Ukraine war mega thread

[misskit]

Russia Says 265 Azovstal Defenders Surrendered


Russia said Tuesday that 265 Ukrainian soldiers holed up in Mariupol’s besieged Azovstal steel plant had “surrendered,” contradicting Kyiv’s account that the evacuated soldiers would be exchanged later.

“The surrender of fighters from the Azov nationalist unit and Ukrainian servicemen blocked in the Azovstal plant in Mariupol began yesterday,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a daily briefing.

Russia’s military said 265 fighters, 51 of whom were seriously wounded, “laid down their arms.”


Those in need of medical assistance were sent to a hospital in the town of Novoazovsk, which is controlled by pro-Russia separatists, it added.


Ukraine’s defense ministry said Monday the fighters had been evacuated through humanitarian corridors to areas under Russian and Moscow-backed separatists’ control and that a further “exchange procedure” would take place later.


Shortly after the Russian Defense Ministry's statement, the speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament, the State Duma, ordered lawmakers to draft a standing order prohibiting the exchange of Azovstal troops for Russian prisoners of war.


“Nazi criminals should not be subject to exchange. They are war criminals and we must do everything to bring them to justice,” Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin was quoted as saying.


Russia has been waging what it terms a “special military operation” in Ukraine based on the false claim of “de-Nazifying” its pro-Western neighbor.

On Tuesday, Ukraine’s defense ministry said a rescue mission to extract the last of the estimated 340 remaining Azovstal defenders was underway.


“Our state is taking all necessary rescue measures,” the ministry said in a Telegram message.


It credited the defenders of Azovstal for delaying the transfer of 20,000 Russian troops to other parts of Ukraine, preventing Moscow from quickly capturing the southern city of Zaporizhzhia and allowing Ukrainian forces to regroup.


The general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said earlier Tuesday that the mission to defend Azovstal is over, effectively ceding control of Mariupol to Moscow and opening a land corridor between annexed Crimea and mainland Russia.

Mariupol has suffered some of the war’s most brutal shelling since Russian troops encircled it in the early days of the invasion.

Russia Says 265 Azovstal Defenders Surrendered - The Moscow Times

[misskit]

Putin Involved in Tactical Decision Making in East Ukraine – Reports


President Vladimir Putin is involved in Russia’s push to capture eastern Ukraine on a tactical level, British media reported Monday, citing unnamed western military sources.


Russian forces are currently attempting to encircle cities under Kyiv’s control in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions after abandoning their initial plan to seize the Ukrainian capital in late February.


The Russian president’s micromanagement of the war, down to determining the movement of forces, is believed to be contributing to the military’s failure to capture cities in the Donbas, according to the Guardian newspaper.


“If Putin is doing the job of a brigade commander… he could be delving into a force that could be as small as 700 to 1,000 soldiers,” British newspaper The Times quoted a source as saying.

Both publications reported that Putin is working closely with top general Valery Gerasimov, contrary to earlier reports of him being sidelined due to military blunders.


"We think Putin and Gerasimov are involved in tactical decision making at a level we would normally expect to be taken by a colonel or a brigadier," a source was quoted as saying by the Guardian.


The western assessment follows an independent Russian media report that Putin received faulty intelligence on Ukraine from the Federal Security Service (FSB) before the invasion.


The FSB's informants included fugitive Ukrainian officials who fled to Russia after Ukraine’s pro-Moscow leader was toppled in 2014, according to the iStories investigative outlet.


“They were air sellers,” an unnamed former FSB officer was quoted as saying.


“They were making things up, misinterpreting and sometimes fantasizing — and the leadership was happy to believe it,” a second former FSB officers said.

Putin Involved in Tactical Decision Making in East Ukraine – Reports - The Moscow Times

[bsnub]

EIGHTY YEARS ago the second Battle of Kharkov was raging in what was then the western Soviet Union. The Red Army had heroically driven the Nazi Wehrmacht back from the gates of Moscow. It gathered in a bulge west of Izyum, a town to the south of Kharkov, as Ukraine’s second city was then known. The subsequent Soviet offensive, launched on May 12th, was a disaster. Soviet armies were driven back and encircled. Over 170,000 Soviet troops were killed. Nikita Khrushchev later focused on the battle when denouncing his predecessor as Soviet leader, Stalin. “This is Stalin’s military ‘genius’,” he sneered, citing the crude tactics of frontal assault. “This is what it cost us.”

The Russian army is once again gathered around Izyum. And once more it is on the retreat from Kharkiv, as the city is now called, after another underwhelming campaign. It has been a month since Russia, having abandoned its assault on Kyiv, launched a fresh offensive in the eastern Donbas region. The idea was to encircle Ukrainian troops in a large salient stretching from Izyum in the north to the city of Donetsk in the south, in part by driving south from Izyum.

There have been minor successes. Russia has taken almost all of Luhansk province—it held only the southern part before the war—bar a salient around the well-defended city of Severodonetsk. It has also pushed south of Izyum, taking villages towards Barvinkove, an important rail junction, and the industrial cities of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk. Yet progress has been achingly slow—one or two kilometres a day—and casualties heavy. The war is now dominated by grinding artillery duels, rather than swift mechanised offensives. Much of Donetsk province is still in Ukrainian hands.

That is no surprise. Conventional military theory says that attackers need a three-to-one advantage over defenders to break through defensive lines. Russia is far short of that. On May 15th British defence intelligence said that the Russian armed forces had lost a third of the combat power originally committed to the invasion of Ukraine. Russian units are operating below their full strength, some severely so, despite efforts to coax ex-servicemen back into action with big pay packets. Even if Russian forces get as far as Severodonetsk, Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, the heavy casualties from urban warfare are likely to sap their capacity to fight yet further.

“The Russians continue to make seemingly the same tactical errors in how they are approaching the fight,” says a Western official. One example of that came from Bilohorivka, a settlement south-east of Izyum, where the bank of the Siverskyi Donets river lies littered with the carcasses of dozens of Russian armoured vehicles after Ukrainian artillery destroyed a pontoon bridge and foiled a crossing a week ago. “The Russians clearly intended to invest in this axis and throw a lot of combat power down it,” says Major General Mick Ryan, a retired Australian officer. “This is a significant setback for them.”

Victories like that have buoyed the Ukrainians. Though much of Donbas is lost, Ukrainian troops have held the line in Severodonetsk, despite its vulnerable position, and imposed a heavy cost on their opponents. Ukrainian counter-attacks to the north and east of Kharkiv have forced the Russians back tens of kilometres, out of artillery range of the city and, in places, back to the border. A video published on May 15th by Illia Ponomarenko of the Kyiv Independent showed the 127th territorial defence brigade placing a border post back into the ground and gathering around it, triumphantly . Those counter-attacks may eventually allow Ukraine to threaten Russian supply lines through Vovenchansk, which lies on the road between the Russian city of Belgorod and the frontlines around Izyum, and perhaps even to strike Russian rear areas around Belgorod itself, says Konrad Muzyka of Rochan Consulting, which tracks the war.

There have been other morale-boosters, too. Ukrainian warplanes are active over Donbas, including Izyum itself, despite the proximity to Russian air-defence systems over the border to the east. In the past two weeks, Ukrainian drones and jets have also repeatedly struck Russian helicopters, landing craft and surface-to-air missiles on and around Snake Island, a tiny outcrop in the north-western corner of the Black Sea, near Odessa. And while Russia is struggling to replenish its forces, Western arms—including heavy artillery—are now flowing into Ukraine.

On May 11th America’s House of Representatives approved a $40bn aid package for Ukraine which, if approved by the Senate, would bring the cumulative total for American support to $54bn—equivalent to 7% of the Biden’s administration’s proposed defence budget. “Time is working in Ukraine’s favour,” argues Mr Muzyka. “Unless Russia conducts mobilisation…its armed forces will not only stall over the next few weeks, but the influx of Western weaponry and Ukrainian personnel will allow Kyiv to start pushing Russian units back along a much broader front.”

Some Ukrainian generals are heady with success. “The breaking point will be in the second part of August,” declared Major General Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, in an interview with Sky News on May 14th. “Most of the active combat actions will have finished by the end of this year,” he promised. “As a result, we will renew Ukrainian power in all our territories that we have lost including Donbas and the Crimea.” But in private, many Ukrainian officials are more sombre about their prospects.

Russia has found it hard going in Donbas in part because this region has been an active warzone for eight years, since Russia first fomented, and backed, an armed insurgency against Ukraine in 2014. The soldiers of the Joint Forces Operation, as the Ukrainian units in Donbas are called, are battle-hardened and well equipped. But they are also dug into defensive positions, such as trenches. That shields them well from the relentless artillery barrages that have turned parts of Donbas into a pocked moonscape in recent weeks. But it also makes them less mobile, and thus less able to counter-attack.

Ukrainian forces are capable of “tactical manoeuvres”, like the operations around Kharkiv, says the Western official. But scaling this up along a front which stretches hundreds of kilometres in Donbas alone, and 1,300km in total—in other words, turning counter-attacks into a full-blown counter-offensive—will be a challenge. Russia’s woes in Ukraine have served as a reminder that war tends to favour the defender. If Ukraine were to attack dug-in Russian positions, it would find it harder going. For exactly that reason, Russian forces in Kherson, Mykolaiv and Zaporizhia provinces in southern Ukraine, have been digging trenches and building concrete fortifications, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a think-tank.

“Overall, the battle is finely balanced,” says the official. “Ukrainian personnel are highly motivated and highly experienced, and [deployed] in sufficient numbers to hold a defensive line—but perhaps don’t have the capabilities they might need.” Western weaponry has been abundant, but not decisive, so far at least. Russian forces, despite their heavy losses and tactical shortcomings, still “significantly overmatch the Ukrainians in terms of their overall capability”. That assessment was echoed on May 10th by Lieutenant-General Scott Berrier, the head of America’s Defence Intelligence Agency. “The Russians aren’t winning and the Ukrainians aren’t winning,” he said. “We’re at a bit of a stalemate here.” Ukrainians receive such pronouncements with scepticism. They have been underestimated before.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is running out of steam, again | The Economist

[misskit]

^ I want to read that but I’m going blind.

Can you please repair that wall of text?

[bsnub]

Can you please repair that wall of text?

Jeez give me a few minutes. I always repair the wall.

Early bird.

[misskit]

Thanks!

[bsnub]

The Ukrainians want to give civilians in Russia a taste of their own medicine, and Ukrainian artillery fire is now hitting civilian targets across the border. This is a turn of events to watch closely as the artillery war picks up. Shelling has specifically hit the Belgorod oblast in southwestern Russia, north of the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. One person was killed and three people wounded by Ukrainian fire in a village in that region on May 11.

Remarkable but Fleeting

Ukraine hit Russia again on May 15. The Kyiv Independent said, “Belgorod Oblast Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov claimed that the village of Sereda in the region’s Shebekino District was shelled from the territory of Ukraine, saying that one civilian received a shrapnel wound. Previously Ukraine has neither confirmed nor denied shelling Russian regions.”

Some military analysts on social media point out that Ukrainian artillery could target Russian supply lines as the defenders counterattack and move north past Kharkiv.

Shashank Joshi, defense editor at the Economist, posted to Twitter on May 16 that according to security commentator Konrad Muzyka, “‘Ukraine will be able to hit Russian logistics lines coming through Vovenchansk (from Belgorod to Izyum).’ And, he says, ‘[it is] likely that Ukraine will be able to shell Russian soil around Belgorod.'”

Noteworthy lines in @konrad_muzyka update on Ukrainian counter-offensives around Kharkiv: Ukr “will be able to hit Russian logistics lines coming through Vovenchansk” (from Belgorod to Izyum). And, he says, likely that Ukraine will be able to shell Russian soil around Belgorod. pic.twitter.com/GuFXVwc7SA

— Shashank Joshi (@shashj) May 16, 2022

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak told Al Jazeera that Russia has it coming.

“If you [Russians] decide to massively attack another country, massively kill everyone there, massively crush peaceful people with tanks, and use warehouses in your regions to enable the killings, then sooner or later the debts will have to be repaid,” Podolyak said.

While it is remarkable to see Ukraine shelling Russian civilian targets, the effects could be fleeting. The Ukrainians would need to move much more artillery in position to hit Russian residential areas and supply lines for it to make a difference.

Nevertheless, the bombardment is a psychological blow to Russia. No one expected the war to last this long, much less to see Ukraine strike at Russian territory. This is a propaganda win for Ukraine.

What the War Has Come Down To

The war has come down to dueling artillery in eastern Ukraine. This type of fighting will exact a toll from civilians on both sides. Russia also faces logistical hurdles, and artillery fire from Ukraine could shake Moscow’s confidence in its ability to resupply Russian forces. Ukraine is pushing Russia back steadily. We will likely witness additional shelling of Russian civilian and military targets, even if its effectiveness is limited in scope.

Ukraine will receive more towed and self-propelled artillery systems from the U.S. and other NATO members. This artillery could take weeks to reach the frontlines near Kharkiv, but it will eventually join the other assets that Ukraine is fielding. When this happens, look for more Russian casualties in the Belgorod region.

https://www.19fortyfive.com/2022/05/...y-hits-russia/

[bsnub]

The war has come down to dueling artillery in eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine can now win this battle with superior range and better artillery, thanks to NATO.

Almost ten PM in Melbourne and Sabwang has lost his tongue. I bet that a Ukrainian has cut it off.

[misskit]

Explainer: Is Russia Running Low on Missiles?


Precision-guided missiles have been one of the weapons of choice for the Russian Armed Forces since invading Ukraine in late February.


These domestically produced missiles have been responsible for some of Russia’s most deadly attacks in Ukraine, including on the Ukrainian port city of Odessa and on a train station in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, where a Tochka-U missile reportedly killed 57 and injured at least 100 fleeing civilians.


In total, Russia has fired 2,154 missiles at Ukraine since the beginning of the invasion, according to a statement last week by Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky.


But these attacks have become rarer in recent weeks, leading to speculation from Western officials, analysts and media reports that Russia’s missile stocks are running low.


We look at Russia’s use of missiles, whether stocks really are seriously depleted, and what a lack of such munitions could mean for Russian tactics in Ukraine.

What is a “precision-guided missile”?
Precision-guided missiles, also known as “smart munitions,” are designed to be extremely accurate. They are fitted with “seeker” systems, which enable them to change flight paths after launch and hit specific targets from long distances. Russia’s Iskander-M missile, for example, can travel up to 500 kilometers and hit an area the size of a paddling pool.


What missiles has Russia been using in Ukraine?
Russia has used a number of smart munitions in Ukraine.


These include Kh-101 and Kh-55 cruise missiles, which are launched from fixed-wing aircraft such as the Tu-95 Bear and Tu-160 Blackjack bombers. Such missiles have been regularly spotted flying over Ukraine on their way to their targets, and were used in April attacks on Odessa, according to military analyst Rob Lee.

In addition to cruise missiles, Russia has fired a number of ground-launched ballistic missiles at Ukraine, including the Tochka-U and the Iskander-M. Whereas cruise missiles are self-propelled at subsonic speeds, ballistic missiles are much faster — they use an initial rocket motor to propel them in a mostly unpowered arc to their target.

One of Russia’s most famous ballistic missiles, the Iskander-M, is a short-range ballistic missile system manufactured in the town of Kolomna, near Moscow. Capable of carrying conventional and nuclear warheads, Iskander-Ms fly at an altitude of about 50 kilometers. This is far higher than cruise missiles such as the Kh-101, which travel at tree-top height.


The Russian Defense Ministry last month released footage of troops firing an Iskander-M into Ukraine. According to the state-run TASS news agency, an Iskander-M was responsible for an attack on a Ukrainian training base for foreign volunteer soldiers in March.


In addition, Russia has also fired a small number of Kalibr-M cruise missiles. Frequently used by the Russian military in Syria, Kalibr-Ms are ship-launched, and have a range of up to 2,000 kilometers. The Russian Navy launched Kalibr missiles from a submarine in the Black Sea earlier this month, according to TASS.


Why use precision-guided munitions?
Precision-guided munitions are prefered in modern warfare because of their effectiveness and their ability to minimize collateral damage.

“Using precision munitions, you can send two aircraft to service a target, whereas in World War II, you would have had to send 100,” James Lewis, an analyst at the Strategic and International Studies Institute in Washington, told The Moscow Times.


Precision missile attacks should also cause fewer civilian casualties.


However, there are serious questions about the effectiveness of Russian missiles. Russia’s Kh-101 has proved highly-unreliable in Ukraine, with U.S. officials assessing Russia it has suffered a 60% failure rate, according to Reuters.


Many of Russia’s missiles do not even reach their targets, according to U.S. officials.


Where does Russia fire its missiles from?
Throughout the war, Russia has chosen to hit Ukraine with precision weaponry from areas firmly under Russian control.

“Their tactic has been to operate offshore, or out of country, using long-range cruise missile strikes from aircraft orbiting over Belarus, Kalibrs from the sea, or Iskanders coming in from Russia proper,” said Robert Bell, a former NATO official.


Is Russia running out of missiles?
Russian tactics in the first months of the war mean that their stocks of precision munitions are now seriously depleted, according to some analysts and Western officials.


“There are no volleys of long-range cruise missiles anymore, and there are almost no Iskander strikes,” independent military analyst Pavel Luzhin told The Moscow Times.


A U.S. official told journalists in a briefing earlier this month that Russia is “having inventory issues with precision-guided munitions.”

These reports are corroborated by a change in Russian tactics, particularly an increasing use of conventional unguided bombs, notably in the port city of Mariupol. Unguided munitions were allegedly used for attacks in Mariupol on the Azovstal steel factory, defended by Ukrainian soldiers, as well as on a maternity hospital and a theater.


Can’t Russia just produce more missiles?
Many analysts believe that Western sanctions mean Russia will struggle to replace its reserves of precision missiles.


In particular, the guidance systems for precision missiles require semiconductors and transistors that are neither manufactured in Russia nor available from China, according to expert Lewis.


“So unless the Russians have planned ahead and stockpiled munitions or Western microelectronics, or ramped up production pre-war, they’re going to run out of gas when it comes to precision guided munitions,” Lewis said.

What happens if Russia runs out of precision weapons?
Falling stocks of precision munitions will likely mean Russia looks to alternatives.


For example, there has been a recent uptick in Russian air sorties, with pilots conducting operations in Ukrainian airspace with unguided munitions.


This will likely mean a corresponding uptick in civilian casualties, analysts said.


Zelensky said that 60 civilians were killed last week in Russian air strikes, including one that hit a school in the village of Bilohorivka where 90 civilians were sheltering.


“They're going to use the Air Force to hit ground forces… [and use] unguided munitions, which will cause a lot of collateral damage,” said Dara Masicott, a senior policy researcher at the U.S.-based Rand Corporation.

Explainer: Is Russia Running Low on Missiles? - The Moscow Times

[Backspin]

French reporter finds out that the United states is leading the war in Ukraine (this is not a pro Russia source)

[pickel]

French reporter finds out that the United states is leading the war in Ukraine

That's not what he said at all. It sounds more like an American volunteer leading an international group of volunteers.

[misskit]

^ Typical backspit. If there were really something important about the story, the “reporters” would have included the name of the French reporter. Might even have mentioned the title and date of the article they say he wrote for le Figero. Click bait.

[sabang]

By Jeffrey Sachs
May 17, 2022



NEW YORK – Wars often erupt and persist because of the two sides’ miscalculations regarding their relative power. In the case of Ukraine, Russia blundered badly by underestimating the resolve of Ukrainians to fight and the effectiveness of NATO-supplied weaponry. Yet Ukraine and NATO are also overestimating their capacity to defeat Russia on the battlefield. The result is a war of attrition that each side believes it will win, but that both sides will lose. Ukraine should intensify the search for a negotiated peace of the type that was on the table in late March, but which it then abandoned following evidence of Russian atrocities in Bucha – and perhaps owing to changing perceptions of its military prospects.

The peace terms under discussion in late March called for Ukraine’s neutrality, backed by security guarantees and a timeline to address contentious issues such as the status of Crimea and the Donbas. Russian and Ukrainian negotiators stated that there was progress in the negotiations, as did the Turkish mediators. The negotiations then collapsed after the reports from Bucha, with Ukraine’s negotiator stating that, “Ukrainian society is now much more negative about any negotiation concept that concerns the Russian Federation.”

But the case for negotiations remains urgent and overwhelming. The alternative is not Ukraine’s victory but a devastating war of attrition. To reach an agreement, both sides need to recalibrate their expectations.

When Russia attacked Ukraine, it clearly expected a quick and easy victory. Russia vastly underestimated the upgrading of the Ukraine military following years of US, British, and other military support and training since 2014. Moreover, Russia underestimated the extent to which NATO military technology would counter Russia’s greater number of troops. No doubt, Russia’s greatest error was to assume that the Ukrainians would not fight – or perhaps even switch sides.

Yet now Ukraine and its Western supporters are overestimating the chances of defeating Russia on the battlefield. The idea that the Russian army is about to collapse is wishful thinking. Russia has the military capacity to destroy Ukrainian infrastructure (such as the rail lines now under attack) and to win and hold territory in the Donbas region and on the Black Sea coast. Ukrainians are fighting resolutely, but it is highly unlikely that they can force a Russian defeat.

Nor can Western financial sanctions, which are far less sweeping and effective than the governments that imposed them acknowledge. US sanctions against Venezuela, Iran, North Korea, and others have not changed the politics of those regimes, and the sanctions against Russia are already falling far short of the hype with which they were introduced. Excluding Russian banks from the SWIFT international payments system was not the “nuclear option” that many claimed. According to the International Monetary Fund, Russia’s economy will contract by around 8.5% in 2022 – bad but hardly catastrophic.

Moreover, the sanctions are creating serious economic consequences for the United States and especially Europe. US inflation is at a 40-year high and is likely to persist because of the trillions of dollars of liquidity that had been created by the Federal Reserve in recent years. At the same time, the US and European economies are slowing, perhaps even contracting, as supply-chain disruptions proliferate.

US President Joe Biden’s domestic political position is weak and likely to weaken further as economic difficulties mount in the coming months. Public support for the war will also likely diminish as the economy sours. The Republican Party is split over the war, with the Trump faction not much interested in confronting Russia over Ukraine. The Democrats, too, will increasingly resent the stagflation that is likely to cost the party its majority in one or both houses of Congress in the November midterm elections.

The adverse economic fallout from the war and sanctions regime will also reach dire proportions in dozens of developing countries that depend on food and energy imports. Economic dislocations in these countries will lead to urgent calls worldwide to end the war and sanctions regime.

In the meantime, Ukraine continues to suffer grievously in terms of deaths, dislocation, and destruction. The IMF now forecasts a 35% contraction of Ukraine’s economy in 2022, reflecting the brutal destruction of housing, factories, rail stock, energy storage and transmission capacity, and other vital infrastructure.
Most dangerous of all, as long as the war continues, the risk of nuclear escalation is real. If Russia’s conventional forces were actually to be pushed toward defeat, as the US is now seeking, Russia might well counter with tactical nuclear weapons. A US or Russian aircraft could be shot down by the other side as they scramble over the Black Sea, which in turn could lead to direct military conflict. Media reports that the US has covert forces on the ground, and the US intelligence community’s disclosure that it helped Ukraine kill Russian generals and sink Russia’s Black Sea flagship, underscore the danger.

The reality of the nuclear threat means that both sides should never forgo the possibility of negotiations. That is the central lesson of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which took place 60 years ago this coming October. President John F. Kennedy saved the world then by negotiating an end to the crisis – agreeing that the US would never again invade Cuba and that the US would remove its missiles from Turkey in exchange for the withdrawal of the Soviet missiles from Cuba. That was not giving in to Soviet nuclear blackmail. That was Kennedy wisely avoiding Armageddon.

It is still possible to establish peace in Ukraine based on the parameters that were on the table at the end of March: neutrality, security guarantees, a framework for addressing Crimea and the Donbas, and Russian withdrawal. This remains the only realistic and safe course for Ukraine, Russia, and the world. The world would rally to such an agreement, and, for its own survival and well-being, so should Ukraine.

https://johnmenadue.com/ending-the-w...on-in-ukraine/

[David48atTD]

Again and adding to the above ... utter BS

It's a report, which can't be confirmed that an 'American' is organising the volunteer troupes.

The 'American' is apparently a war veteran, speaks English and since English isn't spoken much in Ukraine, it makes perfect sense.

Imagine rocking up to Passport Control in Thailand the processing officer unable to communicate with you.

'US boots on the ground' ...

[bsnub]

Yet now Ukraine and its Western supporters are overestimating the chances of defeating Russia on the battlefield.

No they aren't. I think the generals know better than this clown.

[sabang]

They don't consult excitable boy scouts snub.

“Overall, the battle is finely balanced,” says the official. “Ukrainian personnel are highly motivated and highly experienced, and [deployed] in sufficient numbers to hold a defensive line—but perhaps don’t have the capabilities they might need.” Western weaponry has been abundant, but not decisive, so far at least. Russian forces, despite their heavy losses and tactical shortcomings, still “significantly overmatch the Ukrainians in terms of their overall capability”. That assessment was echoed on May 10th by Lieutenant-General Scott Berrier, the head of America’s Defence Intelligence Agency. “The Russians aren’t winning and the Ukrainians aren’t winning,” he said. “We’re at a bit of a stalemate here.”

[bsnub]

Almost three months after Russia shocked the world by invading Ukraine, its military faces a bogged-down war, the prospect of a bigger NATO and an opponent buoyed Sunday by wins on and off the battlefield.

Top diplomats from NATO met in Berlin with the alliance's chief and declared that the war "is not going as Moscow had planned."

"Ukraine can win this war," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said, adding that the alliance must continue to offer military support to Kyiv. He spoke by video link to the meeting as he recovers from a COVID-19 infection.

On the diplomatic front, both Finland and Sweden took steps bringing them closer to NATO membership despite Russian objections. Finland announced Sunday that it was seeking to join NATO, citing how the invasion had changed Europe's security landscape. Several hours later, Sweden's governing party endorsed the country's own bid for membership, which could lead to an application in days.

If the two nonaligned Nordic nations become part of the alliance, it would represent an affront to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has cited NATO's post-Cold War expansion in Eastern Europe as a threat to Russia. NATO says it is a purely defensive alliance.

While Moscow lost ground on the diplomatic front, Russian forces also failed to make territorial gains in eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine said it held off Russian offensives in the east, and Western military officials said the campaign Moscow launched there after its forces failed to seize the capital of Kyiv has slowed to a snail's pace.

Ukraine, meanwhile, celebrated a morale-boosting victory in the Eurovision Song Contest. The folk-rap ensemble Kalush Orchestra won the glitzy pan-European competition with its song "Stefania," which has become a popular anthem among Ukrainians during the war.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed that his nation would claim the customary winner's honor of hosting the next annual competition.

"Step by step, we are forcing the occupiers to leave the Ukrainian land," Zelenskyy said.

The band's frontman, Oleh Psiuk, said at a news conference Sunday that the musicians were "ready to fight" when they return home. Ukraine's government prohibits men between 18 and 60 from leaving the country, but the all-male band's six members received special permission to go to Italy to represent Ukraine in the contest.

They will return to a country still fighting for survival.

Russian and Ukrainian fighters are engaged in a grinding battle for the country's eastern industrial heartland, the Donbas. Ukraine's most experienced and best-equipped soldiers have fought Moscow-backed separatists in the east for eight years.

Even with its setbacks, Russia continues to inflict death and destruction across Ukraine. Over the weekend, its forces hit a chemical plant and 11 high-rise buildings in Siverodonetsk, in the Donbas, the regional governor said. Gov. Serhii Haidaii said two people were killed in the shelling and warned residents still in the city to stay in underground shelters.

Russian missiles destroyed "military infrastructure facilities" in the Yavoriv district of western Ukraine, near the border with Poland, the governor of the Lviv region said.

Lviv is a major gateway for the Western-supplied weapons Ukraine has acquired during the war.

The Ukrainian military said it held off a renewed Russian offensive in the Dontesk area of the Donbas. Russian troops also tried to advance near the eastern city of Izyum, but Ukrainian forces stopped them, the governor of Ukraine's Kharkiv region, Oleh Sinegubov, reported.

The Ukrainian claims could not be independently verified, but Western officials also painted a somber picture for Russia.

Britain's Defense Ministry said in its daily intelligence update that the Russian army had lost up to one-third of the combat strength it committed to Ukraine in late February and was failing to gain any substantial territory.

"Under the current conditions, Russia is unlikely to dramatically accelerate its rate of advance over the next 30 days," the ministry said on Twitter.

The assessments of Russia's war performance came as Russian troops retreated from around Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, which was a key military objective earlier in the war and was bombarded for weeks. The regional governor said there had been no shelling in the city for several days, though Russia continued to strike the wider Kharkiv region.

One Ukrainian battalion that had been fighting in the region reached the border with Russia on Sunday and made a victorious video there addressed to Zelenskyy.

In the video posted on Facebook by Ukraine's Ministry of Defense, a dozen fighters stood around a blue-and-yellow post, Ukraine's colors.

One explained that the unit went "to the dividing line with the Russian Federation, the occupying country. Mr. President, we have reached it. We are here."

While he spoke, other fighters made victory signs and raised their fists.

After failing to capture Kyiv, Putin shifted the invasion's focus to the Donbas, aiming to seize territory not already occupied by the Moscow-backed separatists.

In the southern Donbas, the Azov Sea port of Mariupol is now largely under Russian control, except for a few hundred Ukrainian troops who have refused to surrender and remain holed up in the Azovstal steel factory.

Many of their wives called on the global community to secure the release of "the entire garrison," during an online news conference. The women painted a grim picture of the troops' situation, saying they suffered severe food, water and medicine shortages; untreated injuries were sometimes leading to sepsis.

The Ukrainian prosecutor-general's office said regional prosecutors have launched a criminal investigation into Moscow's alleged use of restricted incendiary bombs at the steelworks.

International law allows certain use of incendiary munitions but bars their use to directly target enemy personnel or civilians.

Turkey's presidential spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin, said the country had offered to evacuate wounded Ukrainian soldiers and civilians by ship from Azovstal, according to official state broadcaster TRT.

The invasion of Ukraine has other countries along Russia's flank worried they could be next, including Finland, which shares both a 1,340-kilometer (830-mile) land border and the Gulf of Finland with Russia. Putin told Finnish President Sauli Niinisto in a Saturday phone call that joining NATO would be an "error."

In neighboring Sweden, after the ruling Social Democratic Party on Sunday backed plans to join NATO, the plan was to be discussed Monday in parliament, with an announcement by the Cabinet to follow.

However, NATO operates by consensus, and the Nordic nations' potential bids were thrown into question over concerns from Turkey. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said he had discussed Turkey's concerns at the NATO meeting, especially Sweden and Finland's alleged support for Kurdish rebel groups and their restrictions on weapons sales to Turkey.

But during a Sunday visit to Sweden, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Finland and Sweden would be "important additions" to NATO and that the U.S. should swiftly ratify their membership. McConnell is leading a delegation of GOP senators to the region. They made a surprise visit to Kyiv on Saturday in a show of support.

NATO chief says Ukraine "can win this war" - CBS News

[Norton]

But, but, but .... Putin was forced to invade!

[Backspin]

Let's compare the battle for Mariupol with the main operations to seize major cities conducted over the past thirty years.


The city of Fallujah.

Near Baghdad, has a population of about 300,000. The first time it was stormed in the spring of 2004, after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Then it turned out that if you bomb the country and even disperse the army, it sometimes resists.


Assaulting: U.S. and Iraqi (collaborators) - 2,000 to 6,000


Defending: Iraqi insurgents - 2,000


The first assault lasted 27 days. Result: failure, withdrawal of U.S. troops


Second Fallujah assault - late 2004.


Assaulting: U.S., Britain and Iraq - more than 10,000 people


Defenders: Iraqi insurgents - 2,000 to 4,000 people


The second assault lasted 48 days.


Result: success, victory for Coalition forces after a total of 75 days.


Now lets do Mariupol.


Population 430 000 people


Assaulting - Russia and DPR - 8000 people


Defenders - Ukraine - 5,000 people at the beginning it was stated about 14,000.

Result. Success for Russian and DPR forces. The assault has lasted for 88 days, if we count from March 1




That's an apples to apples comparison.

But wait.





City of Mosul

Capital of ISIS, 2016-2017, population - about 1,500,000 people.


Assaulting - Iraqi army with militias, Kurdish militia, air and artillery support from the U.S., England, Canada and France (remember these are the countries that "won" the Iraq war in 2003...?)- 30,000 to 35,000 fighters


Defenders - ISIS, 10,000 - 15,000 people


Result: success, victory for the Coalition. The assault lasted 267 days.


But hey ! Russia sucks ! Why is it so weak ? Man are these Ukrainians tough. The US would have finished this in 2 weeks brah !

[bsnub]

Apples to oranges. You clearly have no clue about warfare and the difference between fighting an insurgency vs conventional warfare. As usual, you have no idea what you are talking about.

Idiot.

[sabang]

Dissociated Press

The Russian Ministry of Health announced Tuesday that McDonalds’ decision to leave Russia is expected to add more than four years to the average Russian’s life expectancy.

Studies undertaken by the University of Moscow School of Health Issues and Troubles (UMSHIT) show that when the drunken buffoon Boris Yeltsin took over Russia after the CIA coup of 1991, Russian men lost almost a decade of life expectancy. Originally it was thought that the looting of Russia by CIA-affiliated Zionist billionaire oligarchs had destroyed life-support systems for food, utilities, and other infrastructure, and that Russians were so depressed about being ruled by an evil American-owned clown like Yeltsin that they started drinking themselves to death.

But more recent research has revealed that McDonalds also played a role. “We discovered that the high-calorie, high-carb, addictive-chemical-drenched drek served by McDonalds was responsible for almost half of the massive loss of life expectancy suffered by Russia after its defeat in the Cold War,” said UMSHIT researcher Morgansky Spurlockovich. “That means that during the past three decades, McDonalds has killed nearly as many Russians as Hitler did. Expelling McDonalds from Russia will save millions of Russian lives and go a long way toward addressing our demographic deficit.”

Sources close to Vladimir Putin say that Russia will not only send McDonalds back to the US, but also covertly fund its operations there. By spending a fraction of the vast wealth Russia is earning due to higher energy prices to open even more McDonalds franchises in America, sources say, Putin will further feminize American men, render them obese and unable to fight, and ultimate kill millions of Americans at a fraction of the cost of a single 9M730 Burevestnik radioactive-tidal-wave-causing cruise missile.

Meanwhile, rumors that the Russian Air Force has begun dropping Big Macs with fries and soda on decision-making centers in Kiev have not yet been confirmed by official sources.

McDonalds Leaves Russia—Russians Gain Four Years of Life Expectancy – Veterans Today | Military Foreign Affairs Policy Journal for Clandestine Services

[bsnub]

Nice source there. Utterly laughable. Three Stooges gotta stooge.

Veterans Today was founded in 2003 "in opposition to the invasion of Iraq." According to Politico, the site "soon began publishing wild conspiracy theories" and "has consistently published articles that push the Kremlin party line".^[2] It has ties with the Iranian state-backed Press TV, and has had ties with Russia's New Eastern Outlook website since 2013, though according to The Daily Beast, the latter connection ended in 2018. The website is formally partnered with several other Russian institutions.^[2][4] According to University of Washington professor Kate Starbird, Veterans Today is a fake news site actively pushing the Kremlin party line.^[2] The New Hampshire Union Leader says that the website mixes "advice for veterans on how to find jobs and pay medical bills" with conspiracy theories and Russian propaganda.^[3] Its editorial board includes a former head of Pakistan's intelligence services.[2

Another one of their headlines...

A joint article with Press TV, written by Jim Fetzer, was entitled: "Did Mossad death squads slaughter American children at Sandy Hook?

Classy bunch you run with, sabang.

[Backspin]

Apples to oranges. You clearly have no clue about warfare and the difference between fighting an insurgency vs conventional warfare. As usual, you have no idea what you are talking about.

Idiot.

No moron. Its the other way around. You and the western media are couching insurgent warfare like Mariupol as conventional warfare.

Idiot.

[bsnub]

You and the western media are couching insurgent warfare like Mariupol as conventional warfare.

You fucking buffoon, Mariupol was flattened like a pancake. There was no insurgent warfare there at all, it was entirely conventional fighting. You have no fucking clue what you are talking about, as usual. Go play with your toys, little boy. Leave the conversation to the adults.

All he can do is whinge about sources !

You clowns are really making fools of yourselves today.

[sabang]

Go have a Happy Meal in the land of the Free snubs. Lucky you.