Launching a new Russian offensive on Mykolayiv would be a "one-way road" and would end in failure for Russia, a former commander of the Mykolayiv defence, Maj-Gen Dmytro Marchenko, has said, according to Krym.Realii.
Marchenko said that in order to capture Mykolayiv, Russia would have to "scramble all its troops from all directions" and try to break the Ukrainian defence with this strike force.
The general calls it an "utopia", and even if Russia manages to create such a strike force, this would entail "not one day of fighting".
"Any commander on the other side understands that if they could not do it then 'from the wheels', now when there is a positional defence, when every area is mined there, when everything is mined, well - it is a one-way road," Marchenko said.