It's looking grim for Team Annexation:
Russia no longer has full control of any of the four provinces of Ukraine it says it annexed last week after Ukrainian troops advanced dozens of kilometres in Kherson province in the south of the country and made additional gains in the east.
On Monday, the Russian military acknowledged that Kyiv’s forces had broken through in the Kherson region. It said the Ukrainian army and its “superior tank units” had managed to “penetrate the depths of our defence” around the villages of Zoltaya Balka and Alexsandrovka.
The [Russian] Ministry of Defence spokesperson Igor Konashenkov said Russian troops had occupied what he called a “pre-prepared defensive line”. They continued to “inflict massive fire damage” on Ukrainian forces, he claimed.
His comments are an admission that Ukraine’s southern counter-offensive is dramatically gaining pace, two months after it began. Ukrainian brigades appear to have achieved their biggest breakthrough in the region since the war started, bursting through the frontline and advancing rapidly along the Dnieper River.
The Ukrainian military’s southern command said forces in the south destroyed 31 Russian tanks and one multiple rocket launcher, without providing details of where the fighting occurred.
Russian sources acknowledged that the Ukrainian tank offensive had moved along the river’s west bank, recapturing a number of villages along the way, and threatening the supply lines for thousands of marooned Russian troops.In a sign of turbulence inside Russia’s army command, the head of the western military district was reportedly sacked on Monday in the wake of the recent defeats.
The news outlet RBC said Col-Gen Alexander Zhuravlyov had been fired. His district is one of five that make up Russia’s armed forces. The move follows criticism over the weekend by Chechnya’s president, Ramzan Kadyrov, of Valery Gerasimov, Putin’s chief of the general staff, over the loss of Lyman.
“This is obviously related to the war blunders, which are becoming harder to hide. The Kremlin is looking for scapegoats,” said a former Russian defence ministry official who has worked with Zhuravlyov. “The pressure on the commander of the Russian armed forces, Valery Gerasimov, will only increase,” the former defence ministry official added.
But wait, there's MORE!:
Russia's forces occupying Ukraine’s southern Black Sea region of Kherson have suffered serious territorial losses to Kyiv’s troops over recent days, maps published by Moscow's defence ministry showed.
The ministry’s daily video briefing made no mention of any pullbacks on Tuesday, but the maps included showed that Russian forces were no longer in control of the village of Dudchany on the west bank of the river Dnieper, where Ukraine’s forces have been pushing to reclaim territory captured at the start of Moscow’s offensive.
In the northeastern Kharkiv region, defence ministry maps showed that Russian forces have left positions on the west bank of the Oskil River. They appeared to have retreated some 20km (12.4 miles) to the east, as far as the border of Luhansk province, in the aftermath this month of a counteroffensive by Kyiv’s army.
That's all Russian sources admitting that the Russian Army is getting its ass kicked all the way back to actual Russia, Internet Field Marshalls. Hint to the hardcore Putards: this was the military breakthrough news you've been breathlessly waiting for since February. Except it's going in the wrong direction. Bummer, huh?
Ukraine has regained more territory in one month than Russia could capture in five. This doesn't bode well for the competence or success of any future Russian operations short of Canned Sunshine deployment.
Maybe the Russians are going to wait until the Ukes have totally recaptured all Ukrainian territory before they spring their Sooper Sekrit Counter-Offensive.
Probably by zooming in from behind on flying unicorns, right?
The war is far from over. Things may shift again. But it hasn't been a very good week for those Rootin' For Putin.
How sad they must be.
Sounds like globohomo gonna get their war escalation of distraction from the real under pinnings of the structural problems in the world.
ReplyDeleteProbably not so much. It's generally about 12 minutes in on most newscasts, so it's not exactly crushing the charts.
ReplyDeleteGas prices and inflation always come in higher.
The open question is Putin: sudden retirement, or nuclear revenge-gasm.
Victory looks like it's off the table for him permanently (like we told people in March), unless things turn around quickly.
I'm just going to print irrelevant bullshit and piss my pants here, because no matter how much I keep hoping contrary to all reality Vlad will win, it keeps turning to shit, just like Aesop said it would, damn him to hell! It couldn't possibly because I've been wrong about everything for six months, and have my head so far up my ass I can see out my nostrils! It has to be because he sucks, and I'm right! I'm right! I'm right! And that's why I'm so right, I'm too chickenshit to even sign my own screeds! Neener! Neener! Pthhhhhbbbbbtttttt!
ReplyDeleteWRSA has some new articles of fanboys claiming Russia is baiting Ukrainian troops (which are supposedly being slaughtered in banzai-style charges) into a great encirclement because “da manoover warfare is da best and da Russians are da masters of manoover and deception!”
ReplyDeleteIt’s like they’ve not left the 1970s, mentally.
If this Ukrainian (read American Proxy Army) assault ends up in a new Russian caldron and shot to hell, will you admit to being wrong Aesop?
ReplyDeleteIt happened before with other "Victorious Ukrainian attacks".
Personally, I suspect the only canned sunshine released will be from an American B61 dial a nuke and much media screaming the Russians did it.
All Putin needs to do is wait for winter and the lack of energy for Europe's people to have heat and electricity (As natural gas generators are their prime electricity system) and NATO and the EU will self-destruct.
I wonder how Europe failing will affect our Country? Got any Geo-Political-Economic wisdom to share here Aesop?
AH SO! Evil Putin destroyed His only way to stop that carnage. Bad Man do Bad things to pipeline. Chuckles Sovietly as the pen of Aesop whispers.
Aesop the main threat to our country is in the District of Criminals. Whatever they sent past the grifters to Ukraine keeps the grift gravy train going.
Being wrong about what?
ReplyDeleteRussia getting their asses kicked? Nope.
Russia pulling off a competent counter-attack? Sure, but you might note I already admitted that bare possibility in the OP, so...
Russia not being able to win this conventionally, ever? Nope.
Putin making the most epic strategic miscalculation in 50 years? Not a chance.
Putin setting back Russian prestige and acceptance by the rest of the world at least a century, if not permanently? No way in Hell.
I hope you're right about no Russian Canned Sunshine deployment, but you're evidently unaware that literally every single nuke blast leaves isotopes behind that are as individual as fingerprints, and any release of nuclear weapons would be traceable to a source in under 24 hours, with greater certainty than DNA evidence, thus making the "pop a B61 and blame Putin" hypothesis an impossible swamp fever dream.
I also hope Putin sits back and waits. At the current wait, he'll be entirely back inside Russia, with nothing to show for this but mounds of Russian corpses, and losing all seized assets from the beginning of the war being given in international courts as reparations to rebuild Ukraine. He'll either spend the rest of his career under house arrest somewhere far from Moscow, or in seclusion as an international pariah, unless one of his underlings uses his brains for a piece of modern impressionist performance art on one of the Kremlin's walls just behind his chair.
Recessions usually spread worldwide, and our financial house of cards was shaly even without Putin's Ukraine blunder. China's eating shit right now, and it promises to be world-breaking by itself before it bottoms out.
Putin shot himself in both feet for 7 solid months before the pipeline incidents. So it's not like him doing it again would be in any way uncharacteristic.
The main threat to our country has always been the District of Criminals. Lincoln knew that in the 1860s. The Creature From Jekyll Island was hatched even before WWI. Progressivism was a disaster when International Socialism was still in diapers. All of that's true, and always has been so, but none of it negates that Putin's an evil megalomaniacal dick-tater asshole with delusions of Soviet grandeur, and the people of Ukraine deserve a fair chance to kick him in the balls until he understands what a bad idea that is, particularly with countries that don't belong to you.
QED
The only quibble I have is that between the global arms trade and buying/ selling of nuclear material (many Russian weapons were disassembled and the material used for reactors), it is entirely possible that the US has nuclear weapons or material whose isotopes match Soviet or other foreign production.
DeleteYou are leaving in a dream world. I despise Putin but if you think they will be defeated check out their two best Generals January and February.
ReplyDeleteHow did that work out for them when they attacked this February?
ReplyDeleteWhat about in January and February of 1918?
Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
7:56, damn you are stupid, you really think that Ukrainians, fighting in Ukraine are unprepared for a Ukrainian winter? This isn't frogs going to Moscow, this is folks on their own home turf pushing out Russians who some how "misplaced" aka sold on the black market, all their winter gear.
ReplyDeleteIt's rather exasperating how many people are stuck in the binary world view, being my enemy's enemy does not make you my friend.
^ This.
DeleteThe enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy. Nothing more, nothing less, and certainly not my friend.
Isolationist patriots had a stunning opportunity to side with Ukrainian nationalists and make preparedness and local defense forces mainstream.
ReplyDeleteThere was even a traditional enemy for the older crew: a KGB tyrant presiding over an army flying the hammer and sickle, infamous for gay rape in peace and straight rape in war, attempting to expand a decaying empire into the peaceful West with tanks to stave off economic collapse.
Instead many permanently discredited themselves. Politically at first, but they doubled down on denying physical realities. What a waste. They disqualified their movement in a way the hard left never could.
That sums it up in a nutshell.
ReplyDeleteI was kind of shocked at the outset, but it just underlies most people aren't stupid, they're just unlucky at thinking.
I’m long Russia on this. Russia isn’t fighting Ukies, it’s fighting NATO.
ReplyDeleteI’m not pro-Putin, I’m anti-GloboHomo and anything or anyone that puts a stick in the neo-cons spokes. A Russian defeat is not in the best interests of the average American.
Even if you are right about Russia militarily in the context of Ukraine (who can collectively GFT) Aesop, and I do not think you are, you don’t seem to connect the dots on how truly fucked the US is if the DS doesn’t suffer some significant setbacks even they cannot hide.
This isn’t sports ball; current events are devolving into the existential for all the big players.
Anon @10:13:
ReplyDeleteYES! YES, YES, YES, YES!
Good freaking God, I am so astounded and bemused and flabbergasted and disgusted with the entire dissident right over this. It's to the point that NeverTrumpers are nearly the only ones saying anything sensible on the topic! Donald Trump Jr. the other day going on about "two corrupt countries at war, why should we care" - GOOD GOD YOU DUMBASS, first of all, Russians torturing people in cellars are not morally equivalent to the people being tortured, second, grow up and think about longer-range consequences, and third, just because Ukraine was one of the circumstances that got your dad in trouble is not Ukraine's fault, it's your dad's complete inability to identify personnel he could rely on! Don't repeat the Bush thing of taking out family resentments on a country of 40 million people!
How infantile and unprepared for the big leagues is this man, to say a thing like that? People applauded THIS guy and suggested him for 2028?
The past 6 months have been the most revelatory and discrediting thing about the American right wing in decades, and simultaneously one of the most demoralizing. THIS movement is going to take control of the government and set it back on a sane and even keel? THIS movement is going to produce wise and far-sighted thinkers to steer the ship of state? THESE people, who are so wedded to their domestic resentments they'd gladly condemn 40 million people to slaughter and misery if given the chance (and thank God and the Democratic corruptocrats they don't have it), are the ones claiming moral superiority? THESE people, who can't recognize or admit battlefield realities screaming them in the face, are the ones who perceive the true reality of things and whose planning should totally be trusted, bro?
"Oh no, nuclear threats! Let's pre-emptively surrender!" Did you idiots learn NOTHING from the Cold War?
This is the right wing as defined by Q.
What is absolutely clear as a result of this is that the right wing - the radical right, the non-Country Club Republican right - is absolutely unprepared and incapable when it comes to exercising power and implementing responsible governance at any level outside the local municipality - and even that much remains to be proven.
I don't know what can be done to correct this, but it's going to be a generational work at least, and it has to be done if the correction to trannyism and immivasion is to avoid entirely new and far stupider catastrophes.
Here's what gets me. It's no so much that the people who are supposed to be American patriots are turning into Quislings by sucking up to a foreign tyrant- it's that they're playing Quisling to an incompetent foreign tyrant.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations, you have become the dupes, useful idiots, and fellow travelers of a new Stalin, but one who can't even get that right. Hope the mess of pottage is worth it.
Not being a military type, I wonder -- is RU's officer corps that fd'up??
ReplyDeleteSure we have given UA some nice Mil Tech stuff, but still the bulk of their armed forces are RU derived equipment (ex WARSAW Pact). Hell UA appears to be rotating captured RU gear to UA forces nearly as fast as they patch it up and send it up. With a near parity in utility that leaves competence as the primary factor.
It's difficult to make a correct assessment of the situation, given the information warfare being performed by both sides.
ReplyDeleteIt does seem clear that Vlad struck a weak blow with too few men, and it isn't playing out how he wanted. You usually don't go firing generals if you're winning. It also seems pretty clear that Russian troops and equipment haven't performed well. Their armour, in particular seems to have suffered grievous losses against western ATGMs.
So at the moment the Russians appear to be on the back foot. The two big factors now IMHO are the addition of a substantial number of Russian reserves, and the onset of winter. Yeah, the Ukes aren't the Wehrmacht in 1941, but no matter how much winter gear you have, soldiering in the field through that winter will not be easy for either side.
I've seen the pics of the grey haired Russian reservists, but I think the addition of those reserves to the fight will enable them to stabilise their lines in the next few weeks, and then both sides will hunker down into a fairly static WWI situation over winter, with lots of people being killed by artillery.
That will keep happening while Vlad faces internal dissent at home, and the EU face a winter (predicted to be harsh) without adequate fuel supplies. Social unrest is likely on both sides, but Vlad will do better on that front, as long as he stays in control.
Ultimately I think after much gritting of teeth, there will be some sort of cease fire negotiated, with the Russians ending up with some slight advantage, at enormous cost to them economically and politically, with Ukraine pretty much shattered and with Western Europe fundamentally divided and weakened. Germany, in particular, looks like its fucked, and honestly, that's a good thing.
We live in interesting times.
Western gear is good, better than Russian gear, but not that good. Which leaves the only possible answer being that Russia flat-out sucks at this.
ReplyDeleteTheir artillery is "Oh, shit, missed again!", while the Ukes are dropping GPS rounds on individual tanks for one-shot kills. The Russian air farce is MIA; they're like seagulls: they swoop in, squall and squak, shit on a couple of people, and then fly away. And there's absolutely no co-ordination between arms. They're fighting like a WWI army, head-up-the-ass, and they're getting creamed because of breakthrough after breakthrough.
I thought the Ukes might be spent after two weeks of offensive operations, but two weeks after that, and they're kicking more ass now than they did in the first week. They may capture the equivalent of a rump army corps, cut off, out of supplies, encircled, and surrendering in hordes.
And with any luck, those Russian POWs will be kept at camps near important targets, to dissuade anyone from popping a tactical nuke on them.
The Russians may get a pause, but not until Ukrainian forces stop shoving them up their own asses, and let them consolidate. Which, to date, they show no signs of letting Vlad's forces do.
Couple that with half the would-be Russian conscripts rioting to the Russian version of "Hell, no! We won't go!", and the other half fleeing Russia by train, car, bicycle, ox cart, or boot leather at warp speed, and I don't think Vlad even gets his planned-for 300K warm bodies. What he does get is being trundled, Stalingrad-style, straight off the trains and into the front lines, minus equipment, and that never goes as well IRL as it does on paper.
General Winter tends to frown on those with poor logistics.
ReplyDeleteAlso, adding more untrained, unmotivated, and unequipped cannon fodder to the pile frequently doesn't help, and may make things worse. The 1917 Eastern Front is the perfect example of that
Read that the Ukrainian ammo shortage was gone, since they had overrun so many Russian supplies. Yikes!
ReplyDeleteAs for fighting in winter just look at what happened in the Finnish Winter War 1939-40. Fighting sucks generally but especially in the winter but it can be done if one is trained for it.
ReplyDeleteShrugh ...
Next "problem".