Rybar founder Mikhail Zvinchuk: first public interview - Part 2

Part 1: https://telegra.ph/Rybar-founder-interview-notes-11-25

Zvinchuk: The issue, in my opinion, is that there were certain miscalculations by the officials who ordered this direction.

Dergachev: Whether there was sufficient defensive preparation.

—Yes. And selective blindness, let's call it that. When the issue concerned the withdrawal of troops from Kherson Region, they acted, first of all, in advance. These activities were carried out for almost a month. And the preparation of the defensive line, the evacuation of the population, we saw that from the statements of the officials, it was a purposeful withdrawal. As far as I know, representatives of the security forces, members of the administration, and members of the population were offered housing in other areas with full employment, simply to encourage these sectors of society to leave the risk zone. And the regrouping – or rather, it wasn't even a regrouping, but as the Defense Ministry called it, a "maneuver" to abandon the right bank of the Dnieper - was actually done quite well and in a sophisticated manner.

We made a fuss in our Telegram channel that we had abandoned all that equipment. Then people wrote to us saying, "Guys, you've got it a bit wrong, because some of the equipment was actually in bad condition, they were damaged literally a few days prior while on the march, and there was just no way to blow them up at night, since we had to hide our movement from the enemy."

Regarding the criticism of the retreat, the regrouping – I don't even remember what the Ministry of Defense called it – from Kherson by the Russian army, people had said: hold on, the Antonov bridge hadn't been fully destroyed, there were several pontoon crossings, there was a boat fleet which allowed to ammunition, supplies, fresh reserves and so on to go back and forth. In your opinion, did that end up being true after all? Even remember [Serbian President] Vucic, who said it's become like Stalingrad. The Ukrainian command, who were saying that the Russians would not surrender this city without weeks or months of heavy fighting; and the Western military analysts, who also said that it would be a city comparable to the defense of Mariupol – the Azov group, of course, are a recognized terrorist organization, or extremist, if I recall – that it would be a very hard victory for Ukraine, a very hard assault and siege. In your view, was everyone wrong, and in general, was the Russian command right to take such a preemptive maneuver?

As far as I know, back in April, in May, certain officials of the Armed Forces, certain commanders and so on, were already expressing the idea that a defense along the left bank of the Dnieper is the most logical option, because then there wouldn't be the, well, how should I say...

—Logistical problems?  

—Even without considering logistics, it's simply easier to hold. But yes, despite the fact that the Dnieper crossings were functioning, even if we turn to footage from the Ukrainian side, in this case no matter how much we try to deny it, it's obvious that the Ukrainian side was able to constantly acquire footage of strikes on Russian crossings and on Russian facilities, thanks to its wide network of agents and network of so-called zhduns, and so on. Moreover, panic was deliberately created among the civilian population, because civilian vehicles were also targeted at the crossings. And people died. And really, they turned the crossing, above all else in people's minds... into a place where you don't know if you're going to be able to get to the other side or not. So obviously, because of the logistical problems, the decision was made. Yes, there may not have been as many problems as the Ukrainian side wrote about, but even the commander-in-chief of the special military operation, General Surovikin, admitted that there were problems with supplying both Kherson city and the grouping.

We were waiting for the Ukrainian army to approach, weren't we? Let's remember Mariupol, where, I think, there was an assault for several months, block by block, then at the Azovstal plant. And there they fought literally to the last man, you could say, they didn't surrender. They eventually surrendered, they came out, there was an exchange process. Was that a more rational approach, to give the opponent as much difficulty as possible, as they say, bathe them with blood, defending to a large population center to the last man? Can these two situations be compared?

I don't know. I'm not ready to compare them. From the point of view of Ukrainian statehood, though, and their national idea, this new nation building, Ukraine was interested in the making the extremist Azov nationalist regiment into heroes who fought to the last, and who will be rescued at any cost, who will never surrender and will live there locked in basements, and so on. They needed an image, they needed an idea to rally their own nation, I suppose. I'm not ready to answer whether turning our servicemen into the same kind of supposed heroes, to heroically defend Kherson and get buried there, would have been a good idea. For me, the most important thing is to preserve the lives of the people, the personnel.

Tell me, Mikhail, I wanted to come to more global issues. The costs of funding the special military operation. How do you think this compares with the campaign in Syria? It's already obvious that it's probably a much higher amount. I mean, is it even possible to roughly estimate it? We understand that we're operating within Russia's rather strict legislation, but nevertheless – some orders of magnitude. Or with some other campaigns, I don't know, like the United States campaign in Iraq, is it comparable in terms of costs?

Look, in order to compare, you have to have access to numbers, and just we don't them. We can only look at the trophy equipment that the enemy captured on the battlefield. We can see the newest Mstas of various types, I think there was even a trophy T-90M, and other novelties of the domestic military-industrial complex. Naturally these are multi-million, multi-billion [ruble] losses and reputational losses for the Russian defense industry. But there is an undeclared war going on, it would be unusual if this kind of thing did not happen. It's impossible for me to estimate total losses and financial costs, because the information is classified.

But, you know, the Ukrainian side is very fond of estimating Russian financial costs when another missile strike is launched against their energy infrastructure. So while there is another blackout in Ukraine, and the energy system goes haywire, they like to write how, right now, Russia spent $800,000 on the strike, look how inefficiently they're operating. But estimating the money that is being spent on the special military operation now, it seems to me, is not very proper, because when the government is doing such things, it's probably the prerogative of the Commander-in-Chief to estimate these expenditures.

Okay, I'll come to the next question of the "global" part of our interview. If before September 21, Russian society perceived this as a kind of regional conflict, truly as a special operation, then after September 21, in one way or another the entire Russian population joined the war. Many of them had relatives or friends, acquaintances, and so on. So in effect the Russian leadership recognized that they can't do without a limited military contingent there, and that people have to be mobilized. Why do you think the Russian leadership took this step? Officially, Shoigu said on September 21, it seems that a little less than 6,000 people were killed. As far as I understand, we were talking about the Russian regular army, not the Wagner PMC, not the People's Militias of the LDNR, not volunteers, but nevertheless, the order of magnitude of deaths was disproportionately lower than what Western analysts or the Ukrainian side have claimed.

Listen, regarding casualties, let's say this. In both the Russian army and the Ukrainian army, there is a vestige of the past, which was described in the memoirs of Soviet intelligence agents from Afghanistan. That enemy losses were counted in accordance with certain norms combined with artillery ammunition usage counts. Often there is not enough objective means to confirm all losses. So, if they hit a BMP, aha, there might be a certain number of people in the BMP, so that's what we'll put down [as the kill count].

As for losses, in fact, the last data that I had personally, as of August 1, losses of the Russian regular army plus LDNR people's militias were measured at 5,000 people, this is the number of bodies returned. That's in total for the Russian army and the LDNR. And so these data here - we often, I think, don't have all the information - it's not available anywhere. But we tend to exaggerate everything and believe in the worst. In fact, it's far from that.

I have no intention of questioning the data from our Ministry of Defense about enemy casualties. I had a source in the General Staff of Ukraine until mid-May who gave me data on actual losses of the AFU and National Guard. To all appearances, either the source was killed during some strike, or he just disappeared somewhere. At that time the total losses of Ukraine had reached 60,000 people killed and wounded. In May. How many are wounded on the Russian Federation side, I can't imagine. But if everyone professes the same principle, recording the number of casualties based on the consumption of ammunition, then of course those numbers will not correspond to reality. What I can say with certainty is that on certain sections of the front, where indeed Ukrainian soldiers were sent to be slaughtered, – including mobilized men – casualties were not reckoned with, in order to carry out the combat mission. There was a time when in the village of Sukhoy Stavok in Kherson Region, a kind of conveyor belt of death was organized in the bare steppe. That is, the Ukrainian side was able to punch a narrow corridor through the bare steppe, which was shot at by our artillery. Ukrainian losses there were quite high.

In your opinion, Mikhail, when Shoigu voiced these figures, almost 6,000 people, are we talking only about the regular Russian army here? Does that not include the LNR and DNR, the volunteers and the Wagner men?

Volunteers have only now been equated to combat veterans and included in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Wagner PMC units are not units of the regular army. And the people's militias are not units and formations of the regular army either. So it seems to me that only regular armed forces were discussed, and of course Sergey Kuzugetovich [Shoygu] can't speak for the other security forces operating in the combat zone. We know very well from the example of the Russian National Guard that they take an active part in combat operations.

What do you think are the reasons we had such big problems with mobilization?

As someone who works with information, I can say this. We judge the big picture by individual, negative videos. Yes, there may be 20 or 40 of them. There may be 20 or 40 clips that show that there is a local trend in certain areas. But you can't judge the big picture by that. I mean, I have both examples: units that were mobilized under a worst-case scenario, – we've all heard about Svatovo from open sources, how people were immediately sent to the front line due to of a mistake by military commissariats and decision-makers – and those who were properly trained. For example of one of the formations in southern Russia, I know for a fact that the commander forbade the mobilized men, even after preparing at a training center, from being sent to the front and supplementing the formations on the front lines, until they had passed all the tests and completed a combat training course under the guidance of officers with SMO combat experience. And there are a lot of such examples, we just don't talk about them.

Yes, but there are problems. There are big enough problems, because we have technical issues with equipping the armed forces. We have problems with the supply of materiel, which is actually the reason why Army General Bulgakov, who was responsible for the rear, was fired some time ago. And we have problems with logistics, and a shortage of just specific individual kit components in the depots. But now this is already being resolved at the level of regional administrations. That is, in Crimea, in Leningrad Region, in Tula Region, and in Ryazan Region, the governors themselves have already established links with the federal government of the Russian Federation and are controlling the supply of units.

—So the situation has improved overall?

—It's gotten better. But there is a long way to go until we've perfected an ideal system of mobilization and equipment. Because, the way I see it, the whole system is left over from the Soviet Union,

—And it wasn't modernized. Or, in fact, the leadership was not ready for such a large-scale wave of mobilization? Initially, they did not want to draw on these reserves, the partial mobilization resources.

—This has already been said quite clearly. Right now, the line of combat with Ukraine is 1,100 km long. Our peacetime army is not designed to simultaneously conduct offensive actions and defensive actions over such an area. Plus, our Armed Forces must operate on a rotational basis. Accordingly, we need to resupply troops, we need to replace those who are on deployment, and we need to bring in new reserves all the time.

Mikhail, we have literally 5 minutes left, so a few last questions that I'd really like to get some answers to. The energy infrastructure strikes that we mentioned. I'm reading Alexei Naumov's VneshPol telegram channel, he quite interestingly quoted, I think, a Pentagon general who researched the effectiveness of strikes on enemy energy infrastructure in different wars, and came to the conclusion that military installations are prioritized for electricity, even in energy shortages; that military infrastructure will not be affected, as it were. It angers the civilian population, it does not lead to revolutions and unrest in the country. So, in your opinion, is this generally effective or not?

Of course it's effective. Recall the operation in Iraq, and how Ukrainian troops took Fallujah. The battle of Fallujah went on for long enough. But the first thing the Ukrainians did – oh gosh, my tongue slipped. American troops– the first thing they did was destroy all the critical infrastructure, starting with the energy infrastructure, water infrastructure, and so on, to deprive the enemy of the will to defend themselves. So that included the families of the Iraqi army, and the Iraqi population, who would be forced to put pressure on the Ukrainian troops – on the Iraqi troops, I'm sorry. And now, we have a strike on Ukraine's energy infrastructure as a natural complement, I suppose, to the economic pressure on Europe on Ukraine, and the need to–

—Is this being done in order to force Kiev to go to peace talks?

—This is done in order to destabilize the social situation in Ukraine. Because the typical average person often doesn't care how things are going "over there." His priority is to provide himself and his wife, his child with everything they need to keep themselves fed and warm in the winter. And when there's no such opportunity, no matter how much ideological hype there is, at a certain point, fatigue sets in, and it all goes to zero.

—But if, let's say, the lights in the maternity hospital or the school are turned off, and he gets angry and goes to the front – is there not such a risk? That Ukraine's mobilization potential will simply increase, to put it bluntly?

—Ukraine's mobilization potential is already infinite, let's just say it. Ukraine's population will not run out anytime soon. And mobilization in Ukraine happens in waves. One wave is trained, then the next wave comes. No one will mobilize the entire population all at once, because there are not enough people to train them, not enough people to control them, and no one wants to create, so to speak, partisan units in Ukraine that will start a Makhnovshchina [state of militarized anarchy].

Mikhail, we literally have one minute left. One last question. Tell us about the phenomenon of Russian war correspondents. Why do you think they've become so popular? What is their relationship with the government, the presidential administration and the Ministry of Defense? And this story of Semyon Pegov, his WarGonzo channel, the military correspondent who claimed that Gerasimov wrote a statement against a number of creators of military telegram channels, including yourself. What do you know about this story?

War correspondents have become a natural information frontier, the defenders of the information borders of the homeland, since the start of the special military operation. Because at that time, as it turned out in the Russian reality, there were not enough competent authorities to respond to the information threats from Ukraine and the collective West, when massive attacks began on Russia's information infrastructure. So that's why we can probably call them heroes of the Russian information front, often motivated by their professional duty and the need to pick up their "information rifles" where specialized agencies and government bodies are unable to act. As for the Pegov story, I have not received any notices about the initiation of criminal proceedings against me, let alone any official messages.

Do you think it's fake news after all?

To be honest, I have great respect for Semyon Pegov's work, as I do for all the other war correspondents, because these are people who are on the front lines and, it turns out, are sacrificing—not even sacrificing, but putting themselves at risk in order to provide truthful information. I don't know why the information agencies of the Armed Forces, let alone Valery Gerasimov, would for some reason bother personally writing a statement on Russian channels. The way I see it, given our realities, if such a thing is even possible, anyone who initiates such a thing is a little bit disconnected from reality, I would say.

Last question, please answer succinctly. Which is more effective, Russian military propaganda or Ukrainian propaganda?

Answer honestly, if possible. Because there are very different opinions on this in the patriotic Russian segment.

Do we even have propaganda?

Well, that's quite a succinct answer. Thank you. Michael Zvinchuk, founder of the military-political telegram channel Rybar, was with us. Stay tuned, and I'm Vladimir Dergachev, editor-in-chief of RTVI.com.