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  1. #1951
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    Ukrainian Troops Hunt Demoralized Russian Stragglers in Seized City

    KRAMATORSK, Ukraine — Ukrainian forces on Sunday hunted Russian stragglers in the key city of Lyman, which was taken back from Russia after its demoralized troops, according to a major Russian newspaper, fled with “empty eyes,” and despite Moscow’s baseless claim it had annexed the region surrounding the city.

    Two days after President Vladimir V. Putin held a grandiose ceremony to commemorate the incorporation of four Ukrainian territories into Russia, the debacle in the city — Lyman, a strategic railway hub in the eastern region of Donbas — ratcheted up pressure on a Russian leadership already facing withering criticism at home for its handling of the war and its conscription of up to 300,000 men into military service.

    Russia’s retreat from Lyman, which sits on a riverbank that has served as a natural division between the Russian and Ukrainian front lines, came after weeks of fierce fighting.

    In an unusually candid article published Sunday, the prominent Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda reported that in the last few days of their occupation, Russian forces in Lyman had been plagued by desertion, poor planning and the delayed arrival of reserves.

    “The risk of encirclement or shameful imprisonment became too great, and the Russian command made a decision to fall back,” a war correspondent traveling with the fleeing Russian forces wrote, adding that dispirited soldiers with “empty eyes” had barely escaped Lyman with their lives.

    The retreat is a significant blow to Russian forces that could further undermine the Kremlin’s position in Donbas, a mineral-rich and fertile part of eastern Ukraine that has been central to Mr. Putin’s war aims.

    Mr. Putin’s office made no public comment about the loss of Lyman, even as pro-war commentators and two of his closest allies sharply criticized the Defense Ministry for retreating from the city.

    Seemingly unfazed by its military setbacks, Moscow pressed ahead with its annexation effort on Sunday, as the country’s rubber-stamp Constitutional Court formally accepted Mr. Putin’s decision to claim the four Ukrainian regions as part of Russia.

    But President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine quickly sought to capitalize politically on the retreat, saying it showed that Moscow’s attempt to illegally annex a sizable part of the country was an “absolute farce” and that “now a Ukrainian flag is” in Donbas. But the Ukrainian recoveries in areas Russia now claims have come as Mr. Putin has increasingly hinted at turning to nuclear options in the conflict, alarming American officials.

    On Friday, after Russian-appointed officials held discredited referendums in the four partly occupied areas of Ukraine, Mr. Putin announced that the territory, including Lyman, would be absorbed into Russia and that its people would be Russian citizens “forever.”

    Mr. Putin claimed the provinces’ residents had voted overwhelmingly to join the Russian Federation, but Ukraine and its Western allies dismissed the referendums as shams, as most of the citizens had fled the region and many of those left behind had cast ballots at gunpoint.

    Despite the Russian leader’s claims and bluster at the ceremony on Friday in a grand Kremlin hall — he denounced Washington for “Satanism” — Russian troops retreated from Lyman barely a day later.

    Initially, Ukrainian commanders thought they would retake Lyman quickly, with forces nearly completely encircling the city. But Russia’s military sent reinforcements. Fierce fighting ensued in dense forests and along the banks of the Siversky Donets River as Ukraine cut off the roads used to move troops and ammunition into the city.

    “In Lyman and around it, there were significantly strong forces,” Col. Sergei Cherevaty, a spokesman for Ukrainian troops fighting in the east, said in an interview.

    Russian soldiers retreated chaotically, breaking from their units and escaping in smaller groups into the surrounding forests, Colonel Cherevaty said, and many were killed or captured. About 2,000 to 3,000 Russian soldiers were in Lyman as Ukrainian forces arrived on the outskirts of the city on Friday, he said.

    As Ukrainian soldiers and police officers fanned out across Lyman to search for Russian stragglers, it was unclear on Sunday how many had fallen into Ukrainian hands.

    Mr. Zelensky said the city had been fully cleared by Sunday afternoon, as Ukrainian forces conducted patrols and delivered aid to residents who had survived months of Russian occupation and weeks of combat.

    Artillery strikes have damaged much of Lyman. The city lies largely in ruins, without electricity, water or regular food supplies, according to Stanislav Zagrusky, the police chief of the Kramatorsk District, which includes Lyman.

    Mr. Zagrusky said in an interview that the resumption of Ukrainian police patrols late on Saturday — hours after the Ukrainian Army declared the city liberated and Russia’s military conceded that it had retreated — underlined the absurdity of the Kremlin’s claim of sovereignty over the four Ukrainian territories.

    “We absolutely don’t care what they say, what decrees they issue, what announcements they make,” he said of the Kremlin authorities, deploring the conditions in which Russian troops had left residents of Lyman during the occupation: “They did absolutely nothing for the people all this time.”

    “They didn’t try to restore electricity or water, and people lived without regular food supplies,” he went on, adding that many residents needed medical care.

    Mr. Zagrusky said that while the Ukrainian military took prisoners after the battle, police officers had made no arrests of Russian stragglers as of midday Sunday. His officers found that Russians had hastily abandoned a police station, leaving it littered with garbage.

    The police said about 5,000 people remained in the city, which had a prewar population of 20,000.

    As Ukrainian forces gained full control of Lyman, commanders turned their attention to the next steps in a punishing offensive that has left Russian troops in the eastern Donbas region in an increasingly perilous position.

    From Lyman, Ukraine could push farther east to try to expel Russian troops from towns and villages they had seized over the summer, though colder temperatures could slow the fighting and Russian lines are expected to be reinforced by newly drafted troops.

    Military analysts also warn that Ukrainian forces, if they push too far, could become overstretched and unable to defend newly reclaimed territory from Russian counterattacks.

    None of the four illegally annexed regions are fully under Russian control. Ukrainian gains in the east and south have left the Kremlin’s forces with diminishing options for taking additional territory.

    In the south, Ukrainian forces are engaged in a fierce counteroffensive in the Kherson region, which Russia seized in the first weeks of the war. Unlike in the northeast, there has been little movement in either direction, though odds increasingly appear to be stacked against Russian forces, the bulk of which have been cut off from their supply lines by successful Ukrainian attacks on key bridges spanning the vast Dnipro River.

    On the other side of the Dnipro, Russian forces trying to push north in the Zaporizhzhia region, which Mr. Putin also claimed to have annexed, have been held at a standstill for months by strong Ukrainian defensive lines.

    For now, Russian troops fleeing Lyman appear to be moving to reinforce their lines 25 miles to the south around the city of Bakhmut. That appears to be the only area along the extensive eastern front line where Russian forces are on the offensive, led primarily by members of the Wagner Group, a private military contractor, whose fighters have been pummeling Ukrainian forces for months.

    “It’s very difficult because they have been hammering for several months with artillery and are constantly attacking with tanks and infantry,” Colonel Cherevaty said. “Holding them is difficult, but they’re managing.”

    https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/02/w...sia-lyman.html

  2. #1952
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    Translation- give generously, American taxpayer! Sigh, looks like we are in for a long war. And Europe, a cold winter.

  3. #1953
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    Quote Originally Posted by sabang View Post
    Translation- give generously, American taxpayer!
    Do you think Russia is fighting the war for free?

  4. #1954
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    At least they are fighting it with their own soldiers, and own armaments, and paid for by their own taxpayers. Ukraine is totally dependant upon armaments paid for and supplied by foreigners. It is only their lives being sacrificed.

  5. #1955
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    Quote Originally Posted by sabang View Post
    It is only their lives being sacrificed.
    AS it should be, it was their country that was invaded without provocation.

    Quote Originally Posted by sabang View Post
    a cold winter.
    Just more of your propaganda BS.

  6. #1956
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    Quote Originally Posted by sabang View Post
    At least they are fighting it with their own soldiers
    The Wagner Group? The Kadyrovites? Or that crazy Texan fighting with the separatists?

    Quote Originally Posted by sabang View Post
    and own armaments
    Their latest weapon introduced to the battlefield are Iranian drones, along with North Korean artillery shells.

    Quote Originally Posted by sabang View Post
    and paid for by their own taxpayers
    My point.

    Quote Originally Posted by sabang View Post
    Ukraine is totally dependant upon armaments paid for and supplied by foreigners.
    Lend-Lease don't work that way.

    Quote Originally Posted by sabang View Post
    It is only their lives being sacrificed.
    A higher price than taxes. And yet they have high morale, something Russians don't have. Morale wins wars. Do you have any examples of soldiers with low morale winning a war?
    Originally Posted by sabang
    Maybe Canada should join Nato.

  7. #1957
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    Quote Originally Posted by sabang View Post
    At least they are fighting it with their own soldiers, and own armaments, and paid for by their own taxpayers. Ukraine is totally dependant upon armaments paid for and supplied by foreigners. It is only their lives being sacrificed.
    Strike 1:At least they are fighting it with their own soldiers WRONG
    Strike 2:and own armaments WRONG
    Strike 3:and paid for by their own taxpayers WRONG

    They say a war last about 1,5 years (average). I hope they are right because sabangs comments are getting unbearable.

  8. #1958
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    Quote Originally Posted by HermantheGerman View Post
    Lend-Lease
    Ironically Russia condemns the US and others for arming the Ukranie.

    Even before the United States entered World War II in December 1941, America sent arms and equipment to the Soviet Union to help it defeat the Nazi invasion. Totaling $11.3 billion, or $180 billion in today’s currency, the Lend-Lease Act of the United States supplied needed goods to the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1945 in support of what Stalin described to Roosevelt as the “enormous and difficult fight against the common enemy — bloodthirsty Hitlerism.”

    400,000 jeeps & trucks
    14,000 airplanes
    8,000 tractors
    13,000 tanks
    1.5 million blankets
    15 million pairs of army boots
    107,000 tons of cotton
    2.7 million tons of petrol products
    4.5 million tons of food

    World War II Allies: U.S. Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union, 1941-1945 - U.S. Embassy & Consulates in Russia
    "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect,"

  9. #1959
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    Quote Originally Posted by Norton View Post
    Ironically Russia condemns the US and others for arming the Ukranie.
    Heh After these two recent big battlefield defeats the Russians are now the biggest supplier of arms to Ukraine.


  10. #1960
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    Quote Originally Posted by bsnub View Post
    Heh After these two recent big battlefield defeats the Russians are now the biggest supplier of arms to Ukraine.

    Maybe they can re-sell the old tanks/parts to the Russians

  11. #1961
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    Quote Originally Posted by HermantheGerman View Post
    Maybe they can re-sell the old tanks/parts to the Russians
    Naw they are just going to use them to kill more Russians.

  12. #1962
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    Back a rat into a corner ... NASTY
    Back a pitbull into a corner Piss yourself
    Back a bear into a corner and prepare for auto-defecation , known as DEFCON BROWN order new tighty whities.

    While the weapons dealers wish to prolong the live action demos as long as possible , however on the wide snow blown steppes winter approaches and the living hell of retreating through slush and mud to seek a new position will be gruelling and worse once snows arrive soon, there is also the danger of miscalculation on all sides. Once general winter arrives we may see dig into status quo until the thaw.
    However drones have transformed modern warfare and shown vulnerability of infantry and capital ships.

    Nato will surely supply/enable Ukraine to sink rest of the Black Sea Kara Deniz flotilla and possibly Caspian Fleet too which can hit targets in Europe if Putin escalates. The Finns, Swedes, USA, China and drone pimps Turkey look like the sole winners to me.

  13. #1963
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    Quote Originally Posted by david44 View Post
    the weapons dealers wish to prolong the live action demos as long as possible
    Historically they have been very successful so in future expect them contiued success.

    Eisenhower warned about this but our leaders obviously aren't listening.

    Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.

  14. #1964
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    Russia Adds TV Protester Ovsyannikova to Wanted List

    Russian authorities on Monday placed Marina Ovsyannikova, the former state TV journalist who denounced the Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine on-air, on the federal wanted list.


    Ovsyannikova, 44, became well-known in Russia and abroad in March after holding up an anti-war sign during a primetime news program on state broadcaster Channel One, where she was employed as a producer at the time.


    Authorities in August placed her under house arrest on charges of spreading "false information" about the Russian Armed Forces after she held up a poster reading: "How many more children must die [in Ukraine] before you stop?" near the Kremlin.

    Last week, Ovsyannikova's ex-husband claimed that the mother of two escaped from house arrest with her 11-year-old daughter.


    It was not immediately clear if she was still in Russia or had fled the country.


    She faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of spreading "false information" about the army.


    In the months since Russia launched a full-scale assault on Ukraine, a number of Russian reporters and opposition activists have been added to the federal wanted list on the same charges, including investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov and journalists Alexander Nevzorov and Michael Nacke.

    ‘We Cannot Win’: Russia’s Military Veterans Opposing The Ukraine War - The Moscow Times

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    Ukraine Presses Forward on Two Fronts as Horrors of War Linger

    PISKY-RADKIVSKI, Ukraine — The Russian soldier lay in the undergrowth, slammed against a tree. Still in full combat uniform with body armor and boots, he had been missed by the crews gathering the dead.

    A week after Ukrainian troops seized back the village of Pisky-Radkivski, in the Kharkiv region, in a sweeping counteroffensive that forced Russian troops into retreat across northeastern Ukraine, the horror of war was all too evident.

    “I cannot breathe in my house from the smell,” said Valentina Eliseeva, 73, a bent woman in slippers who pointed out where the soldier’s corpse lay. “The smell is so bad. When will they take it away?”

    The successful counteroffensive in northeastern Ukraine has reclaimed vast swaths of territory, including Lyman, a crucial railway hub about 25 miles south of Pisky-Radkivski in Donetsk — one of the four regions of Ukraine that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said last week his country was annexing and treating as its own. On Monday, Russian forces were still on the retreat in the northeast while Ukrainian forces also reported progress in the south — adding to the Kremlin’s embarrassments as it faces unusually public criticism of its war effort at home.

    The battle lasted just one day in Pisky-Radkivski, but the power and accuracy of the Ukrainian assault was evident. Burned-out tanks sat still in their positions, at a crossroads and in the woods at the northern edge of the village. Russian uniforms, sleeping bags and rations lay abandoned among the fir trees opposite Ms. Eliseeva’s house.

    Ukrainian artillery knocked out the tanks and killed at least eight Russian soldiers here, said Anatolii, 52, a retired engineer whose house was damaged in the strikes. “It is a strategic crossroads,” he said. “They shelled all around us.”

    Most of the bodies had been removed by professional crews who tour the battle zone in white vans emblazoned with a red cross and the number 200, the code the military has used since Soviet times for cargo of dead soldiers. But they had not picked up the body by the tree, which was missing its head.

    On a road past several villages to the south, a forensic team was picking up Russian bodies at the scene of an ambush. A Ukrainian soldier protested, but the forensic team explained quietly that Russian bodies could be exchanged for Ukrainian soldiers. The soldier helped lift a decomposed body into a black body bag, then leaned over to retch in the grass.

    Down the road, soldiers from a Ukrainian tank crew pulled up near the body of another dead Russian soldier, who lay twisted where he had fallen, his face blackened and his body swollen.

    Weary and dirty, the tank crew showed little concern for the Russian bodies, but seemed tense and angry from their recent battles. They had been fighting for 51 days without a break and were still wearing their summer uniforms, said one of them, who gave his code name as Positiv.

    “We liberated four villages and planted the Ukrainian flag, but other units took the credit,” he said. “So many of our soldiers died,” he added. “So many young guys, 20-year-olds. So many.”

    nytimes.com

  16. #1966
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    Quote Originally Posted by misskit View Post
    Russia Adds TV Protester Ovsyannikova to Wanted List

    Russian authorities on Monday placed Marina Ovsyannikova, the former state TV journalist who denounced the Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine on-air, on the federal wanted list.


    Ovsyannikova, 44, became well-known in Russia and abroad in March after holding up an anti-war sign during a primetime news program on state broadcaster Channel One, where she was employed as a producer at the time.


    Authorities in August placed her under house arrest on charges of spreading "false information" about the Russian Armed Forces after she held up a poster reading: "How many more children must die [in Ukraine] before you stop?" near the Kremlin.

    Last week, Ovsyannikova's ex-husband claimed that the mother of two escaped from house arrest with her 11-year-old daughter.


    It was not immediately clear if she was still in Russia or had fled the country.


    She faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of spreading "false information" about the army.


    In the months since Russia launched a full-scale assault on Ukraine, a number of Russian reporters and opposition activists have been added to the federal wanted list on the same charges, including investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov and journalists Alexander Nevzorov and Michael Nacke.

    ‘We Cannot Win’: Russia’s Military Veterans Opposing The Ukraine War - The Moscow Times
    Ed Snowden be like "what have I done?".


  17. #1967
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    Ukraine hammers Russian forces into retreat on east and south fronts

    Ukrainian troops on Tuesday accelerated their military advances on two fronts, pushing Russian forces into retreat in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions to the east and in the Kherson region to the south.

    The gains showed Kyiv continuing to recapture occupied territory on the same day that Russian President Vladimir Putin and his rubber-stamp parliament sought to formalize their increasingly far-fetched “annexation” of four Ukrainian regions.

    “The Ukrainian armed forces commanders in the south and east are throwing problems at the Russian chain of command faster than the Russians can effectively respond,” said a Western official who briefed reporters about sensitive security information on the condition of anonymity. “And this is compounding the existing dysfunction within the Russian invasion force.”

    Ukraine has been pushing to take back as much of its occupied territory as it can before Russia potentially sends hundreds of thousands of reinforcements to the battlefield, following a recent mobilization effort.

    The Ukrainian counteroffensive, which had moved far more slowly in the south compared with the lightning push through the northeastern Kharkiv region in September, has suddenly picked up speed, with Russian units retreating in recent days from a large swath of territory along the west bank of the Dnieper River.

    Ukrainian forces pushed ahead dozens of miles into the southern Kherson region, liberating towns and villages in scenes reminiscent of those from mid-September, when they swept into Kharkiv and were greeted by joyful residents who had spent many months under Russian occupation.

    On Monday, the spokesperson for the Russian Defense Ministry acknowledged that “superior tank units” of Ukraine had “wedged in the depth of our defense line” near the villages of Zolota Balka and Oleksandrivka in the Kherson region.

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said late Monday that the 129th Brigade from his native city of Kryvyi Rih had liberated the settlements of Arkhanhelske and Myrolyubivka.

    A video shared on social media by soldiers from the Ukrainian navy’s 35th Marine Infantry Brigade showed the capture of Davydiv Brid, which delivered a major blow to Russian supply lines in the Kherson area.

    Regaining control of Kherson, a rich agricultural region whose capital boasts a key port where the Dnieper flows into the Black Sea, is critical for Ukraine. Its capital was the first significant city captured by Russia at the start of its invasion in late February, and its loss would be a severe setback for Russia — strategically crippling for the military and politically humiliating for Putin.

    As the only position the Russians hold west of the Dnieper, Kherson is a potential strategic springboard for Russia to launch any future offensive down the Black Sea coast toward the storied port city of Odessa.

    Ukrainian officials had touted an operation to liberate Kherson for months. But until now, its forces had struggled in the south, suffering heavy casualties and making few territorial advances.

    The Ukrainian gains in Kherson follow the recapture over the weekend of the strategic transit hub of Lyman, in eastern Donetsk. The Ukrainians have now pushed through Lyman, apparently intent on extending their gains into Luhansk, the region where Russia has maintained its strongest grip.

    The collapse of the Russian position in Lyman occurred just as Putin was claiming that the city and all of the Donetsk region, along with Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, were annexed and restored to Russia as part of its historical lands. But unlike in Kharkiv, where Moscow ordered a retreat, Russian forces had apparently been told to defend Lyman.

    “All Russian forces withdrew in poor order, suffering high casualties from artillery fire as they attempted to leave,” the Western official said of Lyman, comparing it to Kharkiv. “Then, as you recall, troops received an order to cede the territory,” the official said. “But in Lyman, we think that the Russian troops retreated despite orders to defend and remain.”

    “Relinquishing this area is exactly what the Kremlin did not want to happen,” the official said.

    As a result, Russian control over the Luhansk region, which was mostly uncontested since June, is now also in jeopardy.

    The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington-based think tank, said geolocated footage corroborates statements from Russian military figures that Ukrainian troops are continuing their advance east of Lyman, apparently gearing up for a fight over the town of Kreminna.

    The new round of Russian setbacks revived debates over Kremlin strategy among pro-Russian military bloggers, who for months have provided a more detailed and less censored look into the war campaign than Moscow’s official military reports.

    “I am now being reproached for driving people into depression with my news,” Alexander Kots, a military correspondent for Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, wrote Tuesday on his Telegram blog, which has more than 600,000 subscribers. “Well, there will be no good news in the near future neither from the Kherson front, nor from now Luhansk.”

    Videos posted by Russian independent outlet Astra show pro-Russian fighters from the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic camping out in an open field and complaining that Russian commanders abandoned them as they withdrew.

    In the videos, a man in worn-out fatigues said the Russian losses in the area were huge, with only 193 survivors and a few pieces of heavy equipment left from their initial convoy. The Washington Post could not independently verify the video clips.

    Another popular Russian war blogger, known as Rybar, posted maps showing how the Russian hold on the Kherson region shrank dramatically in the span of just a few hours. Losing the west bank of the Dnieper River to Ukrainian control would be “an immediate danger” for remaining Russian units in the area, Rybar wrote to his nearly 1 million followers.

    As Russia was retreating on the battlefield, Zelensky signed a decree Tuesday formally refusing any negotiations with Putin — a largely symbolic move to show Kyiv’s confidence in its military position.

    Meanwhile, the political theater continued in Moscow, where the Federation Council, the upper chamber of the Russian parliament, rubber-stamped Putin’s annexation of the four Ukrainian regions.

    Putin and other officials have warned that Russia would feel entitled to defend its newly seized territories by all possible means — including, potentially, the use of nuclear weapons.

    The annexation legislation now passes back to the Kremlin for Putin’s final signature, which from Russia’s perspective would complete the process of seizing more than 15 percent of all Ukrainian sovereign territory.

    Putin’s brazen land-grab attempt was met with overwhelming international condemnation. Even countries that traditionally maintain closer ties to Moscow, such as Turkey and Serbia, have joined Western nations in refusing to recognize the annexation.

    Putin now appears to be betting on the unpopular mobilization drive that aims to call up hundreds of thousands of men to help hold ground in the annexed regions.

    Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced Tuesday that more than 200,000 men have been sent to the Russian armed forces in the two weeks since Putin announced the mobilization on Sept. 21.

    At the same time, the interior minister in neighboring Kazakhstan, Marat Akhmetzhanov, said that an equivalent number of Russians — about 200,000 — had crossed that country’s border since Sept. 21, most of them fleeing the mobilization or leaving out of fear that Putin would soon impose martial law and ban international travel. Tens of thousands more Russians have fled to other neighboring countries, including Georgia and Finland.

    The botched mobilization has led to severe recriminations in Russia, with some governors expressing fury that men who are too old or otherwise unqualified are being wrongly called to duty.

    Shoigu, the defense minister, tried to respond to a torrent of recent reports on Russian social media from mobilized men and their family members complaining about the lack of appropriate equipment in military units, which forced some newly enlisted soldiers to seek protective gear themselves.

    “Officials have been instructed to provide the mobilized with the necessary sets of clothing and other equipment,” Shoigu said, adding that 80 training grounds across Russia are now accepting mobilized soldiers.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...lyman-ukraine/

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    Retreating Russians leave their comrades’ bodies behind

    LYMAN, Ukraine (AP) — Russian troops abandoned a key Ukrainian city so rapidly that they left the bodies of their comrades in the streets, offering more evidence Tuesday of Moscow’s latest military defeat as it struggles to hang on to four regions of Ukraine that it illegally annexed last week.


    Meanwhile, Russia’s upper house of parliament rubber-stamped the annexations following “referendums” that Ukraine and its Western allies have dismissed as fraudulent.


    Responding to the move, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy formally ruled out talks with Russia, declaring that negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin are impossible after his decision to take over the regions.


    The Kremlin replied by saying that it will wait for Ukraine to agree to sit down for talks, noting that it may not happen until a new Ukrainian president takes office.


    “We will wait for the incumbent president to change his position or wait for a future Ukrainian president who would revise his stand in the interests of the Ukrainian people,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

    Despite the Kremlin’s apparent political bravado, the picture on the ground underscored the disarray Putin faces amid the Ukrainian advances and attempts to establish new Russian borders.

    Over the weekend, Russian troops pulled back from Lyman, a strategic eastern town that the Russians had used as a logistics and transport hub, to avoid being encircled by Ukrainian forces. The town’s liberation gave Ukraine an important vantage point for pressing its offensive deeper into Russian-held territories.


    Two days later, an Associated Press team reporting from Lyman saw at least 18 bodies of Russian soldiers still on the ground. The Ukrainian military appeared to have collected the bodies of their comrades after fierce battles for control of the town, but they did not immediately remove those of the Russians.


    “We fight for our land, for our children, so that our people can live better, but all this comes at a very high price,” said a Ukrainian soldier who goes by the nom de guerre Rud.


    Speaking late Tuesday in his nightly video address, Zelenskyy said dozens of settlements had been retaken “from the Russian pseudo-referendum this week alone” in the four annexed regions. In the Kherson region, he listed eight villages that Ukrainian forces reclaimed, “and this is far from a complete list. Our soldiers do not stop.”


    The deputy head of the Russian-backed regional administration in Kherson, Kirill Stremousov, told Russian TV that Ukrainian troops made “certain advances” from the north, and were attacking the region from other sides too. He said they were stopped by Russian forces and suffered high losses.


    As Kyiv pressed its counteroffensives, Russian forces launched more missile strikes at Ukrainian cities.


    Several missiles hit Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, damaging infrastructure and causing power cuts. Kharkiv Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said one person was killed. In the south, Russian missiles struck the city of Nikopol.

    After reclaiming control of Lyman in the Donetsk region, Ukrainian forces pushed further east and may have gone as far as the border of the neighboring Luhansk region as they advanced toward Kreminna, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said in its latest analysis.


    On Monday, Ukrainian forces also scored significant gains in the south, raising flags over the villages of Arkhanhelske, Myroliubivka, Khreshchenivka, Mykhalivka and Novovorontsovka.


    In Washington, the U.S. government announced Tuesday that it would give Ukraine an additional $625 million in military aid, including more of the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, that are credited with helping Kyiv’s recent military momentum. The package also includes artillery systems ammunition and armored vehicles.


    Before that announcement, Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Yevhen Perebyinis told a conference in the Turkish capital, Ankara, on Tuesday that Ukraine needed more weapons since Russia began a partial mobilization of draft-age men last month. He said additional weapons would help end the war sooner, not escalate it.

    Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said the military has recruited more than 200,000 reservists as part of the partial mobilization launched two weeks ago. He said the recruits were undergoing training at 80 firing ranges before being deployed to the front lines in Ukraine.


    Putin’s mobilization order said that up to 300,000 reservists were to be called up, but it held the door open for an even bigger activation. The order sparked protests across Russia and drove tens of thousands of men to flee the country.


    Russia’s effort to incorporate the four embattled regions in Ukraine’s east and south was done so hastily that even the exact borders of the territories being absorbed were unclear.


    The upper house of the Russian parliament, the Federation Council, voted to ratify treaties to make the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk and the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions part of Russia. The lower house did so Monday.

    Putin is expected to quickly endorse the annexation treaties.


    In other developments, the head of the company operating Europe’s largest nuclear plant said Ukraine is considering restarting the Russian-occupied facility to ensure its safety as winter approaches.


    In an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday, Energoatom President Petro Kotin said the company could restart two of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant’s reactors in a matter of days.


    “If you have low temperature, you will just freeze everything inside. The safety equipment will be damaged,” he said.


    Fears that the war in Ukraine could cause a radiation leak at the Zaporizhzhia plant had prompted the shutdown of its remaining reactors. The plant has been damaged by shelling, prompting international alarm over the potential for a disaster.

    Retreating Russians leave their comrades''' bodies behind | AP News

  19. #1969
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    Quote Originally Posted by misskit View Post
    Retreating Russians leave their comrades’ bodies behind
    Well you're not going to have the same ethic as a proper soldier when you've been dragged away from your job flipping burgers at a McDonalds knock off.

  20. #1970
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    I'm still wondering where the rest of Russia's standing army is . . . of course many are stationed along the Chinese border as these two have never trusted one another . . . 850.000 standing army, without conscripts.

    Bizarre . . . and far too early to rejoice.

  21. #1971
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    Quote Originally Posted by panama hat View Post
    I'm still wondering where the rest of Russia's standing army is
    If it existed, it would be in or on its way to Ukraine right now, and they would not be mobilizing a bunch of drunks and old men to go die in Ukraine.

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    Thailand Expat misskit's Avatar
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    They must have to keep army scattered around Russia in case they are attacked. It wouldn’t make sense for them to send all their soldiers to Ukraine.

  23. #1973
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    Quote Originally Posted by misskit View Post
    They must have to keep army scattered around Russia in case they are attacked. It wouldn’t make sense for them to send all their soldiers to Ukraine.
    No-one is going to attack them militarily. The odd terrorist maybe.

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    The Russians clump the FSB and OMON into the total army numbers. Putin will never deploy those forces to Ukraine because he needs them to suppress dissent internally.

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    Quote Originally Posted by misskit View Post
    They must have to keep army scattered around Russia in case they are attacked.
    It is a vast country with borders on two continents, so certainly they have a lot of troops engaged in facing off potential enemies. Whomever they think them to be. That said, there was a report quoted somewhere here on TD about Russia moving a substantial part of its Finland-facing forces to Ukraine. PH has a point, the numbers don't seem to add up.

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