Ukrainian volunteer and civic activist Serhii Sternenko says the country is heading toward a strategic-scale catastrophe that could lead to the loss of statehood.
His comments came in response to a post by Ukrainian war reporter Anna Kalozhna, who described a catastrophic situation on the front lines.
Citing soldiers, she wrote that a commander who regularly posts videos on TikTok lost his personnel in assaults, leaving no one to hold the defense and triggering a collapse of the front line on the Novopavlivka and Hulyaipole axes.
“On the Novopavlivka axis, [she used a derogatory term for Russian troops] drove vehicles from the line of contact 10 kilometers into our rear twice. They landed their troops in Novopavlivka. Deep State reported it; Serhii Sternenko confirmed it. According to my information, they landed between 50 and 100 personnel. Six months ago, they couldn’t have dreamed of this. Now it’s happening more and more often. Every other day, different desperate commanders from that sector are writing,” the post reads.
“Take the kerosene away from your ‘firefighters’- stop counter-assaulting everywhere, where it’s needed and where it’s not. Dig in somewhere already - if we still can, of course. And send people to the brigades! To the brigades, not to TikTokers. I don’t know if it’s too late. I blame myself for writing about the harm of scaling up assault units by bleeding the brigades dry only a month and a half ago,” Anna added.
In comments under Kalozhna’s post, users did not hide their frustration with the command.
Sternenko backed the journalist’s account and said he was being “very diplomatic” in his assessment.
“Ignoring this is a crime. Staying silent is a crime. Under current circumstances, and without sweeping changes not only in military command but in the political approach to a defensive war, the question of when Russian tanks roll into, say, Zaporizhzhia or Dnipro is only a matter of time. Our defense is falling apart - under a suffocating silence about it,” he wrote.
He added that if not for the heroism of the infantry—critically short in number and being ground down in counter-assaults - and for drones, Ukraine would already have lost the war. Sternenko urged Ukrainians to continue supporting the Defense Forces.
Earlier, Col. Valentyn Manko, head of the Assault Units Directorate of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, was accused of posting photos with maps on TikTok that may have contained information marked “secret” or “for official use only.”
Manko said the maps in the photos were Google Maps and that he added the markings himself.
Bohdan Krotevych, former chief of staff of the National Guard’s Azov 12th Brigade, argued that Manko’s posts helped the Russians.
Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Communications said it conducted a professional analysis of the photo Manko posted. The review found the maps did not disclose the spatial or temporal parameters of Defense Forces operations or identify units that took part in them.
