, the Russian military will somehow take on Putin? I mean some analogue of the State Emergency Committee.
– It is unlikely … There is one chance that after the complete defeat of the Russian army, after a very large number of deaths, the Russian elite, and not the one that is now in control, but retired people who understand where everything can lead, this is the so-called junta of “black colonels.” Here they will be able to accomplish this task: to destroy Putin, to take power into their own hands in Russia. But the acting generals, the acting army, they can simply swear allegiance to these colonels, to this GKChP. In this sense, there is hope that a coup may occur.