Thread: Russia launches Ukraine invasion

MYKOLAIV/KHERSON FRONTLINE — It’s now been over eight months of full-scale warfare since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

But while the war continues, the features of the battlefield have changed significantly — both in the systems employed, and the tactics used to counter them.

Ukraine’s military, which began the war with largely Soviet-era equipment, has transitioned into an ever-more Western-armed and -trained force. By contrast, much of Russia’s best equipment — and its most professional troops — have been destroyed or killed in months of relentless combat, leading Moscow to draw on older stocks as the Russian force regresses.

Few people, or units, know this better than Ukraine’s 59th Motorized Brigade. Stationed in Kherson oblast at the start of the war, the 59th was subjected to the full force of one of Russia’s best-prepared strike groups, an armored thrust northwards from occupied Crimea. But while they were forced to cede Kherson City in early March, the 59th held back Russia’s spearheads from seizing Mykolaiv, the next city along the coast towards Odesa. Now, after seven months of largely static warfare, the changing balance of power sees the 59th poised to play a major role in the upcoming battle to liberate Kherson.

The soldiers of the 59th are bullish on their prospects of beating the Russians back at Kherson City. They talk dismissively of the battlefield effectiveness of the Iranian drones that have made headlines in recent weeks — weapons well-suited to harassing civilian infrastructure but less effective against prepared military units. Consistent degradation of Russian logistics and supply lines has hampered the enemy’s ability to effectively contest the battlefield. Russian leaders’ desperate moves to staff their front line with unwilling conscripts, their focus on looting Kherson of anything moveable, and even their use of air defense systems to attack ground targets, all buoy the 59th’s morale. They smell blood in the water.

On a sunny day in late October, one platoon from the brigade was catching some sleep during a break in the action at a disused gas station a few kilometers back from the frontline. The soldiers and officers present shared with Military Times their impressions of how the war has changed — for them, often for the better — over the past few months.

One of the hot topics in recent weeks has been Russia’s heavy deployment of Iranian-made Shahed 136 loitering munitions. Carrying a warhead of up to 50 kilograms and with a range of 1,500 kilometers, these ‘kamikaze drones’ have been employed across Ukraine, in particular to strike heating and power infrastructure in Kyiv and other cities. While they have been used on the battlefield as well, soldiers say they have not been particularly effective militarily.

“Iranian drones are attacking Mykolaiv constantly,” says Vadym, a senior lieutenant in the 59th. “They’re active over the entire region, but most of them are shot down. They are only really useful against civilian targets, when they can slip past air defense,” he says.

One of the difficulties drones present to many air defense systems is a small radio and heat signature, which can make it difficult to achieve lock-on. With advance warning of an approaching drone, however, this can be mitigated — and there are other tools that work even better.

“It’s difficult to hit [a Shahed] with any system that works by heat lock, such as a Stinger [MANPAD], unless you have extra time to track it,” Vadym says. “But our foreign partners have provided us with some very effective systems. The German Gepards [self-propelled anti-aircraft guns] are very good against them. They see the [drone] and can easily shoot it down. Even machine guns can down [Shaheds] quite easily if they are not flying too high — they are quite large and slow,” he explains.

Other troops agree with Vadym’s estimation.

“These drones [Shaheds] are not a problem at all,” says Zhenya, a sergeant major. “If you have warning and anti-aircraft weapons, you can down them quite easily. That’s why [Russia] uses them against cities — they are not useful on the battlefield,” he says.

The use of these systems speaks to the difficulties Moscow is facing in maintaining a steady level of long-range strikes eight months into the war. As its stocks of precision-guided munitions deplete, Russia has turned to other methods, some not designed for the task: soldiers say that S-300 missiles, originally designed for air defense, are now one of the primary weapons used to strike Mykolaiv. Despite their poor accuracy when used against ground targets, the missiles are still fired at the city regularly at night.

Ukraine’s efforts to degrade Russian logistics and supply routes in Kherson are also paying dividends.

“American HIMARs [precision rocket artillery] have been incredibly useful for us. Once we started hitting the bridges, the intensity of the [Russian] shelling decreased a lot,” says Vadym, describing the Ukrainian shelling of the Antonovsky and Nova Kakhovka bridges, the only two connections between Kherson and the rest of Russian-held southern Ukraine. “We destroyed a lot of their artillery and ammunition warehouses as well. Before, [the Russians] used to shell everything, just firing as much as they wanted at any targets. Now, they are forced to economize,” Vadym says.

American-provided long-range artillery systems have been crucial to shifting the tide here as well. Vadym specifically names the M109 Paladin self-propelled howitzer and the M777, whose guided Excalibur shells can hit targets up to 40 kilometers away with high accuracy.

“Before we had the M777, we couldn’t reach their [artillery] systems, but now we can,” he says.

Finally, it is not just Russian equipment that has been depleted. Much of Moscow’s professional infantry corps, many of whom were transferred from eastern Ukraine to Kherson over the summer in anticipation of an impending Ukrainian assault, has been put out of action. With competent manpower consistently lacking and contract servicemen, many of whom have been fighting without a break since Feb. 24, increasingly dwindling, Russia has thrown in a new stopgap to bolster the lines: conscripts.

The men of the 59th are unimpressed by what they have seen.

”We’ve already gone up against their mobilized men here,” says Mikhail, another senior lieutenant at a post closer to the front. “They are nearly useless. Many of them can hardly hold a gun, let alone a position. We have killed their professional soldiers, and now [Russia] is hoping to slow us down with bodies,” he says.

As the situation shifts in Ukraine’s favor, the soldiers want for only one thing: extra artillery and tanks to crack Russia’s defenses and exploit breakthroughs in the inevitable assault on Kherson.

“We have almost everything we need,” Vadym says. “We just need a bit more artillery, to fight against their guns, and especially tanks — maybe the most important element in an attack. There will be positive developments here [in Kherson] very soon.”

https://news.yahoo.com/hardened-ukra...213019632.html

A must-read. You can listen to the audio version on the site.

At a White House ceremony on August 9, days after the U.S. Senate agreed in a near-unanimous vote to ratify the expansion of NATO to include Finland and Sweden, U.S. President Joe Biden highlighted how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had backfired on Russian President Vladimir Putin. “He’s getting exactly what he did not want,” Biden announced. “He wanted the Finlandization of NATO, but he’s getting the NATOization of Finland, along with Sweden.” Indeed, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been a massive strategic blunder, leaving Russia militarily, economically, and geopolitically weaker.

Ukraine’s offensive in Kharkiv in September underscored the magnitude of Putin’s error. As Russian forces grew exhausted, losing momentum on the battlefield, Ukraine seized the initiative, dealing the Russian military a decisive blow. Ukraine’s battlefield successes revealed the extent of the rot in Putin’s army—the sagging morale, the declining manpower, the deteriorating quality of the troops. Instead of giving up, however, Putin responded to these problems by ordering a partial military mobilization, introducing tougher punishments for soldiers who desert or surrender, and moving forward with the illegal annexation of four Ukrainian regions. Putin reacted to Russia’s falling fortunes in Ukraine just as he did to its shrinking role on the world stage: dealt a losing hand, he doubled down on his risky bet. To Putin’s evident surprise, the war in Ukraine has accelerated long-standing trends pushing his country toward decline. Europe is moving to reduce its energy dependence on Russia, diminishing both the country’s leverage over the continent and the government revenues that depend heavily on energy exports. Unprecedented international sanctions and export controls are limiting Russia’s access to capital and technology, which will cause Moscow to fall even further behind in innovation. A year ago, we argued in these pages that reports of Russia’s decline were overstated and that Russia was poised to remain a persistent power—a country facing structural challenges but maintaining the intent and capabilities to threaten the United States and its allies. Putin’s disastrous invasion underscored the dangers of dismissing the threat from Russia, but it has also hastened the country’s decline. Today, Russia’s long-term outlook is decidedly dimmer.

Given these factors, there will be a strong temptation to downgrade Russia as a threat. That would be a mistake, and not just because the war has yet to be won. In Ukraine and elsewhere, the more vulnerable Moscow perceives itself to be, the more it will try to offset those vulnerabilities by relying on unconventional tools—including nuclear weapons. In other words, Russian power and influence may be diminished, but that does not mean Russia will become dramatically less threatening. Instead, some aspects of the threat are likely to worsen. For the West, recognizing that reality means abandoning any near-term hopes of a chastened Russia and maintaining support for Russia’s targets. That effort should begin in Ukraine: the United States and its allies must provide sustained support to Kyiv to ensure that Russia suffers a defeat. But even if Putin loses, the problem that Russia poses will not be solved. In many ways, it will grow in intensity. So, too, should the response to it.

Payment Due

The war in Ukraine has dealt a blow to Russia’s global economic influence. Russia’s GDP is set to contract by six percent over the course of 2022, according to the International Monetary Fund. And that could be just the beginning, as the full brunt of Western measures are yet to be felt. Western export controls will curtail Moscow’s access to key technologies and components, hobbling an economy that depends heavily on foreign inputs and know-how. Already there are signs of struggle in car manufacturing and other major commercial sectors in which Russian dependence on foreign components or parts is especially pronounced.

Moreover, Russia’s status as a major energy power is on shaky ground. To be sure, Europe faces challenges in securing alternatives to Russian energy imports in the coming decade. But over the long term, the political leverage that the Kremlin derives from energy exports will diminish. Western sanctions scheduled to take effect by the end of 2022 will block the issuance of commercial insurance for Russian tanker shipments, increasing the risks and costs of Russian oil transactions. The G-7, meanwhile, is imposing a price cap on the sale of Russian oil. Over time, the noose may tighten, forcing Russia to offer greater discounts for the purchase of its oil. There are growing signs of declining Russian exports and, hence, shrinking revenue, leading the Russian government to slash its budget in many departments by ten percent. Europe will steadily decrease its imports of Russian energy, giving Moscow less room to negotiate with other consumers, such as China and India. Russia has also hemorrhaged some of its best talent, including programmers, engineers, and information technology specialists, which will curtail its future competitiveness.

Although those factors will take a significant toll, the full extent of the looming economic contraction and its impact on Russia is unclear. The effects of sanctions and export controls will largely depend on the West’s success in enforcing them and Europe’s success in reducing its dependence on Russian energy. The Kremlin, for its part, will work hard to circumvent the restrictions and find workarounds to blunt their damage. Moscow will resort to trading goods illegally through networks that transit friendly countries, such as the Eurasian Economic Union states, and to working with countries such as China to jointly develop technologies. It will be difficult for Russia to access the large volume of components required to supply key sectors of its economy, such as the automotive industry, but it may be able to secure the specific technologies needed to sustain select weapons programs.

Rather than facing a total collapse, the Russian economy is likely headed toward scarcity, autarky, and a steady decoupling from the global economy. As conditions deteriorate, the Kremlin will grow more desperate, resorting to shadowy or illicit means to get by and flouting the rules that govern global commerce in which it no longer has a stake. The more marginalized and threatened the Kremlin becomes, the less predictable and restrained its behavior will be.

It is worth considering that before the war, Russia was already a relatively weak great power, with poor economic foundations for its global influence. Yet its ability to contest U.S. interests has often been greater than any raw economic indicators would suggest. Russia tends to punch above its weight and, though lacking in dynamism, is known for its resilience. The country has also lost its share of wars yet has remained a consequential actor in European security. With that track record, it would be unwise to assume that an economically weaker Russia will necessarily be less threatening to U.S. interests in the years to come.

Battlefield Dearth

The Russian military has been badly mauled in Ukraine. The war has consumed millions of artillery shells and worn out a massive quantity of Russian equipment, from artillery barrels to tank engines. More than 80,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in the fighting. Mobilized personnel from Russian-held Ukrainian territories in Donetsk and Luhansk and volunteer fighters make up a significant percentage of the more recent losses, but many of Russia’s best troops were lost early in the war. At the same time as it faces personnel shortages, the Russian military is increasingly having to bring old equipment out of storage to outfit new volunteer units. Moscow has addressed these problems piecemeal, allowing its troops to muddle through, but that ultimately won’t resolve the fundamental problems as the quality of the force degrades. Mobilization may extend Russia’s ability to sustain the war, introducing a degree of uncertainty to the medium and long term, but it is unlikely to resolve the structural problems in Russia’s military performance. As Western export controls cut Russia off from key components such as computer chips and Western machine tools, armament programs have been delayed and Moscow has been forced to pursue expensive workarounds. These measures will reduce the quality and reliability of such parts in weapons systems and, over time, substantially weaken Russia’s defense industry.

Still, the West should not assume that the Russian military will be rendered harmless after its disastrous war with Ukraine. Russia is likely to find ways around the Western restrictions, especially given the difficulty of enforcing them. Moscow may not be particularly good at producing its own substitutes for imports, but it has a knack for skirting Western export controls. After its illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, Russia, despite an array of sanctions, still managed to maintain access to Western-made parts for many of its weapons. China may also work to lessen the pressure. Although Beijing has so far been reluctant to increase defense-military cooperation with Russia for fear of incurring U.S. penalties for violating sanctions, it is likely to find ways to support Moscow as the international spotlight moves away from Ukraine, including by providing computer chips and other crucial components.

What is more, the war has left untouched many of the Russian capabilities that most worry the United States and NATO. Russia remains a leader in integrated air defenses, electronic warfare, anti[at]satellite weapons, submarines, and other advanced systems. Although it at first seemed that Russia had not used cyber-operations during its attack on Ukraine, according to an analysis by Microsoft, Russia did in fact conduct almost 40 destructive cyberattacks against Ukraine in the first three months of the invasion, including a devastating cyber-campaign across Europe that blocked Ukrainian access to commercial satellites. To the extent that Moscow exercised restraint on that front, it probably did so because Putin envisioned a swift victory and planned to occupy the country thereafter.

Last but not least, Russia still has a sizable nuclear arsenal—4,477 warheads, according to some estimates—that remains a significant factor shaping U.S. and NATO decision-making. Even as the Russian military invested more heavily in conventional weaponry, it maintained a capable tactical nuclear arsenal and poured billions of rubles into modernizing its strategic nuclear forces. Despite Russia’s conventional losses in Ukraine, its nuclear arsenal is a logical offset to its conventional vulnerability and poses a credible threat. Western policymakers, therefore, should not assume Russia can no longer endanger European security, nor should they imagine that Russia can’t recover its lost military capabilities. Russia retains considerable latent power, resilience, and mobilization potential even if the present regime is inept at capitalizing on those resources. There is a reason Russia features so prominently in the wars of the past several hundred years: the country frequently uses, misuses, and eventually restores hard military power.

Beyond Putin

To justify the war, the Kremlin has stoked a dark and ugly form of “patriotism” inside Russia. Putin and his propagandists have broadcast the message that the war in Ukraine is in fact a civilizational conflict with a West that seeks to keep Russia weak. They allege that Russia is fighting NATO in Ukraine and that the United States and Europe are out to break Russia apart. Although such anti-American rhetoric is not new—portraying the United States as an enemy has been a long-standing Putin tactic—it is growing angrier and more aggressive. This confrontational, anti-Western tone will continue as long as Putin is in power.

There are now renewed questions about Putin’s longevity in office, particularly after he called for a partial mobilization in September. Before that announcement, Putin had gone to great lengths to shelter politically consequential Russians from his war in Ukraine. The regime raised pensions to win over the country’s millions of retirees, insisted the “special military operation” was continuing “in accordance to the plan,” and disproportionately recruited people from Russia’s most impoverished regions to fight. Indeed, Putin sought Russians’ passive approval, and for many, life continued as normal. By declaring a partial mobilization, however, Putin has awakened Russian society to the grim realities of the war. His grip on power is weaker now than before his decision to call on Russians to prolong his misguided endeavor.

What comes after Putin is harder to predict. Some commentators have warned that Russia’s next leader could be even worse for the West. That is certainly possible, but that likelihood may be lower than many expect. Data on authoritarian regimes most similar to Russia’s suggest that if Putin exited office as a result of domestic dynamics—that is, because of a coup, a protest, or his natural death—Russia’s political trajectory would be unlikely to worsen in terms of stability and repression and might even improve. Research that one of us (Kendall-Taylor) has conducted with the political scientist Erica Frantz found that in the post–Cold War era, coups, wide-scale protests, and more violent forms of conflict are no more likely to erupt in the years after such leaders leave the scene than when they were in office. Repression, in fact, tends to subside after a change.

But although domestic dynamics might not become more combustible, authoritarianism in Russia will likely outlast Putin. In the post–Cold War era, authoritarianism persisted past the exit of longtime leaders in roughly 75 percent of cases, according to Kendall-Taylor and Frantz. Moreover, there is a strong chance that the elites who hold antagonistic views of the West will remain in power. According to the same research, a regime often remains intact after longtime leaders leave office—a prospect made more likely if Putin exits on account of natural death or an elite-led coup. Since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s security services, especially the Federal Security Service, the successor to the KGB, have become only more empowered and entrenched. The more Putin must rely on repression to maintain control, the more power he must grant them. The security services—a group that historically has held especially hostile views of the United States and the West—are therefore primed to maintain influence beyond Putin. Unless there is significant turnover among the ruling elite in conjunction with Putin’s exit, Russia’s confrontational posture will endure.

Wounded But Dangerous

Russia may face mounting challenges, but the Kremlin will try to adapt. In particular, the more vulnerable Putin feels given the degradation of Russia’s conventional forces in Ukraine, the more likely he is to rely on unconventional methods to accomplish his objectives. With its back against the wall, the Kremlin will also have less compunction about trying to destabilize its enemies through sometimes exotic and hard-to-track methods in the biological, chemical, cyberspace, or artificial intelligence realms.

For starters, the Kremlin will almost certainly intensify its disinformation campaigns. Russia has seen just how effective such campaigns can be: disinformation and propaganda have contributed to decisions by leaders in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East to remain neutral or circumspect in the aftermath of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. By accusing Ukraine of carrying out atrocities that Russian soldiers have committed in the war, framing Western sanctions instead of Russia’s invasion as responsible for high food and energy prices, and convincing many that it is fighting a defensive war against an expanding NATO, Russia has diluted criticism of its military aggression.

Cyberattacks will also become an ever more important and disruptive tool, as recent incidents in Estonia and Lithuania suggest. In August, in response to Tallinn’s announcement that it would remove all Soviet monuments from public spaces, a Russian hacker group targeted more than 200 state and private Estonian institutions—the biggest wave of cyberattacks on Estonia in more than a decade. The same hacker group similarly targeted state and private institutions in Lithuania in June after the government placed restrictions on the transit of goods sanctioned by the European Union to Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave between Lithuania and Poland that depends on Lithuanian railways and roads for supplies.

Most ominously, the more damage the Russian military incurs in Ukraine, the more likely it is to rely on the prospect of nuclear escalation to offset NATO’s conventional superiority in Europe. The Russian military appears genuinely more comfortable with the notion of limited nuclear use relative to its Western counterparts. To be sure, the use of nuclear weapons is a political decision, but the preponderance of evidence suggests that Russia’s political leadership might well consider limited nuclear use if faced with the kind of defeat that could threaten the regime or the state. A future crisis or conflict with NATO would leave Moscow with few conventional options before it decided to threaten or potentially use nuclear weapons, shortening the pathway to nuclear war.

The growing import of nonstrategic (or tactical) nuclear weapons to Russia’s military means that the country is less likely than ever to agree to negotiated limits on its nuclear arsenal. That is particularly problematic given that Russia has a more diversified nuclear arsenal than the United States does, with different types of nonstrategic weapons, and doctrinally appears to be more willing to use those weapons in a conflict. The current hostility in the U.S. Congress toward Russia and Moscow’s record of violating the treaties it signs also lowers the odds that the United States and Russia will agree to a replacement for the New start treaty once it expires in 2026. In the absence of an agreement, Russia’s ability to produce strategic nuclear weapons and deploy new systems would be unchecked, and the United States would lose important insights into Russia’s strategic nuclear arsenal. Notably, China is also modernizing its nuclear arsenal. As a result, the United States will find itself dealing with two unconstrained nuclear powers, both focused on the United States as the primary threat.

The Danger of Complacency

Any sensible effort to counter Moscow must start in Kyiv. U.S. and European support for Ukraine has so far been remarkable. The United States alone has sent more than $45 billion in assistance. This support has helped Ukraine not just defend itself but launch a counteroffensive to retake territory occupied by Russian forces. With the momentum on Kyiv’s side, now is the time to step up the support and the provision of weapons Ukraine needs to, at a minimum, return its borders to where they stood before the invasion. Anything less would increase the prospects of another war down the line.

Even if Ukraine and its Western backers are wildly successful, however, Russia will remain a challenge for European security. Russia’s war, at its core, is an imperialist endeavor rooted in the still unfolding collapse of the Soviet Union. As some historians rightly point out, the dissolution of the Soviet Union is best thought of as a process that in many ways is still going on rather than as a discrete historical event; the war in Ukraine is just the latest in a series of conflicts that have accompanied this process. It is optimistic to assume that this war is the dying gasp of Russian imperialism or that Russia, even under a different leader, will quickly abandon revanchism to become a stakeholder in European security.

Moscow’s war is also leading to ripple effects that will create new risks in Western relations with Russia. For example, Finland’s and Sweden’s entry into NATO—a direct result of Russia’s attack on Ukraine—will increase security tensions with Russia in the Baltic and Arctic regions. NATO has been strengthened by their addition, but their membership also brings new borders for NATO to defend and contingency plans to develop. Moreover, a Russia that feels vulnerable about its conventional forces is more likely to overreact to Western actions. That is particularly true in the aftermath of Russia’s failures in Ukraine, which could prod the Kremlin to seek opportunities to demonstrate that Russia is still a power to be feared. Such dynamics will create new challenges for NATO to manage.

Russia is not in a position to start another war today and certainly not with NATO. But this does not mean Western policymakers can be complacent. Yes, it will take Russia the better part of a decade to recapitalize its conventional forces in the aftermath of its attack on Ukraine. But NATO has its own recapitalization woes. It will take years for member states to replenish the weapons and ammunition they sent to Ukraine in this war. That toll will mount if the war goes on longer, which it most likely will. It is also important not to plan to fight the previous war. NATO must consider how best to counter the Russian military that will eventually emerge from this war years from now and invest accordingly. Given Russia’s demonstrable failures in this war, it is unlikely that Moscow will seek to rebuild the same military, with its brittle force structure, weak training, and anemic logistical capacity.

Some have argued that Russia’s poor performance in Ukraine suggests that the United States can hand over the Russian challenge to Europe, allowing Washington to focus on Beijing. But if anything, this war has provided a stark reminder of why Europe’s defense is and will likely remain highly dependent on the United States. The ability to employ military power on a large scale means working out such issues as logistics, command and control, and communications for hundreds of thousands of troops. European countries would struggle on their own to scale operations to counter a future Russian campaign similar in size to the one Moscow launched in Ukraine. It is naive to think that any European country can provide the integration, enabling, and other critical support functions currently being performed by the United States. Defense planning based on Washington’s ability to offload the Russian challenge onto Europe in the next decade amounts to wishful thinking.

Likewise, the Russian war against Ukraine underscores the way in which the outcome of major wars ultimately comes down to attrition and the ability to replace lost personnel, materiel, and ammunition. NATO has deficits across the board in these categories. A European army would have been forced off the field long ago if it had taken even a fraction of the casualties suffered by the Russian or the Ukrainian armed forces. NATO has meager stocks of advanced weapons, militaries often composed of difficult-to-replace and expensive platforms, and a defense industrial capacity that would struggle to scale up production. Six months of support for Ukraine has exposed major gaps in the West’s ability to produce ammunition and key replacement parts. Getting Europe to do more for its own defense is a noble goal—but it will take years, perhaps even decades, to get there.

Constrict and Constrain

Russia under Putin will never be a stakeholder in European security. The Kremlin has shown that it is far more interested in imperialist revanchism than in strategic stability. In the near term, then, Washington and its allies must keep working to reduce the risks of escalation—especially of a nuclear exchange—and to diminish Russia’s ability to wage war. Although Washington has rightly suspended its arms control and strategic stability dialogue with Russia, it will need to maintain strategic communication with Moscow to avoid the chance of a nuclear confrontation. The United States and NATO, however, must plan for Russia’s growing reliance on unconventional tactics, including the possibility that Russia will increasingly rely on nuclear threats and may be willing to follow through with limited nuclear use.

Meanwhile, Washington must also work to constrict and constrain Russia—to prevent it from waging aggression beyond its borders. Degrading Russian power requires Washington to build on the policies it set in motion following Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. In particular, the United States must continue to help Europe transition away from Russian oil and gas and rebuild the arms it has given to Ukraine. Critically, Washington and its allies must invest in the enforcement of the sanctions, export controls, and anticorruption measures against Russia that have been put in place. Already there is evidence that Russia is working to circumvent them; the West must prevent it. Constraining Moscow will also require Washington and its European allies to sustain their engagement with India and other fence-sitting countries in Africa and the Middle East that continue to provide a lifeline to Russia. This will mean paying greater attention to the global South, where Russia enjoys greater influence and is able to contest the narrative.

In the long term, however, the United States and Europe share an interest in stabilizing the relationship with Russia. That will not be possible as long as Putin is in power. But one way or another, there will inevitably be a post-Putin Russia, and a change in leadership—especially in Russia’s highly personalized political system—will provide a chance to reestablish guardrails on the relationship. Even though any future Russian leader is likely to remain intent on restoring Russia’s global influence, especially on its periphery, it is clear that Ukraine has been a particular obsession for Putin. A resounding Russian defeat in Ukraine may teach future Russian elites a valuable lesson about the limits of military power. Russia’s growing subservience to Beijing could also raise the odds that a future leader will want options and pursue a foreign policy less antagonistic toward the West. Strategic cultures can change over time, including in response to dramatic defeats.

Washington and its allies must therefore confront Moscow while sticking to their values. This means being thoughtful in discussions of collective responsibility and in meting out forms of collective punishment. The U.S. government should actively assist the Russian exile community, including journalists, activists, and other Russians who support a freer and more democratic Russia, by providing U.S.-based professional fellowships for persecuted human rights defenders and journalists, for example, and addressing shortcomings in the implementation of anticorruption and sanctions policies that cause collateral damage to oppressed civil society actors.

As the United States and its allies cope with the current Putin regime and think about what might eventually follow it, they would do well to remember the old adage that Russia is never as strong as it looks or as weak as it looks. The country often goes through cycles of resurgence, stagnation, and decline. Even with its capacity and global standing diminished by its war in Ukraine, Russia will continue to be driven by its resentments, a quest for a geopolitical space outside its borders, and a desire for status. Washington cannot afford to write Russia off in an effort to ease its own mind, nor should it imagine that Europe can manage the problem on its own. The threat may evolve, but it will persist.

https://reader.foreignaffairs.com/20...2/content.html

IAEA finds no evidence of Ukraine building a ‘dirty bomb’

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported back about their inspections in Ukraine following Russian claims that Kyiv was planning a “provocation” involving a “dirty bomb”, the IAEA announced via its website.


The agency said that its experts inspected three Ukrainian facilities, the Institute for Nuclear Research in Kyiv, Eastern Mining and Processing Plant in Zhovti Kody, and Production Association Pivdennyi Machine-Building Plant in Dnipro, and did not find any evidence of undeclared nuclear activities.


According to the IAEA, the inspectors also gathered environmental samples “with ultrasensitive analytical techniques that can provide information about past and current activities related to the handling of nuclear materials.”


“We will report on the results of the environmental sampling as soon as possible,” IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said.


On 25 October, the IAEA said that its experts would inspect two nuclear facilities in Ukraine following Moscow’s accusations that Ukraine was building a “dirty bomb”. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba suggested that the IAEA should check the facilities. Previously, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu called his counterparts in four NATO countries and told each about Ukraine’s potential use of a “dirty bomb”.

Новая газета. Европа

Russia Warns U.K. Of ‘Dangerous Consequences’ After Black Sea Attack

Russia summoned the UK ambassador to Moscow to the Foreign Ministry on Thursday and warned London of "dangerous consequences" after accusing it of helping Kyiv carry out an attack on Moscow's Black Sea fleet in Crimea last week.


"Such confrontational actions of the English carry a threat of escalation of the situation and could lead to unpredictable and dangerous consequences," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.


Moscow said it had delivered a "strong protest" to U.K. ambassador Deborah Bronnert.


It claimed British forces were training Ukrainian special services, including for "sabotage operations at sea."


On Saturday, Russia accused the U.K. of helping Kyiv orchestrate a drone attack on its ships in the port of Sevastopol in Moscow-annexed Crimea.


Bronnert arrived at Moscow's towering Soviet-era Foreign Ministry building, with a line of people chanting "Britain is a terrorist state," state media showed.

The Foreign Ministry said it had handed "concrete facts" of London's "hostile provocations" to her.


"A demand was put forward to stop them immediately," it said, adding that U.K. military specialists were training Ukrainian special forces in the southern city of Ochakiv, "including training for underwater saboteurs for operations in the waters of the Black and Azov seas."


Russia last week also accused the U.K. of being implicated in explosions on the Nord Stream pipelines in September.


The U.K. says these are "false claims on an epic scale."


Relations between London and Moscow have been deteriorating for years. Russia considers the U.K., one of Ukraine’s strongest backers, to be one of the least friendly Western countries to its interests.


Russia Warns U.K. of 'Dangerous Consequences' After Black Sea Attack - The Moscow Times

Originally Posted by misskit

The U.K. says these are "false claims on an epic scale."

Translation: That's our story and we're sticking to it.

Bronnert arrived at Moscow's towering Soviet-era Foreign Ministry building, with a line of people chanting "Britain is a terrorist state," state media showed.

Totally impromptu of course.

Russia-Ukraine war: At the front line of Ukraine's struggle for Kherson

The city of Kherson on the Black Sea coast was the biggest prize seized by Russia in the first month after its invasion on 24 February. Now there are suggestions that Russia might be about to give up at least part of it as it prepares defensive lines for the winter.
Kherson, its suburbs and outlying villages are spread over both banks of the mighty Dnipro, one of Europe's great rivers. In the last few days Western officials have briefed journalists to expect a partial Russian withdrawal from the western side of Kherson.
The officials said Russian commanders could be preparing to pull back to the more defensible eastern side of the river, also known here as the left bank, taking advantage of its qualities as a formidable natural obstacle.
Since the summer Ukraine has run a media offensive about its plans to recapture Kherson. It telegraphed the announcement of its military plans so clearly that some analysts decided it was a feint to cover a rapid and successful offensive that recaptured a considerable amount of territory in north-east Ukraine.

On the ground here in the southwest of this big country, Ukraine's military offensive has been much more cautious. The Ukrainians are very serious about recapturing Kherson.
President Volodymyr Zelensky needs a victory - not just for the morale of his citizens, but to reassure his allies that this is a war Ukraine can win. But the ambitions of the political and military leadership have collided with the stark realities of pushing the Russians back.
After spending several days this week on the Ukrainian lines around the Kherson perimeter, interviewing front-line soldiers as well as senior officers, it is clear that the men who have to fight in southwest Ukraine have learnt the hard way that the Russians remain a formidable enemy.

On the front line between Mykolaiv and Kherson a Ukrainian soldier, a local man who said his name was Ilya, puffed on a fat cigar as Russian shells targeted his unit's position. He had bushy hair and a dark beard and revelled in a certain resemblance to Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara.
"It's very hard to make progress here. It is necessary to concentrate a large amount of force in one point to break through the front line. Our job is to hold our position. We attack from time to time so that they don't take their reserves and transfer them somewhere else."

"It is very difficult and slow-going. They control the sky. They've got much more military equipment, more people and more ammunition.
"Their people are not trained, but they just go straight forward shouting 'hurrah'. We don't have as many cartridges as they have people."
Casualties are another factor. Both Russia and Ukraine have suffered tens of thousands of dead and wounded. Precise figures are not available. Neither side wants to admit the damage caused by the other.

MORE Russia-Ukraine war: At the front line of Ukraine'''s struggle for Kherson - BBC News

Originally Posted by Takeovers

https://twitter.com/GlasnostGone/sta...31291009007616


Click on twitter link for a drive through Mariupol. The City is devastated.

WOW ... amazing and, at the same time, so sad.

So much pointless destruction.

How can the Ukraine cities be rebuilt?

Who will pay? Can Russia pay? It could be bankrupt after the war.

Kakhova Dam in Moscow-Occupied Ukraine ‘Damaged’ by Kyiv Strike-Russian Agencies

Emergency services in Moscow-occupied Ukraine said Sunday the key Kakhovka dam in the Russian-controlled region of Kherson was "damaged" by a Ukrainian strike, Russian news agencies reported.


"Today at 10:00 there was a hit of six HIMARS rockets. Air defense units shot down five missiles, one hit a lock of the Kakhovka dam, which was damaged," Russian agencies quoted local emergency services as saying.


Ukraine has in recent weeks warned that Moscow forces intended to blow up the strategic facility to cause flooding.


The RIA Novosti news agency then quoted a local Moscow-backed official saying the damage was not "critical."


"Everything is under control. The main air defense strikes were repelled, one missile hit [the dam], but did not cause critical damage," Ruslan Agayev, a representative of the Moscow-installed administration of nearby city Novaya Kakhovka told the agency.


The Kakhovka hydroelectric dam in southern Ukraine was captured by Moscow's forces at the start of their offensive. It supplies Russian-annexed Crimea with water.


Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Russian troops of planning to blow it up to trigger a devastating flood.


Upstream from the dam is the Kakhovka reservoir on Dnipro river.


The reservoir can hold 18 cubic meters of water.


Kyiv has said that the dam bursting would cause a "catastrophe on a grand scale" and has called for an international mission to be deployed at the dam.

Kakhovka Dam in Moscow-Occupied Ukraine 'Damaged' by Kyiv Strike - Russian Agencies - The Moscow Times

Moscow Forces Reinstate Lenin Statue in Ukrainian City

Moscow's occupying authorities in the southern Ukrainian city of Melitopol said Saturday they had brought back a statue of Lenin, seven years after it was taken down following Kyiv's pro-EU revolution.


The Moscow-installed head of the Zaporizhzhia region, Vladimir Rogov, posted a photograph of workers in the city reinstating the tribute to the Bolshevik leader.


"After seven years the statue to Vladimir Lenin has returned to its place in Melitopol," he said, adding that city authorities had taken it down in 2015.


Ukraine dismantled Lenin statues across the country after its 2014 revolution overthrew a Moscow-backed regime as part of its "de-communisation drive."


It was seen as an effort to break away from Russian and Soviet influence.


Moscow condemned the move.


Almost all cities in Russia have a statue of the founder of the Soviet Union in their central squares.


Melitopol fell to Moscow's forces early in their offensive, launched on February 24.

Moscow Forces Reinstate Lenin Statue in Ukrainian City - The Moscow Times

Oops!

Hours after Aleksei Agafonov arrived in the Luhansk region on 1 November as part of a battalion of new conscripts, his unit were handed shovels and ordered to dig trenches throughout the night.

Their digging, which they took turns to do because of the lack of available shovels, was abruptly interrupted in the early hours of the next day as Ukrainian artillery lit up the sky and shells started raining down on Agafonov and his unit.

“A Ukrainian drone first flew over us, and after that their artillery started to pound us for hours and hours, nonstop,” Agafonov, who survived the shelling, told the Guardian in a phone interview on Monday.

“I saw men being ripped apart in front of me, most of our unit is gone, destroyed. It was hell,” he said, adding that his unit’s commanders abandoned them just before the shelling started.

Agafonov was called up on 16 October alongside 570 other conscripts in Voronezh, a city in the south-west of Russia, as part of Vladimir Putin’s nationwide mobilisation push that has seen more than 300,000 men drafted to go and fight in a war that the Kremlin calls its “special military operation”.

After the attacks stopped, Agafonov, with roughly a dozen other soldiers, retreated from the forest outside the Luhansk town of Makiivka to the nearby Russian-controlled city of Svatove. In Svatove, Agafonov and his group moved into a deserted building, trying to contact other mobilised soldiers who had been with him that night.

According to Agafonov’s estimates, only 130 draftees out of the 570 survived the Ukrainian attack, which would make it the deadliest known incident involving conscripts since the start of the mobilisation drive at the end of September.

“And many who survived are losing their minds after what happened. No one wants to go back,” Agafonov said.

The incident points to Russia’s willingness to throw hundreds of ill-prepared conscripts on to the frontline in Ukraine’s east, where some of the heaviest fighting has been taking place, in an effort to stem Kyiv’s advances.

There is growing anger in Russia as more coffins return from Ukraine, bringing home the remains of conscripts.

Some of the details surrounding last week’s shelling could not be independently verified. But the Guardian spoke to a second soldier, as well as two family members of surviving soldiers, who gave similar accounts.

“We were completely exposed, we had no idea what to do. Hundreds of us died,” said the second soldier, who asked to remain anonymous. “Two weeks of training doesn’t prepare you for this,” he said, referring to the limited military training conscripts received prior to being sent to Ukraine.

The Russian investigative outlet Verstka, which first reported on the incident on Saturday, cited the account of a third soldier, Nikolai Voronin, who similarly described coming under Ukrainian fire in the early hours of 2 November.

“There were lots of dead, they were lying everywhere … Their arms and legs were torn off,” Voronin told Verstka. “The shovels we used to dig our trenches were now being used to dig out the dead.”

The shelling has led to anguish in Voronezh, where a group of wives of the mobilised men recorded an angry video message on Saturday addressing the local governor.

“On the very first day, they put the draftees on the frontline. The command left the battlefield and fled,” Inna Voronina, the wife of a drafted soldier whose fate is unknown, said in the video.

The mother of another soldier can be heard saying: “They tell us over the phone that our sons are alive and healthy and even fulfilling their military duty. How the hell are they alive and healthy when they were all killed there?”

Last Friday, Putin boasted that Russia had mobilised 318,000 people into its armed forces, citing a high number of “volunteers”. He went on to invoke the popular Russian saying “we don’t leave our own behind”, claiming the phrase was “not empty words”.

But the chaotic mobilisation campaign, and the casualties that have followed since, have drawn criticism among even the most enthusiastic supporters of the war.

In a scathing statement on Telegram, Anastasia Kashevarova, a well-connected pro-war journalist, condemned Russian commanders on the ground who she said were mobilising untrained men.

“Groups of [mobilised men] are abandoned without communication, without the necessary weapons, without medicines, without the support of artillery,” she said. “Zinc coffins are already coming. You told us that there would be training, that they would not be sent to the frontline in a week. Did you lie again?”

In one video, purportedly filmed at a training centre in Kazan, the capital of Russia’s Tatarstan region, dozens of recently mobilised men are seen berating its military leadership over a lack of pay, water and food. An officer identified as Maj Gen Kirill Kulakov is seen retreating as the large crowd of enraged conscripts shout insults at him.

Perhaps sensing the growing discontent, Putin said on Monday that he planned to “personally discuss with Russians” the issues surrounding support for the mobilised. He urged local officials to “pay attention” to mobilised soldiers and their needs.

Despite the seemingly high costs, the mobilisation drive has so far not resulted in Russia gaining new ground, according to a recent report from the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based thinktank.

The report said the Russian army was “wasting the fresh supply of mobilised personnel on marginal gains” instead of massing sufficient soldiers to ensure success.

“Russian forces would likely have had more success in such offensive operations if they had waited until enough mobilised personnel had arrived to amass a force large enough to overcome Ukrainian defences,” the institute said last Thursday.

In another sign indicating poor morale and communications at the front, several pro-Kremlin journalists published an open letter reportedly from an elite Russian naval infantry unit that criticised its superiors’ decision-making after huge losses in what it called an “incomprehensible” assault on the village of Pavlivka.

Russian forces launched an offensive on Pavlivka, south-west of Donetsk, on 2 November, according to the Ukrainian military and pro-Russia officials. Four days later, the 155th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade reportedly accused its military leaders of the loss of 300 men in a letter to Oleg Kozhemyako, the governor of their home region in the far-east of Russia.

“We were thrown into an incomprehensible offensive,” the letter was quoted as saying by a number of prominent pro-war bloggers.

While the Guardian was not able to independently verify the contents of the letter, Kozhemyako appeared to acknowledge that it was genuine but said it overstated the true scale of the losses.

“We contacted the commanders. Yes, there are losses, there’s heavy fighting, but they are far from what is written in this appeal,” he said in a video statement on his Telegram channel. “I am sure that in any case the situation will be analysed and the competent authorities will give their assessment.”

‘We were completely exposed’: Russian conscripts say hundreds killed in attack | Russia | The Guardian

In the face of a Ukrainian advance, Russian forces are making the occupied city of Kherson increasingly unlivable, in apparent preparation for a major battle there that has been looming for months.

Both sides have given great weight to what happens in Kherson, the only regional capital seized by Moscow’s forces in their invasion this year; President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia reportedly refused a request from his military to pull back from the city to more defensible positions.

The Russian flag has been taken down from administrative buildings, military checkpoints have been abandoned, most of the population and the Kremlin-appointed occupation government have fled, and essential services have stopped working.

But so far there is no sign of Moscow’s military giving up on Kherson, in southern Ukraine, with Ukrainian forces saying that Russia has amassed 40,000 troops there.

Combat is raging to the north and west in the wider Kherson region, and as Ukrainian forces slowly press their offensive toward the city, they say they have reclaimed more than 100 towns and villages in the area west of the Dnipro River.

But recent events have fueled speculation about what is happening and what comes next. A Russian pullback? A pitched battle for control of the battered city? A feigned withdrawal by the Russians to lure the Ukrainians into a trap.

Amid spotty communications, unverified claims by Russian officials and limited information coming from Ukraine’s military, here is some of what is known about Kherson and why control of the city matters.

Conditions for civilians are increasingly bleak.

The people remaining in the largely depopulated region report that Russians are cutting power supplies and drinking water not only to the city of Kherson but also to towns and villages all along the western bank of the Dnipro.

“They are making a desert out of the right bank,” said Petro, a 30-year-old who lives in the area and managed to get a message out late Sunday night. Because of concerns about his safety, he communicated on the condition that his family name not be used.

“Today, they blew up the power poles, so we have no light and no water,” he added.

While state media in Russia said that Ukrainian shelling had damaged the power lines, Yaroslav Yanushevych, the exiled Ukrainian head of the Kherson regional military administration, blamed Russian troops.

The Russian forces have also placed mines around water towers in Beryslav, Mr. Yanushevych said, referring to a town less than 50 miles from Kherson city and just north of a critical dam near the front lines of the fighting.

Ukrainian officials say that Russians, who have told civilians to evacuate, fear that those left behind could feed intelligence to the advancing Ukrainian forces or sabotage the Russian military. The Kremlin-appointed governor of the region has warned that any civilians still there could be treated as hostile.

Some 250,000 people lived in the city before the war. Ukrainian activists estimate that 30,000 to 60,000 people remain, but it is impossible to know how accurate such guesses are.

Last month, the occupation authorities ordered the evacuation of civilians from the west side of the river. They sent thousands of them eastward, to territory that is held more firmly by Russia, while blocking routes into Ukrainian-controlled areas. The government installed by Moscow also departed, while looting the city, according to residents and Ukrainian officials.

Some Ukrainian officials and residents say the civilian evacuation was a pretext for forced deportations. Others say it was about clearing space for newly mobilized Russian troops.

Losing Kherson would be a major blow to the Kremlin.

When Russian forces stormed across the Antonivsky Bridge over the Dnipro River in March and into Kherson city, a major port and a former shipbuilding center, it marked their biggest success of the early days of the war. Mr. Putin hoped to use the wider Kherson region as a bridgehead for a drive farther west, to the port city of Odesa, but that effort failed.

If the Russian forces are driven back across the Dnipro, it would represent a deep symbolic and practical blow for the Kremlin, and its ambition to conquer all of southern Ukraine. The city of Kherson and surrounding country are the only Russian foothold remaining west of the river.

After Russia illegally seized the Crimean peninsula, to the south, Ukraine cut off a canal from the Dnipro that had been Crimea’s main fresh water supply. The invasion earlier this year allowed Russia to resume the flow of water, but further setbacks in Kherson could allow the Ukrainians to interrupt it again.

With his refusal so far to retreat, Mr. Putin has signaled the prestige and strategic value he attaches to the region. Last month, his government said it had annexed the four Ukrainian regions, including Kherson — though his troops did not control the entirety of any of them — in a move that was widely denounced as illegal.

Ukraine has isolated Russian forces in Kherson.

Since late summer, Ukrainian forces armed with long-range Western artillery have waged a determined campaign to isolate Russian forces west of the river, bombarding the bridges that Moscow used to resupply and reinforce them. At the same time, Ukrainian troops have made a grueling advance on Russian positions.

Russians have relied on pontoon bridges and boats, which have also been shelled. The only remaining river crossing they hold is the Kakhovka dam, more than 30 miles northeast of the city, which has become a major supply route.

Each side has accused the other of planning to sabotage the dam, which could have catastrophic consequences. Much of the terrain downstream, including parts of the city of Kherson, could be flooded. And it could cause a drop in the level of the reservoir behind the dam — the source of critical cooling water for the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, Europe’s largest.

The Kherson region’s wide-open fields, crisscrossed by irrigation canals that make for excellent defensive positions, have slowed the Ukrainian approach, and the arrival of fall has turned much of the ground to mud. Analysts say that Russia has dispatched some of its most seasoned fighters to the region and stockpiled ammunition and other supplies there.

Both sides have signaled a brutal urban battle for Kherson.

Ukraine’s military says that, despite the withdrawal of checkpoints, there is no evidence of a withdrawal of Russian forces. Both sides have issued public statements signaling a battle ahead.

If Moscow chooses to defend the city, military experts say it could be a bloody, street-by-street battle. Ukrainian forces are still far from the city limits, reportedly facing stiff resistance.

A pro-Russian proxy leader in Kherson said over the weekend that Ukraine was massing artillery, planes and helicopters in preparation for the next stage of its assault on the region. Top officials in Kyiv have said that Moscow might be trying to create the illusion that its forces are leaving Kherson to draw Ukrainians into a fight.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/07/w...explainer.html

Sounds like something Russia would do. Scourced earth defense worked pretty good in WW2.

Originally Posted by Norton

Sounds like something Russia would do. Scourced earth defense worked pretty good in WW2.

Cowards.

I would like you to give me a sound analysis @norton I respect you.

My question to you is How do you see things on the front? I do not care about the US election. It will not matter as the GOP is for the moment controlled by somewhat rational minds.

Adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister shares footage of Russian draftees taken captive in Luhansk region

Anton Herashchenko, adviser to the Ukrainian interior minister, and Ukrainian journalist Andriy Tsaplienko posted in their Telegram channels a video which claims to show captured Russian draftees.


According to Herashchenko, the soldiers surrendered to the 92nd brigade near Svatove, Luhansk region. The official claims that many of the captives are from Moscow and the Moscow region.


The men in the video introduce themselves as servicemen of the 9th regiment. The video shows 21 people, their hands and heads are tied with yellow scotch tape. The men speak almost simultaneously and say that they were sent to the frontlines one month after the draft.


According to them, the men were thrown into wet tranches, they did not eat or drink for three days, and could not contact their families and friends. One of the draftees adds that “the commanders fled first” after shelling began. “We were left to get slaughtered,” the video shows them saying.


“It’s friendly fire,” says one of the men. “We saw it with our own eyes, and they are just lying to us there.”


“Don’t go to this war, it’s not your war or a war at all,” one other man adds.


Earlier, Mediazona reported that draftee troops were sent to the frontlines near Svatove without command or the necessary equipment.

Новая газета Европа

Telegram: Contact @Pravda_Gerashchenko

Telegram: Contact @Tsaplienko

Platoon on the run. 13 Russians recruits’ grotesque journey to Ukraine and back

Russian defense minister Shoigu declares retreat from Kherson. He does not look happy.

Russia's military has likely lost half its tanks in Ukraine and will be weaker than it was before the war, Pentagon says


Russia has likely lost half of its main battle tanks while fighting in Ukraine, a senior US defense official said Tuesday, adding that the Russian military will end up being weaker than it was before the war began.

Colin Kahl, the undersecretary of defense for policy, told reporters this week that Russian President Vladimir Putin has "suffered a massive strategic failure" during his ongoing and unprovoked war in Ukraine.

Highlighting Putin's military setbacks, Kahl said that Russian forces have "probably lost half of their main battle tanks" and tens of thousands of troops in Ukraine, according to a Department of Defense report published Wednesday.

Kahl did not specify exactly how many tanks the Pentagon estimates Russia has lost, but according to open-source intelligence analysis by Oryx, at least 1,450 Russian tanks have been destroyed, captured, abandoned, or damaged over the course of the war. Notably, Russian troops fleeing Ukrainian battlefield advances have left behind modern T-90 tanks that Moscow considers to be among the most advanced in its arsenal.

Russia has, in turn, been forced to pull old and obsolete tanks from storage — like the Soviet-era T-62 main battle tank. This type of tank is decades old, can even be seen in some museums, and has long since been replaced by newer, more capable systems.

In addition to armor losses, Russian forces have also lost mountains of other high-value and heavy weaponry, much of which. like Russian tanks, has been repurposed by Ukraine even as it continues to enjoy considerable security assistance and military aid from Western countries.

It's also unclear exactly how many casualties Russia has sustained in Ukraine, but losses are believed to be substantial.

No updated casualty figures have been provided since the Pentagon reported in August that as many as 80,000 Russian troops had been killed or wounded in Ukraine. That figure was presented before Ukrainian forces launched two counteroffensives along the war's northeastern and southern fronts, moves which have seen Russian lines shatter and Kyiv liberate thousands of square miles of territory over the last two months.

Among the Russian war dead have been Russian conscripts and reservists who were recently rushed to the battlefield to reinforce crumbling Russian lines and stem Russian losses.

"Russia will emerge from this war weaker than it went in," Kahl said in reflection on Putin's overall war efforts in Ukraine.

In the latest battlefield humiliation, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on Wednesday ordered his forces to retreat in the southern city of Kherson, the first major city and only regional capital that Moscow managed to capture after it invaded in late February. As Ukrainian forces continued to advance toward the city, a full Russian withdrawal would mark a significant victory for Kyiv.

"I don't know what winning looks like," Kahl said during his remarks this week. "But I do know that Russia will not have achieved the objectives that Vladimir Putin set out. And that's pretty much a guarantee."

https://www.businessinsider.com/puti...on-2022-11?amp

KYIV, Ukraine — The Kremlin on Wednesday announced a retreat of Russian forces from the strategically important city of Kherson in southern Ukraine, a concession to military reality eight months after capturing the area, and one of the most significant reversals of President Vladimir V. Putin’s war effort.

The withdrawal order came from Russia’s defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, in a meeting with top military leaders that was broadcast on Russian state television, after Gen. Sergei V. Surovikin, Moscow’s commander in Ukraine, explained that heavy shelling by advancing Ukrainian forces had made the Russian position west of the Dnipro River, where Kherson is, untenable.

“Go ahead with the pullout of troops and take all measures to ensure safe transfer of troops, weapons and equipment to the other bank of the Dnipro River,” Mr. Shoigu said.

Mr. Putin was not present at the meeting, distancing him from both an embarrassing defeat and a decision to retreat that, Kremlin analysts say, only he could have made.

By day’s end there was strong evidence that Russians were withdrawing from the territory they held west of the river, Ukrainian officials said, as Ukrainian soldiers entered some frontline villages that had been under Russian control in the morning.

Wary of a possible ruse meant to lure Ukrainian troops into a trap, the officials cautioned that they were not yet sure about the status of Russian forces within the city, but as the day went on they grew more confident that the pullback was real.

“We have signs they are pulling out,” moving heavy equipment first and then infantry, said Roman Kostenko, a Ukrainian army colonel and chairman of the defense and intelligence committee in Parliament. “They blew up bridges that would have allowed our forces to advance. We see them leaving population centers, but in some they leave soldiers behind to cover their movements.”

The announced retreat is one of the most significant setbacks for Russia in the war Mr. Putin started in February. Kherson, an important port and industrial city seized during the early days of the war, has been a strategic and symbolic prize of the invasion — the only regional capital Russia captured. It gave Moscow an important foothold west of the Dnipro, from where it expanded and which it hoped to use as a base to push farther west, all the way to the critical port city of Odesa.

News of the withdrawal drew anguished and angry responses from some prominent Russian hawks, while others described it as a sensible, tactical retreat to a more defensible front.

“The decision is shocking to thousands and millions of people who are fighting for Russia, dying for Russia, believe in Russia and share the beliefs of the Russian world,” wrote Yuri Kotyonok, an influential military blogger.

Boris Rozhin, a Russian military analyst, called the retreat the Russian Federation’s “most serious military defeat since 1991,” when it formed. In a Telegram post, he wrote, “If there won’t be any upcoming successes with major towns captured and no advancement during the winter offensive, the series of military setbacks would accumulate a much greater internal discontent than sanctions.”

But Tatiana Stanovaya, a Russian analyst who studies Mr. Putin for her political analysis firm R.Politik, said in a phone interview: “This just confirms, in my view, how pragmatic Putin is. He’s not as crazy as we thought.”

The impact of the Russian move on any potential peace talks was unclear. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and his top aides conveyed this week that, if anything, their position has hardened — that Russia must first leave Ukraine completely, and that it must pay war reparations — and that, in any case, Moscow isn’t interested in negotiations.

President Biden said at a White House news conference on Wednesday, “It remains to be seen whether Ukraine is willing to compromise.” He later insisted that it was up to the Ukrainians whether to enter talks or make concessions.

“They’re going to both lick their wounds, decide what they’re going to do over the winter and decide whether or not they’re going to compromise,” he said.

On Kherson, Mr. Biden said he had expected a Russian retreat. “It’s evidence of the fact that they have some real problems, the Russian military,” he said.

Other U.S. officials said it was not entirely clear that Moscow was abandoning the west bank of the Dnipro, and might not be clear for a few days. But the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to address the matter publicly, said it would make sense to withdraw troops that were increasingly cut off, preserving them to fight another day.

Mr. Shoigu’s evidently choreographed meeting, where both he and General Surovikin said they were motivated by concern for the troops, appeared aimed at softening the blow for a domestic audience. Russians have seen increasing reports of a badly managed war, a chaotic draft that prompted widespread protests, heavy casualties, and troops lacking training and equipment who were used as cannon fodder. At the same time, pro-war commenters have criticized the Kremlin for not waging a more aggressive, brutal fight.

The occupation forces had telegraphed a possible pullback for weeks, making statements about the difficult position of troops in Kherson and ordering both the Kremlin-appointed regional government and the remaining civilians to flee eastward. The Ukrainian military was skeptical, reporting just days ago that 40,000 Russian troops were west of the river, digging in to fight for the city.

Moscow’s apparent decision to pull back allows an orderly withdrawal rather than the kind of sudden collapse and panicked retreat its forces endured from the northeastern Kharkiv region in September, leaving behind a treasure trove of weapons and other equipment that the Ukrainians could use.

“There is a lot of joy in the media space today, and it is clear why, but our emotions must be restrained — always during war,” Mr. Zelensky said Wednesday in his nightly address. He added, “When you are fighting, you must understand that every step is always resistance from the enemy, it is always the loss of the lives of our heroes.”

Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Mr. Zelensky, said retreat was less a choice for the Russians than an inevitability, as Ukraine’s forces “methodically gnawed through the enemy’s defenses.”

The news that Russia was withdrawing was greeted with cautious jubilation by some local residents, who have suffered under harsh Russian rule with dwindling food, electricity and water. In Kherson, Valentyn, 50, said in a text message exchange that he awoke Wednesday to booming explosions — nothing unusual — but then “it became eerily quiet.”

“Russians are escaping; the city is almost empty,” said Valentyn, who asked that his last name be withheld for his safety. “In many places there’s no light and no water.”

He added: “The atmosphere is tense, we stay at home and wait. For our forces to enter.”

Dudchany, a village north of the city, “was divided by the front line” for a month, said Alla Torchanska, the village leader. Caught in the combat zone, residents were harassed by Russian troops who, she said, “would come every now and then, detain and interrogate people, check their phones, and take away the valuable things.”

“Today,” Ms. Torchanska said, “the Ukrainian forces finally took the entire village under their control. It’s such a blessing. Everyone feels festive.”

The grinding Ukrainian offensive has whittled down the Russian-held pocket west of the Dnipro, farm by farm and town by town, closing in on the largely evacuated city and destroying bridges the Russians used to reinforce and resupply their troops. Western intelligence officials have said that Mr. Putin rejected earlier requests by his military to abandon the city.

But people who know Mr. Putin say he still believes he can win a war he has cast as a broader conflict with the United States and its allies, convinced that the West and Ukraine will be unwilling or unable to pay the price for as long as Russia will.

The deputy head of the Russian occupation government in the broader Kherson region, Kyrylo Stremousov, who had been outspoken about Russia’s deteriorating military situation, died in a car accident, the regional chief, Volodymyr Saldo, said on Wednesday.

Some Ukrainians remained cautious in their assessment of Russian actions. Residents and Ukrainian officials have reported Russian soldiers changing into civilian clothes and taking over homes in Kherson city and the surrounding towns and villages, possible signs of planned ambushes. Russians have laid mines and destroyed roads to slow advancing Ukrainian forces.

“We don’t know how far we will move tomorrow,” said Colonel Kostenko, the Ukrainian lawmaker.

Ukrainian officials have also warned that if the Russians do abandon Kherson, they could then devastate it with artillery from across the river, or with flooding by breaching the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam upstream. Russians and Ukrainians have accused each other of plotting to attack the dam, the last road link Russians have across the Dnipro.

Retaking the west bank of the Dnipro could allow Ukrainian forces to interrupt the primary source of fresh water for the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula, putting them within artillery range of a canal linking the river to the peninsula. Ukraine had cut the flow of water after Russia’s illegal seizure of Crimea in 2014, and the Russians’ offensive earlier this year allowed them to restart it.

nytimes.com

Why would they announce such a thing? Hope it is not a trick.

Originally Posted by misskit

Why would they announce such a thing? Hope it is not a trick.

There is no way the can hide it, so they might as well. They have already been retreating for weeks.

Originally Posted by Takeovers

Russian defense minister Shoigu declares retreat from Kherson. He does not look happy.

Russia's priorities are their forces and civilians . . . what a hypocritical piece of shit. Throwing untrained conscripts to the front line without weapons and pounding cities with artillery.

Russians . . .

Retreating from the capital of one its new Republics be almost like yielding Paris to the Alegerians, oh wait a moment