Some say Russia has lost war in Ukraine
...... it is very pitiful when people close their eyes to the West-Induced Anarchy prevailing in Ukraine and make half-hearted comments all the while never uttering a single syllable against the innocent blood(
Ukrainian all the way) being shed by the anarchists.
Anyone needs to have only one glance at the situation there and can realize that the thugs in Kiev have only one single agenda of crushing everyone and everything in their path.
I don't know what the Russians are thinking in all this...
@Cadian can give a better perspective of that, but I can say one thing....the Russians, had they really been on the ground as the Kiev thugs are claiming would have turned the tide long time back as they did in Crimea.
Russia is not participating in this war, so it can't loose ^^'
But if interpret this confrontation wider, then Russia has lost when the USA have managed to make a coup in Kiev and succeeded in an anti-Russian consciousness manipulation campaign that turned off the critical thinking of millions Ukrainians (Hello, Akim). Now we can only minimize pitiful consequences.
Speaking about Slavyansk we can't say, that it was a major Resistance defeat. Strelkov is Slavyansk was covering the rest Donbass so it could hold the referendums and get organized.
Lughansk was pretty successful in that and created centralized command and mobilization structures.
Donetsk was not. Still there is no central command and there are a lot of SBU and Ahmetov's agents. Battalion "Vostok", for example, is led by Ahmetov's man, ex-Alpha commander, Hodakovski, who has send his troops (including volunteers from Russia) to ambushes in Donetsk airport on 26th of May and on Marinovka checkpoint on 6th of June. "Vostok" fighters with Georgian ribbons were also guarding Ahmetov's property and assets.
Donetsk commanders were doing nothing to help Slavyansk garrison and often captured packages to Slavyansk for their own needs. Now this "libertines" is over and Strelkov takes full command.
Strelkov has made a very impressive and unexpected move when he managed to withdraw almost all his forces with tanks, APCs and other military hardware from the surrounded city. I admit, that during 2 previous days he was doing everything to show that he and his man will fight to the end to hold the city =) It worked, Ukrainian army has "missed the bus"... 200 of them. Kramators was also abandoned because it was shelled from Karachun hill and almost surrounded too.
Now Ukrainian army has an nontrivial task to relocate all it's forces from Slavyansk to new positions around Donetsk, which will require tons of fuel, hundreds of trucks and good protection of convoys, while Strelkov's man are already preparing ambushes.
It's more difficult to siege the Donetsk, because there are no hills like Karachun around it and it is 10 times larger then Slavyansk.
The Resistance can win if Donetsk and Lughansk will hold long enough before economical collapse in the rest of Ukraine and Maidan-3 in Kiev. We expect it on October-November.