Ukraine war mega thread

[sabang]

The reaction to his application for accelerated membership was muted, exposing the limits of the West’s military involvement in this war.

OCTOBER 6, 2022
Written by
Ted Snider

On September 30, in the tailwind of Russia’s announcement that Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia would be annexed by Russia, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky issued a renewed plea for Ukrainian membership in NATO.

The Ukrainian president made his case for membership by pointing out that “de facto, we have already made our way to NATO.” With that statement, he lifted up Russia’s claim that it is “now in a direct war with the U.S.” or, as Putin said on September 21, that Russia is fighting “the entire Western military machine.”

In other words, Zelensky’s request has further fed into Russian fears that Ukraine has already become a Western vassal. For Ukraine and its allies, it also highlighted, once again, that Kyiv is not a member of NATO. And, judging by the muted response from NATO leaders, that’s not going to change anytime soon.

Take NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who repeated that the door is open to all European countries before slamming the door shut again by saying that “our focus now is on providing immediate support to Ukraine to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia’s brutal invasion.”

If that wasn’t enough, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan then pretty much locked the door, saying Ukraine’s application “should be taken up at a different time.”

This is a reminder to the people of Ukraine — the people who are directly suffering the horrors of this war — that the U.S. and its NATO allies are more than happy to send weapons to Ukrainian soldiers but remain unwilling to send their own men and women to fight.

Biden has repeatedly insisted that the U.S. “will not fight the third world war in Ukraine,” hence the immediate reason NATO won’t entertain Zelensky’s entreaties: Article 5 could be triggered immediately in the face of continued Russian aggression against the defenses, infrastructure, and populace in Ukraine.

But, due in part to years of confused policy toward Ukraine, NATO is on that precipice today. Now that the eastern region of Ukraine has, in Russia’s eyes, joined Crimea as part of Russia, Russian officials have warned that they will regard an assault on that region as an assault on Russia — an assault that justifies the “use of all weapon systems available to us,” in the words of Vladimir Putin. And that would start the very World War III that closing the NATO door to Ukraine is meant to avoid.

The only way out is diplomacy and a negotiated settlement. Unfortunately, that way out has now been complicated by another statement from Zelensky. Following his application for accelerated ascension to NATO, the Ukrainian president invoked a decree banning negotiating with Putin. The decree “acknowledge[s] the impossibility of holding negotiations with President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin.” Zelensky added in a video address that “we are ready for dialogue with Russia, but with another president of Russia,” effectively ruling out peace talks.

Russia, which has also at times refused to talk, says it will talk if Zelensky changes his mind. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said,“we’ll now be waiting for the current president to change his stance or for the arrival of the future president of Ukraine.”

That Ukraine and Russia see Ukraine as a de facto member of NATO and that NATO still refuses entry to Ukraine highlight both the dangerous peak the war has reached and the firm limits to NATO’s willingness to become involved in the war. This makes the need for a negotiated settlement more critical. There is an urgency for the U.S. to finally begin to talk to Russia, to urge Zelensky to reconsider the decree, to finally return to the last promising point of departure — April’s talks in Istanbul — and restart diplomatic talks that could finally end this horrific conflict.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/10/06/zelenskys-nato-bid-falls-flat/

[misskit]

Russian Infighting Peaks With Calls for Suicide and Execution

Just over two weeks since Vladimir Putin’s latest hail mary in his war against Ukraine, things are going so well for the Russian leader that draftees are rioting, his top allies are at each other’s throats over a series of losses, and his defense minister has now been urged by his own team to blow his brains out.


“Yes, really, many are saying that… a defense minister who allowed such circumstances to arise could, as an officer, just shoot himself. But, you know, for many the word ‘officer’ is not clear,” one of Russia’s puppet leaders in Kherson said Thursday in the latest sign of the wheels falling off the Russian war machine.


Kirill Stremousov now joins a rapidly growing list of Putin loyalists openly venting about recent Russian failures on the battlefield—and blaming “worthless” Russian military brass for the humiliating debacle.


After weeks of complaints by pro-Kremlin military bloggers, anger at the military has now officially carried over into a more formal setting: even some Russian lawmakers are now lashing out at defense officials, with retired army officer Andrei Kartapolov on Wednesday demanding the army “stop lying” about war losses.


Propagandist Vladimir Solovyov, interviewing Kartapolov, suggested the “only solution” would be to execute the defense officials “guilty” of the mounting setbacks.

The very public infighting could not come at a worse time for the Kremlin, as Ukraine’s eye-popping counteroffensive to reclaim the country’s land has already forced Russian troops out of territories Putin boasted were officially now part of Russia just days ago.


The meltdown also comes, quite fortuitously, just in time for the Russian president’s birthday on Friday, which the Kremlin says he will spend in his hometown of St. Petersburg, more than 800 miles from Belgorod—the scene of the latest episode showing that Putin’s “partial mobilization” is going, quite spectacularly, not according to plan.


Just two weeks after Putin announced to all of Russia that he would be summoning hundreds of thousands to face likely death on the battlefield to stop the West from “weakening” and “dividing” the country, his own troops are clearly divided: video has emerged of draftees straight-up rioting over the dysfunctional call-up, and more than a hundred of them are now said to have refused to fight.


An estimated 500 draftees were filmed in Belgorod trashing Putin’s chaotic “partial mobilization” this week in a video widely shared by social media channels linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner Group puppet master who human rights groups say personally recruited hundreds of prison inmates to fight in Ukraine in order to “win this damn war” for Putin.

“Nobody needs us, there is absolutely zero preparation!” one of the draftees can be heard shouting in the video.




As if the footage of Russian troops deriding their own leaders was not bad enough, the video was also widely seen as evidence of further infighting between Putin loyalists behind the scenes, as several men seen in the video were donning Wagner insignia. The video immediately sparked suspicions that Prighozin himself may have leaked it in order to further smear top Russian defense officials he’s openly criticized for recent war failures, including Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. That theory appeared to gain traction as news broke that Alexei Slobodenyuk, a staffer for one of Prigozhin’s media projects known for attacking Shoigu, was arrested by a spetsnaz unit in Moscow.


But similar scenes have played out elsewhere, and even new legislation threatening deserters with up to 10 years in prison has apparently not deterred Russian draftees from opting out of the war.


More than 100 newly mobilized troops from Bryansk are now said to be refusing to go to the front.


“Where are they sending us? We have no experience, we have nothing,” an unnamed draftee said in an interview with the news outlet Sota published Thursday.


The soldier said military leadership intends to send him and roughly 100 others who are refusing to fight to take back Lyman in the Donetsk region, from where Russian troops were forced to retreat last weekend.


“About a hundred and something people were sent there [before] and one remains alive, he’s in a hospital,” the soldier said.

Apart from refusing to fight, many of the new troops Putin mobilized also appear to be more busy devouring each other than “defending the Motherland” as the Russian leader hoped. Residents in the Moscow region’s city of Serpuhkov are afraid to leave their homes as draftees drunkenly fight in the streets; draftees in Penza beat up a lieutenant-colonel accused of calling them “meat” for the slaughter; and draftees and conscripts engaged in a mass brawl near Moscow that required police intervention, according to Mozhem Obyasnit.


At least 10 Russian draftees have died before even making it to the frontline, according to local media reports. Those already on the battlefield are also revolting, according to human rights group Rus Sidyashaya, which revealed Thursday that 13 soldiers hijacked defense ministry vehicles and fled from a military base in occupied Kherson with weapons and ammunition in tow.


And that’s to say nothing of the nearly 700,000 citizens who fled the country after Putin’s mobilization order, according to a new report by Forbes Russia.


In the face of such losses, however, the Kremlin appears to prefer sticking to what it does best: playing dumb.


“I don’t even know what the Russian publication Forbes is,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday when asked about the mass exodus. “Is it published? Is there even such a publisher?”

Russian Infighting Peaks With Calls for Suicide and Execution

[bsnub]

Wow! The Three Stooges have really loaded up the last page with total bullshit propaganda. It really is a shame that that trash is allowed to stay on the thread. It all should be trashed into the doghouse, all it does is distract people from being able to see what is really happening in Ukraine.

[sabang]

So in snubs world, "Responsible Statecraft" is propaganda. You are sounding as unhinged as your hero Zelensky.

[harrybarracuda]

So in snubs world, "Responsible Statecraft" is propaganda. You are sounding as unhinged as your hero Zelensky.

"Responsible statecraft"



A more accurate description:

The end of Vladimir Putin is fast approaching

Vladimir Putin claimed at the start of Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine that he was motivated by a desire to rid the country of the “Nazis” who had seized control of it. Now, thanks to the litany of atrocities committed by Russian forces, it is abundantly clear that the one person who personifies all the most despicable characteristics of a Nazi fanatic is Putin himself.The Russian leader’s tyrannical instincts were very much on display at the preposterous ceremony he laid on in Red Square at the weekend to celebrate the annexation of the four Ukrainian territories he says his forces have captured during the past four months.

Invoking the rhetoric of a demagogue, Putin could hardly contain himself as he launched into a tirade denouncing the iniquities of the West, while heralding the heroic achievements of the Russian military. Perhaps not since Adolf Hitler delivered his rants at the Nuremberg rallies have we witnessed such a deranged outpouring by a world leader.

Putin’s cruel contempt for the Ukrainian people he seeks to “liberate”, moreover, is shared by the Russian military, which has committed abominations on an industrial scale in its desperate quest to conquer Ukrainian soil. Russia stands accused of countless war crimes, from massacring civilians at the northern town of Bucha at the start of the conflict, to the more recent missile strike on a convoy of refugees trying to flee to safety, killing 20 people – including a number of children.

More than seven decades after the defeat of Nazi Germany, it is almost beyond comprehension that such horrors are being carried out on European soil.

Russia’s perpetration, furthermore, of these abhorrent war crimes makes it even more imperative that the Western powers do everything they can to ensure Putin and his acolytes suffer the same fate as the Nazi regime that he is trying so hard to emulate.

I have spent much of this week attending a conference organised by the impressive Wilton Park centre, where some of the world’s leading military thinkers have been considering the implications of the Ukraine conflict, and how the West can withstand the future threat they are likely to encounter from autocratic powers such as Russia and China.

And while opinions differ as to the best means of achieving this goal, especially enhancing Nato’s readiness to meet such challenges, there was a general consensus that ensuring Putin’s Russia suffers a humiliating defeat would be a good place to start.

Thankfully, this happy prospect has moved a significant step closer following the breathtaking successes Ukraine’s forces are achieving on the battlefield as they continue to advance against the Russians on both the eastern and southern fronts.

To the east, Ukrainian forces have added to the sizeable gains they have already achieved in Donetsk by extending their offensive into Luhansk, where they claim to have recaptured several settlements in recent days. If the Ukrainian military is able to maintain this momentum, it will not be long before Putin’s claim to control the two regions that constitute the Donbas is exposed as a sham.

It is a similar situation in the south, where the Ukrainians are reported to be making serious progress around the strategic city of Kherson, regarded as the gateway to Crimea. This raises the tantalising prospect that the Ukrainians will soon be in a position to recapture the Crimean peninsula itself, the home of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, which really would be a dagger blow to Putin’s heart.

The speed with which the Ukrainians have turned the tide of the conflict emphatically to their advantage has prompted unease in some Western quarters. There are concerns that the cornered Russian tyrant might resort to tactical nuclear weapons to save his skin.

Such a dramatic escalation by Putin, though, would ultimately prove counterproductive. Russia developed these weapons during the Cold War to destroy massed ranks of heavy armour, thereby allowing its forces to break through Western defences. But, in Ukraine, there are no massed ranks of heavy armour to attack, and no Russian forces standing ready to launch an offensive.

Putin’s nuclear sabre-rattling, therefore, is nothing more than another example of his erratic and delusional behaviour. All the more reason, then, for the West to ensure that he suffers a total and humiliating defeat, one that sends an unequivocal message to other autocratic regimes that any future acts of unprovoked aggression will suffer a similar fate.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/10/06/end-vladimir-putin-fast-approaching/

[Hugh Cow]

The reaction to his application for accelerated membership was muted, exposing the limits of the West’s military involvement in this war.

OCTOBER 6, 2022
Written by
Ted Snider

On September 30, in the tailwind of Russia’s announcement that Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia would be annexed by Russia, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky issued a renewed plea for Ukrainian membership in NATO.

The Ukrainian president made his case for membership by pointing out that “de facto, we have already made our way to NATO.” With that statement, he lifted up Russia’s claim that it is “now in a direct war with the U.S.” or, as Putin said on September 21, that Russia is fighting “the entire Western military machine.”

In other words, Zelensky’s request has further fed into Russian fears that Ukraine has already become a Western vassal. For Ukraine and its allies, it also highlighted, once again, that Kyiv is not a member of NATO. And, judging by the muted response from NATO leaders, that’s not going to change anytime soon.

Take NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who repeated that the door is open to all European countries before slamming the door shut again by saying that “our focus now is on providing immediate support to Ukraine to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia’s brutal invasion.”

If that wasn’t enough, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan then pretty much locked the door, saying Ukraine’s application “should be taken up at a different time.”

This is a reminder to the people of Ukraine — the people who are directly suffering the horrors of this war — that the U.S. and its NATO allies are more than happy to send weapons to Ukrainian soldiers but remain unwilling to send their own men and women to fight.

Biden has repeatedly insisted that the U.S. “will not fight the third world war in Ukraine,” hence the immediate reason NATO won’t entertain Zelensky’s entreaties: Article 5 could be triggered immediately in the face of continued Russian aggression against the defenses, infrastructure, and populace in Ukraine.

But, due in part to years of confused policy toward Ukraine, NATO is on that precipice today. Now that the eastern region of Ukraine has, in Russia’s eyes, joined Crimea as part of Russia, Russian officials have warned that they will regard an assault on that region as an assault on Russia — an assault that justifies the “use of all weapon systems available to us,” in the words of Vladimir Putin. And that would start the very World War III that closing the NATO door to Ukraine is meant to avoid.

The only way out is diplomacy and a negotiated settlement. Unfortunately, that way out has now been complicated by another statement from Zelensky. Following his application for accelerated ascension to NATO, the Ukrainian president invoked a decree banning negotiating with Putin. The decree “acknowledge[s] the impossibility of holding negotiations with President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin.” Zelensky added in a video address that “we are ready for dialogue with Russia, but with another president of Russia,” effectively ruling out peace talks.

Russia, which has also at times refused to talk, says it will talk if Zelensky changes his mind. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said,“we’ll now be waiting for the current president to change his stance or for the arrival of the future president of Ukraine.”

That Ukraine and Russia see Ukraine as a de facto member of NATO and that NATO still refuses entry to Ukraine highlight both the dangerous peak the war has reached and the firm limits to NATO’s willingness to become involved in the war. This makes the need for a negotiated settlement more critical. There is an urgency for the U.S. to finally begin to talk to Russia, to urge Zelensky to reconsider the decree, to finally return to the last promising point of departure — April’s talks in Istanbul — and restart diplomatic talks that could finally end this horrific conflict.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/10/06/zelenskys-nato-bid-falls-flat/

So I take from this that the "negotiation" will be. Russia: Give us all of the 4 provinces we stole plus crimea. Admit they now belong to Russia and we will withdraw or in some cases advance our troops to the "new" Russian border. In return we will give you well, nothing.
That is about the same "negotiation" that a country would impose on another, after said country's total unconditional surrender. Hardly a negotiating position for a country that is losing a war.
It is not in any way a recipe for peace but a blueprint for endless future wars, where the aggressor takes what he wants with no consequences. If that was allowed to happen China would be on the way to Taiwan by now.
Whoever wrote that rubbish is a fantasist that lives in an alternate reality. Certainly not a journalist with any knowledge or credibility, not withstanding the gullibility of someone that would reprint that tripe let alone give it any creedence.

[bsnub]

Whoever wrote that rubbish is a fantasist that lives in an alternate reality. Certainly not a journalist with any knowledge or credibility, not withstanding the gullibility of someone that would reprint that tripe let alone give it any creedence.

He has been posting the same tosh since before the war started, repeated ad nauseam. At the start of the war these trash sites he quotes said that Ukraine should surrender and succeed its territory for the sake of "world peace" now they are still saying the same horseshit.

[bsnub]

The noose continues to tighten in Kherson.

KHERSON/1315 UTC 6 OCT/ Offensive operations continue. UKR units in contact at the northern urban area of Snihurivka. UKR Air defense interdicts 3 Iranian Shaheed-136 UAVs before they could strike Mykolaiv. UKR conducts 350 fire missions and 7 Close Air Support (CAS) sorties.

[sabang]

These war porn cartoons of yours would be more useful if they showed the losses on both sides.

[pickel]

These war porn cartoons of yours would be more useful if they showed the losses on both sides.

If they did you'd say it was a lie and then post an opinion piece by a poet or a pedophile.

[bsnub]

These war porn cartoons of yours would be more useful if they showed the losses on both sides.

This is a thread about a war, you imbecile, and these maps provide important tactical updates as to what is going on at the battlefield level it is far from "war porn". Go start a knitting thread if you can not handle it in here.

If they did you'd say it was a lie and then post an opinion piece by a poet or a pedophile.

Very true. The Ukrainians are so far and away better trained, equipped and disciplined, and it is really showing on the battlefield. The Russians take far higher casualty rates than the Ukrainians at this point of the war.

[harrybarracuda]

These war porn cartoons of yours would be more useful if they showed the losses on both sides.

How exactly?

If they showed Russians dying by the thousand you'd say they were wrong anyway, you pitiful putin brown noser.

[Shutree]

“About a hundred and something people were sent there [before] and one remains alive, he’s in a hospital,” the soldier said.

That has a ring of truth about it, coming from a draftee. All very sad.

[panama hat]

These war porn cartoons of yours would be more useful if they showed the losses on both sides.

And you'd the say . . . what? Keep wanking over your war porn.

[OhOh]

anyone who has the luxury to live in a democracy

Which countries, do you suggest, are those?

[Shutree]

Which countries, do you suggest, are those?

Be smug, if you want to. Greater minds have considered the issues:

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
(Speech in the House of Commons, 11 November 1947) — Winston S. Churchill

You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police ... yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts: words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home all the more powerful because forbidden terrify them. A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic. — Winston S. Churchill

[panama hat]

Which countries, do you suggest, are those?

Well, they wouldn't include the brutal murderous regime in China, the brutal and idiotic murderous regime in Russia, the brutal and astonishingly murderous regime jn Pyongyang . . . you could go with Iran if you wish to try

[Troy]

Just over two weeks since Vladimir Putin’s latest hail mary in his war against Ukraine, things are going so well for the Russian leader that draftees are rioting, his top allies are at each other’s throats over a series of losses, and his defense minister has now been urged by his own team to blow his brains out.

We saw the Russian rout in the east, there's a real possibility we will see the Russian mutiny in the south.

Russian logistics is just crap, they can't feed and arm the soldiers they already have let alone a bunch of forced conscripts. If Ukraine can retake Kherson then all is lost for Putin, no reason not to kick him out of Crimea as well.

[Shutree]

Russian logistics is just crap, they can't feed and arm the soldiers they already have let alone a bunch of forced conscripts.

You have to wonder if it is smart to add thousands of new conscripts to Kherson area and then be unable to feed them along with the regular forces. The competition for resources including food and winter clothing could get nasty. Unfortunately it might be civilians who end up suffering most.

[bsnub]

If Ukraine can retake Kherson then all is lost for Putin, no reason not to kick him out of Crimea as well.

I think it is a pretty safe bet that as soon as Kherson has fallen, they will be coming for Crimea next.

The competition for resources including food and winter clothing could get nasty.

On the Russians side of the entire front, there will be rampant frost bite cases. The Russians are totally unprepared for the winter, the Ukrainians on the other side have seen tons upon tons of winter gear pour in from the west. They will be nice and toasty all winter, especially since they will be rotating their forces as well. Something the Russians are incapable of doing.

[Norton]

Unfortunately it might be civilians who end up suffering most.

Always is. Much more to come I fear. This war is far from over.

[david44]

I have lived and worked in over 60 nations

I think you know very well who I mean some are more open liberal than others.

In most surveys Finland where women have always ahd a vote comes out highly alongside Estonia, Iceland and the Republic of Ireland .

I can cite is Poblacht na hÉireann where governments change folowing free elections.

The Dail is elected by popular franchise even dentally handicapped British residents can vote.

Even being gay of Indian descent or from Blanchardstown proved no bar to LEO !!

We even had an elected President born in UK !! and provided the sixth president of Israel Chaim Herzog, from Holy Ground to Holy Land by proxy.

The President can be removed also unlike here UK Belgium Holland Spain etc

"The president can be removed from office in two ways, neither of which has ever been invoked. The Supreme Court, in a sitting of at least five judges, may find the president "permanently incapacitated", while the Oireachtas may remove the president for "stated misbehaviour".[

Either house of the Oireachtas may instigate the latter process by passing an impeachment resolution, provided at least thirty members move it and at least two-thirds support it.

The other house will then either investigate the stated charges or commission a body to do so; following which at least two-thirds of members must agree both that the president is guilty and that the charges warrant removal.

There are various levels of representation as you well know , voting age first past the post.

I dout you are really that ignorant I think you are playing devil's advocate or being needlessly frivolous where teh choice is between a struggling democracy under unprovoked attack from a nuclear dictatorship.

A simple guide is can one safely freely criticise the leader, are the press , courts, bank, immigration , armed forces independent of temporary politcians.

Of countries I have visited I can assure you the ragheaded dictatorshits, Russia, China and most of Asia (bar Israel India S Korea and Singapore) are not, Switzerland, Czechia, Finland, Germany France , Italy USA and Austria are.
Most of former Spanish colonies , Portuguese colonies in Lain America have albeit flawed elections , despite coups and American interference, although many of the former UK slave islands still have courts of appeal in London.

[bsnub]

Putin is getting his ass handed to him on a plate. What a fitting birthday present.

[OhOh]

Putin is getting his ass handed to him on a plate

Tonights tasty hors d'oeuvre.

An opinion from a Swiss "expert":

"Jacques Baud , born on 1 ^April , 1955 , is a former colonel in the Swiss army, strategic analyst specialist , intelligence and terrorism ."

Jacques Baud — Wikipedia

Kharkov and Mobilization

October 1, 2022 Jacques Baud

The recapture of the Kharkov region at the beginning of September appears to be a success for Ukrainian forces. Our media exulted and relayed Ukrainian propaganda to give us a picture that is not entirely accurate.

A closer look at the operations might have prompted Ukraine to be more cautious:

""From a military point of view, this operation is a tactical victory for the Ukrainians and an operational/strategic victory for the Russian coalition.
On the Ukrainian side, Kiev was under pressure to achieve some success on the battlefield. Volodymyr Zelensky was afraid of a fatigue from the West and that its support would stop. This is why the Americans and the British pressed him to carry out offensives in the Kherson sector. These offensives, undertaken in a disorganised manner, with disproportionate casualties and without success, created tensions between Zelensky and his military staff.

For several weeks now, Western experts have been questioning the presence of the Russians in the Kharkov area, as they clearly had no intention to fight in the city. In reality, their presence in this area was only aimed at affixing the Ukrainian troops so that they would not go to the Donbass, which is the real operational objective of the Russians.

In August, indications suggested that the Russians had planned to leave
the area well before the start of the Ukrainian offensive. They therefore withdrew in good order, together with some civilians who could have been the subject of retaliation. As evidence of this, the huge ammunition depot at Balaklaya was empty when the Ukrainians found it, demonstrating that the Russians had evacuated all sensitive personnel and equipment in good order several days earlier. The Russians had even left areas that Ukraine had not attacked. Only a few Russian National Guard and Donbass militia troops remained as the Ukrainians entered the area.

At this point, the Ukrainians were busy launching multiple attacks in the Kherson region, which had resulted in repeated setbacks and huge losses for their army since August. When US intelligence detected the Russians’ departure from the Kharkov region, they saw an opportunity for the Ukrainians to achieve an operational success and passed on the information. Ukraine thus abruptly decided to attack the Kharkov area that was already virtually empty of Russian troops.

Apparently, the Russians anticipated the organisation of referenda in Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhe and Kherson oblasts. They realised that the territory of Kharkov was not directly relevant to their objectives, and that they were in the same situation as with Snake Island in June: the energy to defend this territory was greater than its strategic importance.

By withdrawing from Kharkov, the Russian coalition was able to consolidate its defence line behind the Oskoll River and strengthen its presence in the north of the Donbass. It was thus able to make a significant advance in the Bakhmut area, a key point in the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk sector, which is the real operational objective of the Russian coalition.

As there were no longer any troops in Kharkov to “pin down” the Ukrainian army, the Russians had to attack the electrical infrastructure to prevent Ukrainian reinforcements by train to the Donbass.
As a result, today, all Russian coalition forces are located within what may become the new borders of Russia after the referenda in the four southern Ukrainian oblasts.

For the Ukrainians, it is a Pyrrhic victory. They advanced into Kharkov without encountering any resistance and there was hardly any fighting. Instead, the area became a huge “killing zone” (“зона поражения”), where Russian artillery would destroy an estimated number of 4,000-5,000 Ukrainians (about 2 brigades), while the Russian coalition suffered only marginal losses as there was no fighting.

These losses come on top of those from the Kherson offensives. According to Sergei Shoigu, Russian Defence Minister, the Ukrainians lost about 7,000 men in the first three weeks of September. Although these figures cannot be verified, their order of magnitude matches the estimates of some Western experts. In other words, it seems that the Ukrainians have lost about 25% of the 10 brigades that were created and equipped in recent months with Western help. This is a far cry from the million-man army mentioned by the Ukrainian leaders.

From a political point of view, it is a strategic victory for the Ukrainians, and a tactical loss for the Russians. It is the first time that the Ukrainians have taken back so much territory since 2014, and the Russians seem to be losing. The Ukrainians were able to use this opportunity to communicate about their final victory, undoubtedly triggering exaggerated hopes and making them even less willing to engage in negotiation.

This is why Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, declared that the moment “is not one for appeasement.”

This Pyrrhic victory is therefore a poisoned gift for Ukraine. It has led the West to overestimate the capabilities of the Ukrainian forces and to push them to engage in further offensives, instead of negotiating.

The words “victory” and “defeat” need to be carefully used. Vladimir Putin’s stated objectives of “demilitarisation” and “denazification” are not about gaining territory, but about destroying the threat to the Donbass. In other words, the Ukrainians are fighting for territory, while the Russians seek to destroy capabilities. In a way, by holding on to territory, the Ukrainians are making the Russians’ job easier. You can always regain territory—you cannot regain human lives.

In the belief that they are weakening Russia, our media are promoting the gradual disappearance of Ukrainian society. It seems like a paradox, but this is consistent with the way our leaders view Ukraine. They did not react to the massacres of Russian-speaking Ukrainian civilians in the Donbass between 2014 and 2022, nor do they mention Ukraine’s losses today. In fact, for our media and authorities, Ukrainians are a kind of “Untermenschen” whose life is only meant to satisfy the goals of our politicians.

Between 23 and 27 September, there were four referendums in progress, and the local populations have to answer different questions depending on their region. In the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, which are officially independent, the question is whether the population wants to join Russia.

In the oblasts of Kherson and Zaporozhe, which are still officially part of Ukraine, the question is whether the population wants to remain within Ukraine, whether they want to be independent, or whether they want to be part of Russia.

However, there are still some unknowns at this stage, such as what will be the borders of the entities that will be attached to Russia. Will they be the borders of the areas occupied by the Russian coalition today or the borders of the Ukrainian regions? If it is the second solution, then we could still have Russian offensives to seize the rest of the regions (oblasts).

It is hard to estimate the outcome of these referenda, although one can assume the Russian-speaking Ukrainians will most probably want to leave Ukraine. Polls, whose reliability cannot be assessed, suggest that 80-90% are in favour of joining Russia. This seems realistic due to several factors.

Firstly, since 2014, linguistic minorities in Ukraine have been subject to restrictions that have made them 2nd class citizens. As a result, the Ukrainian policy has caused Russian-speaking citizens to no longer feel Ukrainian.

This was even emphasised by the Law on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in July 2021, which is somewhat equivalent to the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, which give different rights to citizens depending on their ethnic origin. This is why Vladimir Putin wrote an article on 12 July 2021 calling on Ukraine to consider Russian speakers as part of the Ukrainian nation and not to discriminate against them as proposed by the new law.

Of course, no Western country protested against this law, which is a continuation of the abolition of the law on official languages in February 2014, which was the reason for the secession of Crimea and Donbass.

Secondly, in their fight against the secession of Donbass, the Ukrainians never tried to win the “hearts and minds” of the insurgents. On the contrary, they have done everything to drive them further away by bombing them, by mining their roads, by cutting off drinking water, by stopping the payment of pensions and salaries, or by stopping all banking services. This is the exact opposite of an effective counter-insurgency strategy.

Finally, the artillery and missile strikes against the population of Donetsk and other cities in the Zaporozhe and Kherson region in order to intimidate the population and prevent them from going to the polls is further alienating the local population from Kiev. Today, the Russian-speaking population is afraid of Ukrainian reprisals if the referenda are not accepted.

So, we have a situation where the Western countries announce that they will not recognise these referenda, but on the other hand they have done absolutely nothing to encourage Ukraine to have a more inclusive policy with their minorities. Ultimately, what these referenda could reveal is that there has never really been an inclusive Ukrainian nation.

Moreover, these referenda will freeze a situation and make Russia’s conquests irreversible. Interestingly, if the West had let Zelensky continue with the proposal he made to Russia at the end of March 2022, Ukraine would more or less retained its pre-February 2022 configuration.

As a reminder, Zelensky had made a first request for negotiation on 25 February, which the Russians had accepted, but which the European Union refused by providing a first package of €450 million in arms.

In March, Zelensky made another offer that Russia welcomed and was ready to discuss, but the European Union once again came to prevent this with a second package of €500 million for arms.

As explained by Ukraïnskaya Pravda, Boris Johnson called Zelensky on 2 April and asked him to withdraw his proposal, otherwise the West would stop its support. Then, on 9 April, during his visit to Kiev, “BoJo” repeated the same thing to the Ukrainian president. Ukraine was therefore ready to negotiate with Russia, but the West does not want negotiations, as “BoJo” made clear again on his last visit to Ukraine in August.

It is certainly the prospect that there will be no negotiations that have prompted Russia to engage in referenda. It should be remembered that until now, Vladimir Putin had always rejected the idea of integrating the territories of southern Ukraine into Russia.

It should also be remembered that if the West were so committed to
Ukraine and its territorial integrity, France and Germany would certainly have fulfilled their obligations under the Minsk Agreements before February 2022. Moreover, they would have let Zelensky proceed with his proposed agreement with Russia in March 2022. The problem is that the West is not looking for Ukraine’s interest, but to weaken Russia.

Partial Mobilization

Regarding Vladimir Putin’s announcement of a partial mobilisation, it should be recalled that Russia has intervened in Ukraine with considerably fewer troops than the West considers necessary to conduct an offensive campaign. There are two reasons for this.

First, the Russians rely on their mastery of the “operative art” and play with their operational modules on the theatre of operations like a chess player. This is what allows them to be effective with reduced manpower. In other words, they know how to conduct operations efficiently.

The second reason that our media deliberately ignore is that the vast majority of the combat actions in Ukraine is carried out by the Donbass militias. Instead of saying “the Russians,” they should (if they were honest) say “the Russian coalition” or “the Russian-speaking coalition.” In other words, the number of Russian troops in Ukraine is relatively small. Moreover, the Russian practice is to keep troops only for a limited period in the area of operations. This means that they tend to rotate troops more frequently than the West.

In addition to these general considerations, there are the possible consequences of the referenda in southern Ukraine, which are likely to extend the Russian border by almost 1000 kilometres. This will require additional capabilities to build a more robust defence system, to construct facilities for troops, etc. In that sense, this partial mobilisation is a good idea. In this sense, this partial mobilisation is a logical consequence of what we have seen above.

Much has been made in the West about those who have sought to leave Russia to avoid mobilisation. They certainly exist, like the thousands of Ukrainians who sought to escape conscription and can be seen in the streets of Brussels driving powerful and expensive German sports cars!

Much less publicity has been given to the long queues of young people outside military recruitment offices and the popular demonstrations in favour of the decision to mobilise!

Nuclear Threats

As to the nuclear threats, in his speech on 21 September , Vladimir Putin mentioned the risk of nuclear escalation. Naturally, the conspiratorial media (i.e., those that construct narratives from unrelated information) immediately spoke of “nuclear threats.”

In reality, this is not true. If we read the wording of Putin’s speech, we can see that he did not threaten to use nuclear weapons. In fact, he has never done so since the beginning of this conflict in 2014. However, he has warned the West against the use of such weapons.

I will remind you that on 24 August, Liz Truss declared that it was acceptable to strike Russia with nuclear weapons, and that she was ready to do so, even if it would lead to a “global annihilation!” This is not the first time that the current British Prime Minister has made such a statement, which had already prompted warnings from the Kremlin in February.

Moreover, I would like to remind you that in April of this year, Joe Biden decided to depart from the US “no-first use” policy and thus reserves the right to use nuclear weapons first.

So clearly, Vladimir Putin does not trust Western behaviour that is totally irrational and irresponsible, and which is ready to sacrifice its own citizens in order to achieve objectives guided by dogmatism and ideology. This is what is happening in the field of energy and sanctions at the moment, and this is what Liz Truss is ready to do with nuclear weapons. Putin is certainly worried about the reactions of our leaders who are in increasingly uncomfortable situations because of the catastrophic economic and social situation they have created by their incompetence.

This pressure on our leaders could lead them to escalate the conflict just to avoid losing face.

In his speech, Vladimir Putin does not threaten to use nuclear weapons, but other types of weapons. He is of course thinking of hypersonic weapons, which do not need to be nuclear to be effective and which can thwart Western defences. Moreover, contrary to what our media say, the use of tactical nuclear weapons is no longer in the Russian employment doctrine for many years. Moreover, unlike the United States, Russia has a no-first-use policy.

In other words, it is the Westerners and their erratic behaviour that are the real factors of insecurity.

I am not sure that our politicians have a clear and objective view of the situation. Ignazio Cassis’ recent tweets show that his level of information is low.

First of all, when he mentions Switzerland’s role and neutrality in offering its good offices, he is a bit out of touch with geography. In Russia’s mind, Switzerland has abandoned its neutrality status and if it wants to play a constructive role in this conflict, it will have to demonstrate its neutrality. We are a long, long way from that.

Secondly, when Cassis expressed his concern about the use of nuclear weapons to Lavrov, he clearly did not understand Vladimir Putin’s message. The problem with today’s Western leaders is that none of them currently has the intellectual capacity to deal with the challenges that they themselves have created through their own foolishness. Cassis would probably have been better advised to express his concerns to Truss and Biden!

The Russians—and Vladimir Putin in particular—have always been very clear in their statements and have consistently and methodically done what they said they would do. No more, no less. One can of course disagree with what he says, but it is a major and probably even criminal mistake not to listen to what he says. For if we had listened, we could have prevented the situation becoming what it is.

It is also interesting to compare the current general situation with what was described in the RAND Corporation reports published in 2019 as the blueprint for trying to destabilise Russia.

Figure 1—From the RAND Corporation’s 2019 paper on how to destabilise Russia. This document shows that the US was aiming for a campaign of subversion against Russia, in which Ukraine was only an unfortunate instrument.

As we can see, what we are witnessing is the result of a carefully planned scenario. It is very likely that the Russians were able to anticipate what the West was planning against them. Russia was thus able to prepare itself politically and diplomatically for the crisis that was to be created.

It is this capacity for strategic anticipation that shows that Russia is more stable, more effective and more efficient than the West.

This is why I think that if this conflict is going to escalate, it will be more because of Western incompetence than because of a Russian calculation."

https://www.thepostil.com/kharkov-and-mobilization/

[Troy]

Jacques Baud

Hasn't this guy been trashed enough? Is anyone reading these garbage posts?