Ukrainian regime president Volodymyr Zelensky with masked fighters in the background, a map showing the war frontlines, and a countdown to ceasefire. Illustration: Mahdi Rtail/Al-Mayadeen English.
By Dmitri Kovalevich – Jul 18, 2025
The Russian Armed Forces have accelerated their military advances in early July 2025, placing the Ukrainian Armed Forces under record pressure since the beginning of the NATO proxy war in the country, three and a half years ago. Ukrainian analysts are predicting that the military pressure on the governing regime in Kiev will only increase with each passing month. The Russian army is accelerating territorial advances as new Russian divisions are formed and trained, while the Ukrainian army continues to be depleted.
In response to the deteriorating military situation, the Trump administration in Washington announced on July 14 additional funding and weaponry for the governing regime in Kiev and its military, to be paid for, it says, by the warmongering governments of Europe. But this is only a change of tone, not of policy, and it cannot change the outcome of the US/NATO war against Russia using Ukraine as their proxy.
Ukrainian legislator Oleksandr Dubinsky, jailed since early 2023 for “treason,” notes that the Ukrainian Armed Forces under Zelensky have only known a steady retreat of late. “The comedian [Volodomyr Zelensky, the unelected head of the Kiev regime] lost 559 square kilometers of territory in June. In May, he lost 449 square kilometers. That’s almost 1000 square kilometers. Since the fall of 2022, Ukraine has never achieved a ‘plus’ territorial gain in the war, only retreats and losses,” he writes.
The Ukrainian online publication Politnavigator cites Russian military correspondent Alexander Kots in a report on July 3 as saying that the number of troops on both sides is in rough parity, but there are significant differences in morale. “The quality is completely different, because our troops are in high spirits while the Ukrainians have been forcibly conscripted and are anything but happy,” Kots told a radio broadcast by the Russian tabloid newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda.
“Ceasefire” talk by Kiev regime representatives
Ukraine’s official media continue to broadcast daily that the war will last for years to come. Ukrainian ultra-nationalists try to cheer up Ukrainian soldiers and convince them to fight on with constant references in their broadcasts to some kind of “black swan” event (a rare and unpredictable occurrence with profound impacts and consequences) that will miraculously rescue the deteriorating military/political situation. But when facing Western audiences, Zelensky has been projecting a different message, talking of “ceasefire” with Russia (presumably to please Donald Trump and his pre-July 14 talk).
Trump continues to be presented by corporate and state media in the West as sincerely desirous of “peace” between Russia and Ukraine. Even alternative media is playing that game, despite the continued news reporting exactly the opposite.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Heorhiy Tykhiy, said on July 6 that Ukraine would participate in ceasefire talks with Russia strictly to prevent critics in the West, particularly those opposing continued financial and military support, from accusing Kiev of rejecting peace initiatives.
A “Georgia” outcome in Ukraine?
In May 2025, JPMorganChase financial analysts predicted a ceasefire by July 2025, with the most likely scenario being along the lines of the truce in Georgia, which followed the brief war there in 2008. According to this scenario, Ukraine after the war would not receive reliable security guarantees from the West, would remain unstable, and eventually, after one or two changes of government, would fall into Russia’s sphere of influence. Although Georgia is not a country friendly to Russia, the West considers it so because of the persistent refusal by the government there to consider launching a second suicidal conflict with Russia.
In 2008, the then-government of Georgia launched a military attack against the disputed region of South Ossetia, which was seeking full autonomy from Georgia or outright joining of the Russian Federation. Russia came to the defense of the region and quickly defeated the Georgian army. South Ossetia is today a sovereign state recognized by Russia, with a population of some 60,000.
The Western analysts are wrong. “The Georgian scenario is optimal for everyone,” commented Yevgeny Minchenko on the JPMorgan report, as reported by Strana.ua on July 1. He is one of the most prominent political scientists in Russia, said to be close to the Kremlin.
Strana writes in its July 1 report that the Georgia outcome is entirely feasible, provided that the economic elites and armed forces leaders conclude that in order to save the statehood and nation of Georgia from self-inflicted destruction caused by threats and provocations against Russia, it is necessary to compromise and make peace. In addition to the aspirations of Ukraine and Russia for such a scenario, Strana emphasizes, it also requires the absence of active resistance from the West.
West wants continued war, is willing to enlist neo-Nazis to fight it
Ukraine is being pushed to continue to wage war for the Western countries. A suicidal prolongation of military action by Ukraine provides an opportunity for Western governments to browbeat their own populations and lower their social standards and expectations while continuing to launder billions of dollars from the funds supposedly dedicated to purchasing weapons from the Western military-industrial complexes.
The survival of neo-Nazism in Germany was nurtured by Western capitalists following World War II in order to combat a declared “red menace” emanating from the Soviet Union and its constituent republics. Beginning in the 1980s and accelerating after the demise of the Soviet Union, the Western powers began to expand their NATO military alliance eastward. Part of this strategy was to dehumanize entire peoples, above all the Russian people (who were the largest component by land area and population of the Soviet Union). Today in Ukraine, the West continues to pursue this same strategy. Although Russia explains that the goal of its special military operation in Ukraine includes denazification, the Western media simply refuse to report this, still less to explain it. It refuses to even acknowledge the presence (and ascendance since 2014) of neo-Nazi ideology in Ukraine.
Also ignored has been the military and political training and arming that the US government and military have provided to the neo-Nazi movement in Ukraine, even if some circles in the US would recognize this movement as a threat to the United States itself. Konstantin Nemichev of the neo-Nazi ‘Azov’ movement in Ukraine, today an officer in the main military intelligence service of Ukraine, boasted recently that Azov has received training from US instructors since 2014. An officer in the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine confirmed this in a July 1 interview in a Ukrainian news outlet, as reported on Telegram by Politnavigator.
Nemichev explained, “It was the summer [of 2014] and we took a two-week course for willing, young fighters-to-be. Before that, I had never even held a machine gun, now we had US special commandos training us. They taught us some skills and tactics, and we were trained by Alpha officers [US special commandos]. After that, we went to Donbass and put our new-found skills to work in such urban centers as Ilovaisk, Pavlopol and Shirokino (in the Donetsk republic, Donbass region). We had a lot of operations there and we gained experience that would become vital beginning in February 2022. A lot of operations in which we, first of all, gained the experience that we needed in 2022…. NATO officers, Americans, taught us staff culture and management, and this was very much needed.”
Azov emerged amid the coup in 2014 as a shock force to suppress Ukrainians holding on to the country’s Soviet legacy. Until 2024, it was considered by the US government to be an extremist group, but that all changed in the middle of that year.
In an interview for Ukrainska Pravda, as reported on Telegram by Politnavigator on July 1, the same Nemichev stated he is in favor of continuing the war with Russia, although he admits that more and more cities will have to be lost before conditions improve for the Ukrainian side. “I understand that if we sign some absurdity (ceasefire) now and make a pause—and I’m talking exactly for a pause, similar to the ‘pause’ of 2016 to 2022—then we will lose the cities and regions of Kharkiv, Dnipro and Zaporizhzhya. We will fight for three more years and perhaps lose Cherkasy, Kyiv and other cities and regions in central Ukraine. We must realize that is our destiny; our destiny is to fight.”
Another neo-Nazi leader, Yevhen Karas of the C-14 paramilitary group (recently involved in violence against Roma people), spoke on Ukrainian television about how to capture and return to the frontlines Ukrainian men who have escaped or evaded military service. He, too, works for the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s main intelligence service. He sees the task of Ukrainian nationalists as fighting for a “common Ukrainian-European cause,” including in Africa. That is, he considers Ukrainian ultra-nationalists to play the role of assistant colonizers of the “white man.”
“How do we return Ukrainians who have gone abroad? Let’s make a deal. We will go to fight for common Ukrainian-European interests in Africa, while the drones of military recruiters will be permitted to fly over Europe to catch evaders and send them back to us.” This scenario is not so far-fetched, as European countries may soon be deporting Ukrainians back home, where a dispatching to the frontlines will await. EU citizens will eventually face the same fate; it is not for nothing that some European countries are already introducing forms of compulsory military service (conscription), including even, in some cases, for women. For the West, this is an existential issue of survival and hegemony of their capitalist system, which has been shaken by their losing war effort in Ukraine and by the rising resistance and rebellion of the peoples and countries of the Global South.
Neo-Nazi ideology running wild at the highest levels
The biggest scandal of all in Ukraine of late is the appointment of Oleksandr Alferov to be the new director of the renowned (for Ukrainian ultra-nationalists) Ukrainian Institute of National Memory and a former press secretary of the neo-Nazi Azov. According to Ukrainian journalist Oleksandr Savko, Alferov was once known among ultra-nationalists as favoring the creation of a Ukrainian kingdom headed by an autocrat-monarch, ruling over the country with the help of a newly created and appointed class of nobles.
In his first interview in his new post, Alferov states that Adolf Hitler was a cultured, decent, educated man who cannot be judged according to the same standards as political figures from Russia. “How can you compare a man [Hitler] who received a German education, was an artist, and was brought up amidst the philosophy and the high culture of Germany to these other people? No way. These are two different kinds of people cannot be compared.” In his view, Russians do not compare with the law-abiding, highly moral Germans of the Third Reich.
Alferov considers today’s inhabitants of the Russian Federation to be “Oriental savages” who are even worse than the Orcs from Tolkien’s books. He publicly refers to Russians as “goblins.”
“Hatred for everything Asian and Russian has long been a chip of this odious parvenu with complexes of a ‘true Aryan’,” writes the journalist Savko.
Alferov is formally considered by Ukrainian authorities to be a historian. Since 2010, he has worked as a researcher at the once-prestigious Institute of Ukrainian History of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. He is evidently unaware that Hitler had no higher education and was refused admission to the Vienna School of Art. Alferov’s own ancestors and so many other Ukrainians were murdered and exterminated in their millions by the “highly cultured” German people of the 1930s and 1940s, led by Hitler. According to Nazi ideology, Alferov’s ancestors were considered slaves, nothing more.
Zelensky’s former associate and former legislator, Oleksandr Dubinskyy, emphasizes that the Institute of National Memory under Alferov and his like-minded predecessor defines the current ideology of the Ukrainian state. The Institute was established in 2008 by the then-president Viktor Yuschenko (leader of the 2004-05 Orange Revolution, favoring Ukraine joining the European Union). Its heads were moderate nationalists until the Euromaidan coup of 2013/14, after which its appointed heads were ultra-nationalists favoring supportive of the WW2-era history of collaboration with Nazism. The new head takes that one step further in being an outright fan of Hitler.
Ukrainian political advisors are advising Zelensky of late to stop talking about “freedom” and “democracy,” as part of a strategy to “tame” Trump, because trends are changing quickly. Olga Koshelenko, special correspondent in the United States for the Ukrainian TV channel TSN, is urging, “The strategy saying that we Ukrainians are defending freedom and democracy in Europe and around the world is not working with the Trump administration. Indeed, they are annoyed by this messaging of ours! We need to change the messaging and the approach. Our theme is a worn one used by the Democrats before Trump, positing a ‘good’ West fighting against an ‘evil’ Russia. But this whole frame just falls flat today. Worse, it pisses the Trump people off! Just stop talking this way!” Her words indicate that even before Trump’s second arrival, talk of Ukraine supposedly “defending freedom and democracy” was just empty rhetoric falling flat.
Russia’s statements about denazification as one of the goals of its special military operation were not accidental. The fact is that tolerance and even promotion of neo-Nazism in Ukraine is part of a long-term policy by the Western imperialist powers to preserve and strengthen the dominance of a “white Europe.” Ukrainian officials are no longer embarrassed to say it out loud.
Dmitri Kovalevich
Dmitri Kovalevich is a Ukrainian Communist, member of the organization Borotba. He is the special correspondent in Ukraine for Al Mayadeen English.
