Thread: Russia launches Ukraine invasion

Zelensky just wants to hold the western (sucker) world to ransom. I personally doubt he will still be in power in six months time, but let's see.

Originally Posted by misskit

Russia Says Strike on Odesa Port Hit Ukrainian Military Targets

The second lie. First they said, they did not attack the port at all.

Ukraine war: Russia's Lavrov says ready to expand war aims

Russia's military focus in Ukraine is no longer "only" the east, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said.

In an interview with Russian state media, he implied Moscow's strategy had changed after the West supplied Ukraine with longer-range weapons.

Russia would now have to push Ukrainian forces further from the front line to ensure its own security, he explained.

His comments came as the US announced it would provide Ukraine with more long-range weapons.

Ukraine will receive another four Himars advanced rocket systems to hold the advance of Russian troops, bringing the total number to 16, Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin said.

Meanwhile Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska addressed US Congress on Wednesday, asking for more air-defence systems to "help us to stop this terror against Ukrainians".

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62231936

May 23, 2022
Open Letter to Noam Chomsky (and Other Like-Minded Intellectuals) on the Russia-Ukraine War

Bohdan Kukharskyy, Anastassia Fedyk, Yuriy Gorodnichenko, and Ilona Sologoub




Dear Professor Chomsky,

We are a group of Ukrainian academic economists who were grieved by a series of your recent interviews and commentaries on the Russian war on Ukraine. We believe that your public opinion on this matter is counter-productive to bringing an end to the unjustified Russian invasion of Ukraine and all the deaths and suffering it has brought into our home country.
Having familiarized ourselves with the body of your interviews on this matter, we noticed several recurring fallacies in your line of argument. In what follows, we wish to point out these patterns to you, alongside our brief response:
Pattern #1: Denying Ukraine’s sovereign integrity
In your interview to Jeremy Scahill at The Intercept from April 14, 2022 you claimed: “The fact of the matter is Crimea is off the table. We may not like it. Crimeans apparently do like it.” We wish to bring to your attention several historical facts:
First, Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 has violated the Budapest memorandum (in which it promised to respect and protect Ukrainian borders, including Crimea), the Treaty on Friendship, Partnership and Cooperation (which it signed with Ukraine in 1997 with the same promises), and, according to the order of the UN International Court of Justice, it violated the international law.
Second, “Crimeans” is not an ethnicity or a cohesive group of people—but Crimean Tatars are. These are the indigenous people of Crimea, who were deported by Stalin in 1944 (and were able to come back home only after the USSR fell apart), and were forced to flee again in 2014 when Russia occupied Crimea. Of those who stayed, dozens have been persecuted, jailed on false charges and missing, probably dead.
Third, if by “liking” you refer to the outcome of the Crimean “referendum” on March 16, 2014, please note that this “referendum” was held at gunpoint and declared invalid by the General Assembly of the United Nations. At the same time, the majority of voters in Crimea supported Ukraine’s independence in 1991.
Pattern #2: Treating Ukraine as an American pawn on a geo-political chessboard
Whether willingly or unwillingly, your interviews insinuate that Ukrainians are fighting with Russians because the US instigated them to do so, that Euromaidan happened because the US tried to detach Ukraine from the Russian sphere of influence, etc. Such an attitude denies the agency of Ukraine and is a slap in the face to millions of Ukrainians who are risking their lives for the desire to live in a free country. Simply put, have you considered the possibility that Ukrainians would like to detach from the Russian sphere of influence due to a history of genocide, cultural oppression, and constant denial of the right to self-determination?
Pattern #3. Suggesting that Russia was threatened by NATO
In your interviews, you are eager to bring up the alleged promise by [US Secretary of State] James Baker and President George H.W. Bush to Gorbachev that, if he agreed to allow a unified Germany to rejoin NATO, the US would ensure that NATO would move “not one inch eastward.” First, please note that the historicity of this promise is highly contested among scholars, although Russia has been active in promoting it. The premise is that NATO’s eastward expansion left Putin with no other choice but to attack. But the reality is different. Eastern European states joined, and Ukraine and Georgia aspired to join NATO, in order to defend themselves from Russian imperialism. They were right in their aspirations, given that Russia did attack Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014. Moreover, current requests by Finland and Sweden to join NATO came in direct response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, consistent with NATO expansion being a consequence of Russian imperialism, and not vice versa.
In addition, we disagree with the notion that sovereign nations shouldn’t be making alliances based on the will of their people because of disputed verbal promises made by James Baker and George H.W. Bush to Gorbachev.
Pattern #4. Stating that the US isn’t any better than Russia
While you admittedly call the Russian invasion of Ukraine a “war crime,” it appears to us that you cannot do so without naming in the same breath all of the past atrocities committed by the US abroad (e.g., in Iraq or Afghanistan) and, ultimately, spending most of your time discussing the latter. As economists, we are not in a position to correct your historical metaphors and, needless to say, we condemn the unjustified killings of civilians by any power in the past. However, not bringing Putin up on war crime charges at the International Criminal Court in the Hague just because some past leader did not receive similar treatment would be the wrong conclusion to draw from any historical analogy. In contrast, we argue that prosecuting Putin for the war crimes that are being deliberately committed in Ukraine would set an international precedent for the world leaders attempting to do the same in the future.
Pattern #5. Whitewashing Putin’s goals for invading Ukraine
In your interviews, you go to great lengths to rationalize Putin’s goals of “demilitarization” and “neutralization” of Ukraine. Please note that, in his TV address from February 24, 2022, marking the beginning of the war, the verbatim goal declared by Putin for this “military operation” is to “denazify” Ukraine. This concept builds on his long pseudo-historical article from July 2021, denying Ukraine’s existence and claiming that Ukrainians were not a nation. As elaborated in the “denazification manual” published by the Russian official press agency RIA Novosti, a “Nazi” is simply a human being who self-identifies as Ukrainian, the establishment of a Ukrainian state thirty years ago was the “Nazification of Ukraine,” and any attempt to build such a state has to be a “Nazi” act. According to this genocide handbook, denazification implies a military defeat, purging, and population-level “re-education.”“Demilitarization” and “neutralization” imply the same goal—without weapons Ukraine will not be able to defend itself, and Russia will reach its long-term goal of destroying Ukraine.
Pattern #6. Assuming that Putin is interested in a diplomatic solution
All of us very much hoped for a cease-fire and a negotiated settlement, which could have saved many human lives. Yet, we find it preposterous how you repeatedly assign the blame for not reaching this settlement to Ukraine (for not offering Putin some “escape hatch”) or the US (for supposedly insisting on the military rather than diplomatic solution) instead of the actual aggressor, who has repeatedly and intentionally bombed civilians, maternity wards, hospitals, and humanitarian corridors during those very “negotiations.” Given the escalatory rhetoric (cited above) of the Russian state media, Russia’s goal is erasure and subjugation of Ukraine, not a “diplomatic solution.”
Pattern #7. Advocating that yielding to Russian demands is the way to avert the nuclear war
Since the Russian invasion, Ukraine lives in a constant nuclear threat, not just due to being a prime target for Russian nuclear missiles but also due to the Russian occupation of Ukrainian nuclear power plants.
But what are the alternatives to fighting for freedom? Unconditional surrender and then elimination of Ukrainians off the face of the Earth (see above)? Have you ever wondered why President Zelenskyy, with the overwhelming support of the Ukrainian people, is pleading with Western leaders to provide heavy weapons despite the potential threat of nuclear escalation? The answer to this question is not “Because of Uncle Sam,” but rather due to the fact that Russian war crimes in Bucha and many other Ukrainian cities and villages have shown that living under Russian occupation is a tangible “hell on earth” happening right now, requiring immediate action.

Arguably, any concessions to Russia will not reduce the probability of a nuclear war but lead to escalation. If Ukraine falls, Russia may attack other countries (Moldova, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Finland or Sweden) and can also use its nuclear blackmail to push the rest of Europe into submission. And Russia is not the only nuclear power in the world. Other countries, such as China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea are watching. Just imagine what will happen if they learn that nuclear powers can get whatever they want using nuclear blackmail.
Professor Chomsky, we hope you will consider the facts and re-evaluate your conclusions. If you truly value Ukrainian lives as you claim to, we would like to kindly ask you to refrain from adding further fuel to the Russian war machine by spreading views very much akin to Russian propaganda.
Should you wish to engage further on any of the above-mentioned points, we are always open to discussion.
Kind regards,
Bohdan Kukharskyy, City University of New York
Anastassia Fedyk, University of California, Berkeley
Yuriy Gorodnichenko, University of California, Berkeley
Ilona Sologoub, VoxUkraine NGO

Originally published at Berkeley Blog.


https://www.e-flux.com/notes/470005/...ia-ukraine-war

^^^^ My understanding is that the Russians were going after storage facilities for imported foreign weapons. I would not put it past Zelensky to use the grain agreement to do a bit of military maneuvering in and around Odesa. This was in relation to your following comment.

Originally Posted by pickel

And Russia has finally admitted they did it, and the UN has condemned Russia for it.

I saw one report of the UN condemnation. I would have thought if it were verified that it would be all over the news with the propaganda machine and all.
Something doesn't smell right here.

Originally Posted by russellsimpson

Something doesn't smell right here.

Absolutely! This is not a war! This is a special operation

How many accidental rockets have been fired on the Ukraine? Can you keep count?

https://omr.gov.ua/ua/news/229066

https://omr.gov.ua/

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...NbNCAqpfCY5CiG

Originally Posted by russellsimpson

I have to agree with Sabang. I doubt very much that Zelensky will still be in power in six months. It's a chilling thought to imagine this fucking war will still be happeninjg in six months.

20 February 2014 – present (8 years, 4 months and 4 weeks) Russian invasion of Ukraine: 24 February 2022 – present (4 months, 3 weeks and 3 days)

Originally Posted by russellsimpson

My understanding is that the Russians were going after storage facilities for imported foreign weapons. I would not put it past Zelensky to use the grain agreement to do a bit of military maneuvering in and around Odesa.

You are a fool who really should not post on a topic that you are utterly clueless about. You are proving to be a useful idiot.

Originally Posted by russellsimpson

I have to agree with Sabang. I doubt very much that Zelensky will still be in power in six months.

How much money do you have to put on the table? Six months from now, Zelensky will still be in Kyiv and the Russian army will be afflicted with mass cases of frostbite.

Originally Posted by russellsimpson

I hope to see little war monger Blinken gone asap.

Stop parroting Russian propaganda, you pathetic buffoon.

Originally Posted by bsnub

How much money do you have to put on the table? Six months from now, Zelensky will still be in Kyiv and the Russian army will be afflicted with mass cases of frostbite.

How about 20 US dollars?

You have to be right on both counts to win.

Originally Posted by russellsimpson

You have to be right on both counts to win.

Oh, I will be right, don't you worry.

Originally Posted by russellsimpson

How about 20 US dollars?

Done.

Originally Posted by sabang

Zelensky just wants to hold the western (sucker) world to ransom. I personally doubt he will still be in power in six months time, but let's see.

AH, and there was me thinking it was Putin using energy and grain to try and blackmail the world into letting him keep the territory he's stolen.

You complete douchebag.

Originally Posted by russellsimpson

I hope the fog of war will lift long enough for us to see what really happened in Odesa. In the meantime I'm not buying any of the stories.

Yeah, I'd stick to TASS and Pravda versions, you chump.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres Saturday "unequivocally" condemned missile attacks earlier in the day on Ukraine's Odessa, a port that is key to a UN-brokered grain export deal between Russia and Ukraine.

‘Dirt, decay, and bitter cold’ Ukrainian volunteers held captive for more than 100 days describe harrowing conditions inside ‘filtration’ prison near Donetsk

In late March, Russian forces detained 32 Ukrainian volunteers who had been providing humanitarian aid to civilians in the besieged city of Mariupol. The captives were sent to a “filtration” prison in Olenivka — a village located inside the Kremlin-controlled “Donetsk People’s Republic” (DNR), where captured Ukrainian troops from the Azovstal steel plant were also reportedly imprisoned. More than 100 days later, on July 14, 31 of the volunteers were released for unknown reasons. Since then, at least four of them have spoken to journalists: Hanna Vorozheva, Kostiantyn Velychko, and Stanislav Hlushkov gave a press conference in Warsaw, and Yevhen Maliarchuk gave an interview to Current Time TV. Meduza summarizes their stories here.

Before the February invasion, Hanna Vorozheva worked as a party planner in Mariupol. Kostiantyn Velychko was an IT specialist, Stanislav Hlushkov worked in international transport, and Yevhen Maliarchuk was an entrepreneur. After Russia began waging a full-scale war against Ukraine, they all became volunteers, working to deliver food and medicine to Mariupol residents and evacuate civilians from the besieged city.


According to Kostiantyn Velychko, he was detained along with Hanna Vorozheva and Stanislav Hlushkov after Russian soldiers stopped their bus at the last checkpoint on the way out of Mariupol. (Yevhen Maliarchuk did not explain the circumstances surrounding his capture in the interview with Current Time TV.) Despite the fact that the volunteers had the necessary ID badges and documents, the Russian soldiers sent them to the village of Nikolske, where they were handed over to combatants from the self-proclaimed “Donetsk People’s Republic” (DNR) for interrogation.


The interrogators accused the volunteers of “evacuating people for money” and smuggling Ukrainian soldiers out of Mariupol. “[They claimed that] we were giving [them] our documents so that some servicemen, including ‘Azov’ fighters, could leave Mariupol and get to the territory of Ukraine,” Hlushkov recalled.


Following the interrogations, he and the other volunteers were sent to Correctional Colony No. 120, a defunct prison in Olenivka — a village outside of Donetsk — that the Russian side has used to hold Ukrainian captives since the start of the war.


“At almost every stage we were moved around blindfolded,” Velychko explained. “They wrapped our eyes and hands with scotch tape and put bags over our heads. We were led around facing the floor, like terrorists. If we didn’t sit the right way, stand the right way, or our escort didn’t like something, they beat us. If I sat the wrong way, they beat my legs. If I lowered my hands, they beat my arms.”


Vorozheva described the prison in Olenivka as an abandoned facility that included several two-storey buildings. According to the volunteers’ estimates, the building where they were held had 19 cells, designed to hold a maximum of 100 people. At one point, however, it held nearly 800 prisoners. The prison guards referred to the building as “the pit.”


“The correctional colony in Olenivka was mothballed before us. It was opened specifically to organize a ‘filtration camp.’ At first, there weren’t many prisoners. And then large convoys started arriving from the Ilych plant, then from Azovstal [two factories in Mariupol that Ukrainian soldiers used as strongholds]. There were around 3,000 people on the grounds of the [prison] colony at the same time,” Maliarchuk said.


According to Vorozheva, the prisoners were “surrounded by dirt, decay, and bitter cold every second.” In some of the cells, people had to take turns sleeping on the concrete floor due to overcrowding. Many of the prisoners were ill, but there were neither doctors nor medicine. Even those with broken bones weren’t given painkillers, Vorozheva said. She herself suffered injuries to the inside of her cheeks after the wire came off her braces, and resorted to smoking cigarettes to try and relieve the pain.

The prison didn’t have enough food. According to Vorozheva, during the first weeks, the prisoners were given 150 grams (5 ounces) of bread per day, along with “boiled pasta [and] a certain amount of sprats.” Maliarchuk said he lost roughly 15 kilograms (33 pounds) while in captivity.


There was also a shortage of drinking water. The prisoners were supposed to be given 150–200 milliliters (5–7 ounces) each per day. Sometimes they were given access to untreated water, but there wasn’t enough of that either. The sewage system wasn’t functional and the women weren’t provided with sanitary pads. Some of Vorozheva’s cellmates were pregnant.


Later, the volunteers learned that the conditions in the other barracks were better than in “the pit” — in other parts of the camp, the prisoners could “sleep lying down, not sitting up, and also breathe [fresh] air.” The prisoners were told that they could be moved out of “the pit” if they obtained office equipment and building materials for the prison camp. The prisoners were allowed to call their relatives to give them shopping lists. Which is how their families finally received confirmation that they were still alive.


The prisoners were also forced to do all of the work around the camp. According to the volunteers, some of the captives were beaten and tortured. “We’ve seen what these people do with prisoners. Unfortunately, I can’t give the details, because I worry for the safety of those people who remained in the colony. But there was torture more severe than that inflicted on us,” Hlushkov said.


According to Hlushkov, the head of the prison, Sergey Yevsyukov, “obviously has sadistic tendencies.” “Yevsyukov […] in my personal opinion, is one of the most terrible executioners running this entire camp. [He] repeatedly told us that we’d be there for at least 10 years,” Hlushkov recalled.


At first, the volunteers were told that they’d be released after 30 days (according to DNR law, one cannot be detained for more than a month without a trial). But an order to “re-arrest” them was simply drawn up at the end of every month. The volunteers don’t know why they were finally released. Hlushkov assumed that it was thanks to the efforts of their relatives, who appealed to officials in Ukraine, the DNR, and Russia.


“One fine day, several officers came to our cell and started calling out surnames, then there was a team with [our] things ready to go. We thought that we’d simply be transferred to another place, as had happened before,” Maliarchuk recalled. “In the end, we were summoned, forced to sign protocols [stating] that we had no complaints, and just released. They opened the gate and said ‘You’re free’.”


According to Hlushkov, after they were released, the volunteers escaped “through Donetsk” — they got out of the DNR thanks to “caring people.” Their friend, a fellow Ukrainian volunteer named Serhiy Tarasenko, is still imprisoned in Olenivka. “We need to join forces and help him,” Maliarchuk underscored. “In addition to Tarasenko, there are many other civilians there. There’s no logic in that place, there’s no operating procedures. How do they detain [people]? For what? Why do they release [people]? Why not? No one knows. No one explains anything.”

https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/07...nd-bitter-cold

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres Saturday "unequivocally" condemned missile attacks earlier in the day on Ukraine's Odessa, a port that is key to a UN-brokered grain export deal between Russia and Ukraine.

Have another look at your own quoted statement Harry. Not the ringing condemnation that you are telling us it is.

However no way in the world that Russia is going to be let off the hook for this, the bastards..

Originally Posted by russellsimpson

My understanding is that the Russians were going after storage facilities for imported foreign weapons. I would not put it past Zelensky to use the grain agreement to do a bit of military maneuvering in and around Odesa.

Wrong again. You are a naive fool to believe anything the Russians say.

US working on "Plan B" for Ukrainian grain exports after Odesa bombing, USAID administrator says

The United States is working with Ukraine on a "Plan B" to get grain exports out of the country following Russia's attack on the port of Odesa, according to United States Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power.


"Plan B involves road and rail and river and sending in barges and adjusting the rail systems so that they're better aligned with those in Europe so that the exports can move out more quickly," Power told CNN's Larry Madowo in an interview in Nairobi, Kenya on Sunday, after visiting drought-stricken areas of Kenya and Somalia last week.


"We have been living the contingency plan because there's no way you can trust anything that Vladimir Putin says," she continued.


Power stressed that despite the security afforded by a contingency plan, "there is no substitute for Putin allowing the blockade to end and the grains being sent out the most efficient way possible."


On Friday, Russia and Ukraine signed a deal allowing for the export of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea after months of tough negotiations, mediated by Turkey and the United Nations.


However just one day later, Russia carried out a missile strike on the southern Ukrainian port of Odesa, where vital grain stocks have been lying in storage.


More than half of Somalia's wheat imports come from Ukraine, said Power, adding that 20 million metric tons of wheat and corn are still trapped at the port of Odesa.


Power said she hopes that that the grain deal "somehow sticks" despite Russia's move to "immediately turn its back" on it by bombing the port.


Ensuring the supply of grain will help drive down prices, Power said.


"Even the specter of this deal working and being enforced and the grains leaving the port brought prices down, even in a 24-hour period," she said. "So, more supply with the same amount of demand is going to mean lower prices."


Last week, the US announced an additional $1.3 billion in humanitarian assistance to the Horn of Africa, with unprecedented drought across Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia.


Power called on countries that play "leadership roles in the international system, such as the People's Republic of China clearly aspires to do," to "dig deeper" to prevent the food crisis "from becoming a catastrophe."

Live updates: Russia'''s war in Ukraine

The war in Ukraine may be entering a new stage as long-range rocket systems supplied by the US disrupt Russia’s grinding advance in the eastern Donbas region, and open the door for a possible counteroffensive.

More than 150 days into President Vladimir Putin’s invasion, it remains far from clear if Ukraine can take advantage of the “opportunity” that Britain’s MI6 intelligence service chief Richard Moore last week said was emerging as Russian forces “run out of steam.”

But reasons for the leadership in Kyiv to attempt a larger assault are rising, both on and off the battlefield. Those include falling casualty rates, a recent hardening of Russia’s declared territorial claims, the need for economic recovery within Ukraine, and a global downturn that could see allied governments under pressure to end the war.

On Sunday, the Institute for the Study of War said in its daily report on the fighting that a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the southern Kherson region might already have begun.

The report by the Washington think tank also attributed a sharp reduction in Russian artillery barrages on the main Donbas front since July 15 to so-called HIMARS, multiple rocket launch systems with a range of 80 km (50 miles) that have struck dozens of arms depots supplying the Russian front lines.

Ukrainian forces have damaged all bridges that connect Russian forces in Kherson to their supply lines on the eastern bank of the massive Dnipro river, the ISW said on Monday.

“We have a significant potential for the advance of our forces on the front, and for the infliction of significant new losses on the occupiers,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said after a meeting with his security chiefs on Thursday.

Ukraine’s battlefield casualties have fallen to about 30 per day, from a high of 100-200 per day in May-June, Zelenskiy said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal published on Friday. He again ruled out any cease-fire that leaves Russia in control of territory it has taken.

All of this indicates the war is entering another phase, according to Phillips O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. In the first, Russian forces tried and failed to take Kyiv in a fast-moving operation. In the second, they withdrew east in a bid to pound a path to victory, using artillery.

“If the reduction in Russian fire power in the Donbas continues, then basically that front is frozen and the question becomes -- can the Ukrainians push them back?” O’Brien said.

On Sunday, Moscow Calling, a Russian mid-size Telegram channel on the invasion, made the same breakdown of the war, saying the arrival of HIMARS had launched a third phase.

Ukraine’s commanders are likely to be cautious, because when they try to move forward against modern defensive weaponry their tanks, planes and soldiers will face the same vulnerabilities that have plagued the Russian troops, according to O’Brien.

And uncertainties abound, including the potential for Russian commanders to rebuild supply lines out of range of the HIMARS, or to galvanize an under-performing air force to destroy them. Either development could allow Russia to reinvigorate its operations and close any window of opportunity for Ukraine.

The capacity of Ukrainian forces to roll back Russian territorial gains without first securing even more artillery, armored vehicles and anti-aircraft systems from allied nations is also unclear. Although Kyiv has conducted numerous counteroffensives since the invasion began on Feb. 24, these have been on a small scale.

A failed assault could cost Ukraine troops it can ill-afford to lose, exposing it to a renewed attack, according to a European defense official.

Still, Zelenskiy pledged last month to take back lost territory in the south, where Russian occupation up to Kherson has cut Ukraine’s access to the sea and crippled its industrial heartland along the Dnipro, with major cities and factories as little as 50 km from the front lines.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov last week added a further reason to act, saying Moscow now aimed to permanently separate the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia provinces from Ukraine. He likened them to the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk republics, which Moscow recognized as independent on the eve of the invasion.

Lavrov cited further deliveries of arms by Ukraine’s allies, claiming the longer reach of the weapons put Donetsk, Luhansk and Russia under threat.

The Kremlin has ordered referenda to approve Kherson and Zaporizhzhia’s annexation by Sept. 15, according to people familiar with the matter. Most of both provinces are under Russian occupation and such votes would be illegal. Even so, annexation would raise the stakes for any counteroffensive, because the Kremlin could portray it as an attack on Russia.

Ukraine also is under pressure to show its supporters in Europe and the US it can strike back, before they enter a season of energy crises, inflation and recession, caused in part by the war.

“To be honest, it will be an important reminder to the rest of Europe that this is a winnable campaign by the Ukrainians,” MI6’s Moore said, in a rare public appearance at the Aspen Security Forum, “because we are about to go into a pretty tough winter.”

Pressure to secure gains is mounting for Russia, too, not least because it will be difficult to hold referenda with Ukrainian artillery still able to shell cities such as Donetsk, which would be crucial to turnout.

The main problem is that while Ukraine gets more modern weapons to fight with, Russia is having to switch to ever older tanks, guns and missiles, a person close to the Russian defense ministry said, asking not to be identified talking about confidential matters.

Igor Girkin, a nationalist with 410,000 followers on Telegram who has fiercely criticized Russia’s military leadership for being disorganized and ineffective in its campaign against Ukraine, said in a recent post there was “wild” under staffing of front-line units, while morale was poor with soldiers refusing to fight. He described recent progress by Russian forces in Ukraine as “tortoise-like.”

“We have nothing to attack with in depth,” said Girkin, a Russian citizen who played a prominent role in the 2014 Russian takeover of Crimea and weeks later became the first commander of Russia-backed separatist forces in Donbas. Girkin is being tried in absentia in the Netherlands, charged with murder in the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine, where all 298 on board were killed. He has dismissed the trial.

A Ukrainian counterattack on Kherson could succeed at least in the short term, because it has more troops in a region where Russian forces are relatively weak and have their backs to the Dnipro river, according to the person with knowledge of Russian defense capabilities.

In the end, though, “it would still be a fight between two artilleries, and that means what we need most is more artillery, both for tactical depth at 20-25 km, HIMARS at 80 km and ATACMS,” said Mykola Bielieskov, a research fellow at the National Institute for Strategic Studies, a Ukraine government think tank. He was referring to Army Tactical Missile Systems, with a range as far as 300 km. The US is not known to have sent ATACMS to Ukraine.

“Also it would be about mobility, more armored vehicles, more air defense to cover these moving formations and secure communications,” Bielieskov said. “This is a process and it is too early to say the Russian front has stabilized.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...w-phase-of-war

Russia struggling to repair thousands of destroyed combat vehicles, British intelligence says


LONDON — Russia is likely struggling to extract and repair combat vehicles damaged in its war in Ukraine, Britain’s Ministry of Defense has said.


In a Monday intelligence update, the ministry said that a Russian army facility six miles from the Ukrainian border was created to refit and refurbish broken combat vehicles. Close to 300 damaged vehicles, including armored personnel carriers and battle tanks, were identified at the lot.


Among other “well-documented personnel problems” — such as reportedly using private mercenaries to reinforce its depleted frontline — the Defense Intelligence went on to say, Russia continues to struggle to repair the thousands of broken military vehicles that have been damaged in the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine.

According to Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense, Russia has lost close to 9,000 combat vehicles, including 3,950 armored protected vehicles and 1,730 tanks. Russia’s Ministry of Defense has provided little data on the number of total vehicles lost, but according to the Kremlin’s preliminary published data, just 50 APVs have been damaged.


In comparison, Oryx, an open source investigation that relies on photographic evidence to calculate losses, stated that Russia had lost over 2,000 vehicles including 885 tanks and 965 infantry fighting vehicles. Some of those vehicles have remained operational and have been captured by Ukrainian forces.


The steep losses of combat vehicles have left the Russian infantry exposed to attack, according to Dr. Matthew Schmidt, the director of international affairs and an associate professor of national security at the University of New Haven in Connecticut.


“The exposure means a higher risk of casualties that will exacerbate the manpower shortage Moscow faces,” Schmidt told Yahoo News. “Add to that the fact that most of the replacement troops will be undertrained and a lack of armored vehicles means that any offensive in the Donbas or towards Odesa faces high casualty scenarios.”

Russia struggling to repair thousands of destroyed combat vehicles, British intelligence says

So much for the grain agreement...

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia targeted Ukraine’s Black Sea regions of Odesa and Mykolaiv with air strikes Tuesday, hitting private buildings and port infrastructure along the country’s southern coast, the Ukrainian military said.

The Kremlin’s forces used air-launched missiles in the attack, Ukraine’s Operational Command South said in a Facebook post.

In the Odesa region, a number of private buildings in villages on the coast were hit and caught fire, the report said. In the Mykolaiv region, port infrastructure was targeted.

Hours after the renewed strikes on the south, a Moscow-installed official in the southern Kherson region said the Odesa and Mykolaiv regions will soon be “liberated” by the Russian forces, just like the Kherson region further east.

“The Kherson region and the city of Kherson have been liberated forever,” Kirill Stremousov was quoted as saying by Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.

The developments came as Ukraine appeared to be preparing a counteroffensive in the south.

Russia previously attacked Odesa’s port at the weekend. The British military said Tuesday there was no indication that a Ukrainian warship and a stockpile of anti-ship missiles were at the site, as Moscow claimed.

The British Defense Ministry said Russia sees Ukraine’s use of anti-ship missiles as “a key threat” that is limiting its Black Sea Fleet.

“This has significantly undermined the overall invasion plan, as Russia cannot realistically attempt an amphibious assault to seize Odesa,” the military said. “Russia will continue to prioritize efforts to degrade and destroy Ukraine’s anti-ship capability.”

It added that “Russia’s targeting processes are highly likely routinely undermined by dated intelligence, poor planning, and a top-down approach to operations.”

Russian shelling over the previous 24 hours killed at least three civilians and wounded eight more in Ukraine, the president’s office said Tuesday.

In the eastern Donetsk region, where the fighting has been focused in recent weeks, the shelling continued along the entire front line, with the largest cities of the region, including Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Toretsk, being targeted by the Russian forces, a statement said.

Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko accused Russian troops of using cluster munitions and repeated his call for civilians to evacuate.

“There is not a single safe place left, everything is being shelled,” Kyrylenko said in televised remarks. “But there are still evacuation routes for the civilian population.”

The Institute for the Study of War, based in Washington, D.C., reported that the Russians are using mercenaries from the shadowy Wagner Group to capture the Vuhledar Power Plant on the northern outskirts of the Novoluhanske village.

But the Russian forces have made “limited gains” there, according to Ukraine’s General Staff.

The main Russian focus has been on capturing Bakhmut.

“Russian forces made marginal gains south of Bakhmut but are unlikely to be able to effectively leverage these advances to take full control of Bakhmut itself,” the Institute for the Study of War said.

Russian forces continued to launch strikes on civilian infrastructure in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city in the northeast, and the surrounding region.

Kharkiv governor Oleh Syniehubov said the strikes on the city resumed around dawn Tuesday, damaging a car dealership.

“The Russians deliberately target civilian infrastructure objects — hospitals, schools, movie theaters,” Syniehubov told Ukrainian television. “Everything is being fired at, even queues for humanitarian aid, so we’re urging people to avoid mass gatherings.”

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said that Moscow wants “the complete subjugation of Ukraine and its people.”

“We must be prepared for this war — which Russia is conducting with absolute brutality, and is conducting in a way that no one else would — to last months,” Baerbock said during a visit to Prague.

Russia aims new air strikes at Black Sea coastal targets | AP News

If you have not figured it out by now, you never will. The Russians can never be trusted.

There are fears Europe’s largest economy is on the brink of recession as business confidence falls and the threat of retaliation from Russia grows.


The business climate in Germany worsened “significantly” in July, according to a key survey published on Monday, as an energy crisis pushed Europe’s largest economy closer to a recession this year.

The Ifo institute’s monthly confidence barometer, based on a survey of 9000 companies, fell to 88.6 points in July from 92.2 points last month and the “lowest level since June 2020” near the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

The pessimistic figures suggest that “Germany is on the cusp of a recession”, Ifo president Clemens Fuest said.


The mood among businesses had “cooled significantly”, while “higher energy prices and the threat of a gas shortage are weighing on the economy”.

The fall was particularly steep in the manufacturing sector, where “pessimism regarding the coming months reached its highest level since April 2020”, Mr Fuest said.

“Weaker global demand (and) supply chain frictions” were also weighing on the Germany economy, said ING analyst Carsten Brzeski.


He said the strong headwinds and weak data meant Germany’s economy could have seen a contraction “already in the second quarter”.

The risk that Russia could cut off its supply of gas to Germany, in retaliation for Berlin’s support of Ukraine, has prompted fears of an energy shortage at the end of the year.

Looking ahead, “there are more downside than upside risks to the outlook”, Mr Brzeski said.


“A further escalation in the energy crisis will remain a key risk for the economy going into the winter,” he said.


Businesses’ expectations for the economy fell sharply to 80.3 points in July from 85.5 the previous month.

Their assessment of the current situation sank to 97.7 points in July from 99.4 points previously.

Germany ‘on the cusp of a recession’, fuelled by fears of gas crisis | news.com.au — Australia’s leading news site

A large group of African migrants in Paris stormed and occupied the asylum camp established to house Ukrainian refugees fleeing from their war torn country. The group of protestors organised by the activist group “Collectif La Chapelle Debout” demanded “residency rights and housing for all.”

In June, around 80 places made available to Ukrainian refugees were stormed by African migrants. Video footage of one of the occupying movements was released on Thursday, showing a large group of African men storming the camp that houses Ukrainian refugees, packing the venue and making demands on a megaphone.

The organisers of the protest argued that the Ukrainian refugees are receiving preferential treatment, provided housing and resources, while the African migrants were left behind. On their social media post, the “Collectif La Chapelle Debout” highlighted that the aid for Ukrainian refugees in Paris is clearly on racist and supremacist grounds.

FULL- African migrants storming asylum camps for Ukrainian refugees throughout France | TVP World

Russia has decided to quit the International Space Station "after 2024", the newly-appointed chief of Moscow's space agency told President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday.

The announcement comes as tensions rage between the Kremlin and the West over Moscow's military intervention in Ukraine and several rounds of unprecedented sanctions against Russia.

Russia and the United States have worked side by side on the ISS, which has been in orbit since 1998.

"Of course, we will fulfil all our obligations to our partners, but the decision to leave this station after 2024 has been made," Yury Borisov, who was appointed Roscosmos chief in mid-July, told Putin.


"I think that by this time we will start putting together a Russian orbital station," Borisov added, calling it the space programme's main "priority".
"Good," Putin replied in comments released by the Kremlin.


Until now space exploration was one of the few areas where cooperation between Russia and the United States and its allies had not been wrecked by tensions over Ukraine and elsewhere.

Borisov said the space industry was in a "difficult situation".

He said he would seek "to raise the bar, and first of all, to provide the Russian economy with the necessary space services", pointing to navigation, communication, and data transmission, among other things.

Sending the first man into space in 1961 and launching the first satellite four years earlier are among key accomplishments of the Soviet space programme and remain a major source of national pride in Russia.

But experts say the Russian space agency remains a shadow of its former self and has in recent years suffered a series of setbacks including corruption scandals and the loss of a number of satellites and other spacecraft.

Borisov, a former deputy prime minister with a military background, has replaced Dmitry Rogozin, a firebrand nationalist politician known for his bombastic statements and eccentric behaviour.

Russia to quit International Space Station 'after 2024'

The recession was bound to happen even before the invasion.

African men raiding refugee camps of Ukrainian women and children (obviously because military age men can't leave), and you somehow view that as a "win".