Also recall Zelensky also stated “ the Kursk operation is one of the biggest Ukrainian victories.”…….
Zelensky is a delusional fool as we are witnessing…..as is all who supported the war. Fools.
It is almost unheard of for a government to authorize a large surrender of troops. Some examples of the difficulty are Stalingrad where the German general asked permission to surrender and was completely refused by Hitler. The British forces in Singapore, completely out of water, asked permission to surrender to the Japanese and Churchill refused.
It is common for governments to believe that surrender has such a debilitating effect on the populace mindset that the loss to the country is more severe than would be the loss of every single soldier fighting to the last man. The fighting to the last man concept is perceived to be in some way inspirational in contrast to what surrender would be.
There is also an American precedent in the Philippines where a local American general had to surrender and MacArthur as well as the US government never authorized it to take place on as broad a scale as it did. It was a complex matter to surrender of Corregidor amid Japanese refusal to accept that limited surrender, and demanding that it include all US forces in the Philippines.
The surrendering US general was proposed to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor and MacArthur strongly opposed that proposal. The medal was awarded after the war and MacArthur withdrew his objection.
Maybe too much babble there. The point is that it’s pretty typical for senior leadership who are not at any personal risk themselves at that moment to refuse a request to surrender by those who are at risk.