I've seen videos of Ukrainian soldiers surrendering to Russian troops. Many Ukrainians in the region are Russian and voted to join Russia. They asked Putin for help and protection. Ukraine is deep state central.
I personally think you're right that Kharkov city is not the real target, and the small-scale attack in the Kharkov oblast appears to be drawing resources away from Chasov Yar and Krinky, which is going to help Russia's efforts in those areas.
Yes. More evidence is that this attack is through the low ground. There are two high ridges that run all the way to Kharkov to the west of the invasion route which would need to be taken to seriously threaten it which they have avoided. I'm sure those ridges are where the vast majority of Ukrainian fortifications were. I think the Russians are probably thrilled the plan worked and Ukraine was forced by the optics/politics to send reserves and units scrounged from other fronts to stop the capture of non-strategic towns.
*edit: Russia is attacking down a ridgeline now but it deadends before the town of Lyptsi down into a valley that is still 20km from Kharkov. the two ridgelines I mentioned that are to the west of the Russian attack run all the way to Kharkov and overlook the town.
Being somewhat closer to the realist rather than the ideological group of western analysts I don't think we can discount the fact that people could be saying the goal is capturing Kharkiv so they can then say Russia has been defeated when it doesn't happen. After hearing Blinken and Biden and Sullivan say they already defeated Russia because Russia intended to conquer Ukraine when they invaded with just 50,000 combat troops in February (according to the CIA the equivelant of just 69 BTGs - with another 140,000 in support and service troops supplying and maintaining that combat force). At least Blinken and Sullivan must know that claim is absurd. But it serves a vital ideological purpose.
P.S. (as you no doubt now when America invaded Iraq, which was already a half dead corpse, in 2003 we brought ~165,000 in combat forces and had a total army size of 560,000)
There are also complaints in Ukrainian Telegram channels that planned Kharkov Oblast defensive works were simply not built. This has actually made the BBC (!):
"The Russians simply walked in, Ukrainian troops in Kharkiv tell BBC"
Denys Yaroslavskyi is angry... [he] wants to know what happened to Ukraine’s defences.
He shows me video from a drone feed taken a few days ago of small columns of Russian troops simply walking across the border, unopposed.
He says officials had claimed that defences were being built at huge cost, but in his view, those defences simply weren’t there. “Either it was an act of negligence, or corruption. It wasn’t a failure. It was a betrayal”.
$ went to pouring cement for foundations of villas built on the French Riviera and other exotic escapes. Massive grift of US taxpayers' $ will not stop...you are looking at the most corrupt (and the poorest) country on the continent.
New info regarding the trench grift :
Multi-million contracts for the construction of fortifications, for which they spent a total of 7 billion hryvnias there, were transferred by the Kharkiv OVA to front companies of avatars.
It so happened that the department of the Kharkiv OVA for defense purchases chose newly registered no-name firms and FOPs. Moreover, the owners of these firms do not resemble successful businessmen and businesswomen-they have dozens of court cases, from whiskey theft to domestic violence against their husband and mother, some of them are deprived of parental rights and have had enforcement proceedings for loans in banks.
Another interesting detail-it seems that these beneficiaries do not even know that they are millionaires. After all, they continue to work in shifts" in the fields " and factories.
I hope they just cut off Kharkov—the grift on weapons is high, but the possibilities of making a few $$ on massive reconstruction jobs can be more widespread—and go on for years.
To be fair, statistics on Ukrainian incomes and poverty come from official tax numbers.
Pro-tip - nobody in Ukraine, and certainly not the rich, actually pays taxes. That dude paid cash for his Maybach and his tax statement says he is on Ukrainian minimum wage.
Wildly corrupt? A friend tells me that there might be some corruption in Ukraine. And yes, the first thing an Ukrainian government official does with that money is get it offshore.
I saw that video but it was portrayed as Ukrainians surrendering which seemed slightly more likely. It's hard to believe that any group of 30 soldiers on either side would walk across a field together on an active front within 50km of the fighting. I've never seen anyone walk into a battle in a rural setting they always come mounted. Maybe it was taken by a drone deep inside Russia or Ukraine.
Agree with your comment that the goal is strategic level attrition. With that n mind there is no reason to fight in Kharkov. If the Russians are truly rotating in new units to gain experience, as seems likely, then over time their forces will both get larger and more and more experienced. Eventually you could even see them bypass and isolate bigger cities -which yes, takes immense numbers of troops, but that could be one long term goal. It would certainly enable them to fight more in the open, which they'd far prefer.
That's an interesting theory that maybe NATO was behind the potential Coup - change in leadership makes it easier to blame the old leader and force a peace treaty. Reminds me of the old Soviet joke about the deposed leader giving the new leader two letters and he says that when the first crisis hits the new leader should open the first letter and then when the second one hits, open the second. Sure enough, a crisis arises and the new leader opens the first letter which says "blame everything on me." So he does this and when the second crisis hits he opens the second letter and it says "write two letters."
My impression recently - I guess since the fall of Avdiivka - is that the rather sclerotic old Russian command is starting to be a bit more creative in tactical and strategic moves at various levels.
After the failure of the initial blitzkrieg, both sides largely settled into a slow game of incremental and decremental attrition, house by house, street by street, trench by trench, field by field.
Russia was of course saved by Surovikin's major defensive line in 2023 (after playing both sides in the Wagner uprising, where is he now?).
Then after Avdiivka Russia seems to have been shaping their attack better by swift penetration and flanking, though that might have become easier against an army with failing numbers, matériel and morale.
But for me the great irony of the still unclear Northern strategy over the last week is that a stronger, more flexible Ukraine had wrongfooted Russia in Kharkiv oblast in September 2022, when Russia (not as now, Ukraine) was focused elsewhere.
I think you are about right, although I think the Russian way of war is different than how it is done in the US and Europe generally speaking. In the early part of the war the Russians were not coordinating their operations or their fires effectively and were not working with hard intel on the enemy. All that is now changed, although the level of coordination is not (at least on paper) at the level the US does it. They were also not only naive but contemptuous about the Ukrainians. Now they know better.
Actually the initial months brought Zelensky to the Turkey pow-wow where peace negotiations were shot down by Biden via his poodle BoJo. I think the RUssians miscalculated that sane minds were in charge of western foreign policy!
I meant to add that the aim of the initial blitz seemed to precipitate a diplomatic settlement' the rapid advance covered much territory up to the gates of Kiev. The advance was conditioned by the notion that this advance was against "brotherly people", fellow slavs, and casualties were to be minimized where possible. That it succeeded was evidenced by the talks in Turkey. That is was based on faulty intelligence which mis-read the degree to which Ukrainian sentiment would assist the capitulation is not in dispute.
Remember however that the Russians did not keep their intel apparatii in tact in the former republics with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Ukraine was considered to be in the russian family (as was Belarus) which precluded espionage activities on any scale as evidenced by the surprise of Maidan jumpers and injection of neo-nazis and mercs in the February coup. The CIA wasted no time since the first failed attempt in 2004 (Orange Revolution) and built a substantial network which only grew. Did the Russians make mistakes in the early months? Yes. Did they learn from them? Yes. Are their motives publicized? Yes. Are they attaining their welf-defined objectives? Seemingly so. Are we listening? ...well, some of us are such as Mr. Bryen but most inside the beltway seemly not.
What I find amazing is the apparent failure of the US IC to inform... Larry Johnson suggests that assessments are not provided to the WH deciders (nor wanted) because the decisions are based on dogma (hopium)! The sanctions blowback and Russia's ability to stand up an unrivaled war machine are the most glaring failures that come to the forefront.
"After the failure of the initial blitzkrieg" I see no evidence it was blitzkrieg. You don't send a half dozen understrength brigades to conquer a nation of 40 million that is supplied by NATO that is the size of Texas. We sent 165,000 combat troops in to Iraq in 2003 backed by an army of a total strength of 560,000. I think the evidence makes clear the attack was designed strictly to topple the government or bring it back to negotiations to implement minsk 3 - and in the latter it succeeded. By the end of March there was a preliminary peace agreement under which the status of Crimea and the Donbas and Ukraine neutrality was already agreed and all they were discussing to finalize it was the amount of forces the military of Ukraine was allowed to keep in their standing army. Of course that's when Boris Johnson arrived to brow beat Zelensky that the EU and NATO and the US would not guarantee Ukraine's status and territorial integrity as neutral nation under that agreement but they would fund a war until every last Ukrainian soldier was underground or Russia was defeated. Perhaps their were other threats, the Panama Papers showed that Zelensky has vast wealth stored off shore on banks America has access to. He'd also had his life credibly threatened by the Ukrainian Ultras a half dozen times before the war even started for being to conciliatory to Russia over Minsk. Half a dozen world leaders from Turkey, Israel, the EU, and officials in Ukraine itself have admitted this. So peace was cancelled.
It was the largest miltary operation in Europe since WW2, the largest Russsian operation since Berlin 1945.
When CNN arrived at Kyiv airport on 24 February and asked guards if the rumours of a Russian attack had any basis, a guard calmly said: We are Russian.
Six days later, the land corridor from Donetsk to Crimea was secured and Kherson on the right bank of the Dnieper had fallen.
A huge armoured column that had penetrated from Belarus via Chernobyl was on the right bank close to Kyiv.
But...
Von Mannstein, Guderian and Rommel would not have parked their column on a road flanked by higher wooded ground, running out of fuel, as vehicles were picked off day by day.
Only in that last sense was it not a blitzkrieg... or in my earlier phrase, a failed blitzkrieg.
As Stephen notes, Russian military structure and doctrine (now represented on the AFU side by Russian born and trained Syrsky) is historically different from NATO doctrine.
From before 1812, through Leningrad and Stalingrad to the Surovikin Line, they've excelled at stubborn defence, but often been inflexible in command and movement in attack.
The changes in Russian command structure in theatre and in Moscow since Winter 2021-2 are interesting, not least the firing of various more creative theatre commanders who dissented from the 'sclerotic' bureaucratic Moscow line of Shoigu and Gerasimov, long needed for political reasons by Putin, and now the 'kicking upstairs' of Shoigu as Putin seems finally to be adopting a more creative, dynamic approach, while doubtless also bearing in mind the failed intelligence and logistics filtered to him through the old military-political apparatus in Winter 2021-2.
Russia invaded with less than 1/3 of the size of the combat force that America invaded Iraq with in 2003. Iraq was an already destroyed country that had been sanctioned for 2 decades and had 19 of its 20 power plants destroyed by america in 1991. Iraq was 1/3 of the size of ukraine and had 1/2 the population of it. The only military units it had were even capable of combat operations was the republican guard and there is good evidence the guard struck a deal with the CIA to stay in the barracks and not intervene in the 'war', which they honored. And still America brought 3 times the force to Iraq as Russia brought to ukraine for that relatively pitiful task of beating a paraplegic man to death.
The russian invasion wasn't intended to conquer or even destroy the Ukrainian army. It was only meant to force the Kiev Govt back to negotiation. And it succeeded because a peace deal was almost signed in March 2022 until America arrived and probably told Zelensky you'll die if you make peace - we'll let the Ultras kill you and they already made many credible threats against your life (plus we know about your billions in the panama banks the CIA leaked the panama papers after all).
You sire, don't know anything about a whole lot. That's not a blitzkrieg. A blitzkrieg is by definition the act of bringing OVERWHELMING combined arms forces to overwhelm and gain operational depth and destroy an army or bring about a strategic defeat. It was never that. Russia faced a 3 to 1 disadvantage of combat power when they attacked. It was only designed to wake the Ukrainian government up so they finally understood the civil war would be settled with the Russian-Ukrainains in the Donbas having their civil rights restored as they remained in Ukraine and that Ukraine would be neutralized or there would be real war. And it did bring them to the table and they did initial the peace plan to respect human rights, to sign a lease for Crimea, and to become neutral. Those were the big pieces. The two side were down to negotiating how many tanks would be in Ukraine standing army when the US intervened to thwart a lasting peace.
How about this you learn some definitions and then get back to me.
One possibility is that Russia will use formations made up of Ukrainian POWs to "liberate" Kharkov, then proceed to create an provisional government there. Basically repeating what the Soviets did in Poland.
Of course, if it suddenly appears comparatively easy to take, because Ukrainian forces are hopelessly split between defending against the main thrust and keeping Kharkov.........
Well, the Russian general staff can dream can't they? And they don't have to actually take it. They can just try to cut it off.
Ukraine can't let their center get backed up to the Dnieper and they can't appear to have lost Kharkov. They have already demonstrated that they are increasingly unable to hold the center. To me, this looks like a deliberately constructed end game that was at least a year in the planning.
I was inclined to agree with that assessment at the beginning, but I'm starting to suspect that the Russians are employing a double feign here. The main thrust might actually be in the direction of Kharkov or along the Sumy-Kiev axis. The Ukrainian armed forces have been weaken enough that it makes sense to attempt to land a fatal blow.
Your strategic reading makes much better sense given the relatively low number of Russian troops, except in the unlikely case that the Russians get welcomed as Liberators in Kharkov.
Kharov is nazi central on steroids with extensive underground facilities bequeathed from Soviet times. Ain't gonna be nobody gonna stick their nose out till they leave..they saw how the nazis dealt with such people in the past (Odessa May 2014 was the event that riveted hearts and souls...and the torture and executions never stopped throughout the eastern oblasts...just not posted on Facebook and Telegram). Look for interesting times coming to Odessa....
I agree that the Russian objective is to scatter the Ukrainian forces to further deplete their defenses. The political problems in Ukraine are serious and the western support has been more of a "shut up and quit complaining" rather than a true hands on effort to help Ukraine succeed . Biden's ambiguity is a prime example of his incompetence. He is the epitome of a fair weather "friend" who talks big and loud, but when the going gets tough, he is no where to be found. Russia is playing chess to Biden's checkers. It's time to put the adults in the room and stop the slaughter on both sides.
" The video below is a captured French Foreign Legion soldier who says he is still on active duty and reports to the President of France. He says he and his cohorts operate drones and other equipment. While those in captivity generally want to please their captors, this is extraordinary because (a) the French insist they have no soldiers in Ukraine and (b) the Russians describe these soldiers as “mercenaries.” "
.
No, Stephen. The video is of some bloke we know nothing about, who speaks Russian with another Russian bloke on a video showing no detail as to the location where the video was shot, and who makes an unsubstantiated claim about being a member of the French Foreign Legion. He does not demonstrate any tie to the French Foreign Legion, he does not even attempt to speak any French, he does not give any kind of element showing that he knows something about the French Foreign Legion, such as a menton of a unit or a place where he may have been trained, or a status, or how the Foreign legion works, etc.
All that the guy says is what the official Russian propaganda has been claiming in repeated loops for months: "I'm a member of the French Foreign Legion, the Legion knows I came here and did nothing to stop me, France is not officially at war with Russia but is sending people like me".
Problem: if he went to Ukraine on his own volition and "the Legion didn't stop" him, then he is a deserter, and he cannot be considered to still be a member of the Legion. If he is in Ukraine on orders, then the claim that the Legion didn't stop him is inconsistent. So, in short, his discourse is nothing but a big pile of horsesh*t, and it should be obvious to anyone with half a brain and some sense of honesty in the assessment.
.
What's sure, is that an actual member of the Foreign Legion would have a sense of loyalty to the Legion that would bar him from speaking like this bloke speaks.
.
Nothing even allows you to claim this guy ever was in Ukraine. Nothing allows to claim he ever was in France. Nothing allows to claim he ever was in the French Foreign Legion. Stephen, you are making yourself look silly, that's a shame.
.
Given how easy it is for you to swallow any wild claim as if it were proven truth, I'm very tempted to abuse your gullibility. There it goes:
"Stephen... my name is Pierre, and I am the universally recognized Emperor and Overlord of Planet Earth. You have not paid your taxes to me yet and I will punish you unless you do. Make sure to transfer all your assets to me ASAP. You have 24 hours to DM me to sort this out."
.
There. Easy gain for no effort, thanks to you Stephen.
.
PS: if you need my message to be in Russian with some cheap and mistaken French subtitle to believe it more easily, just let me know, Chat-GPT will do this for me in no time.
A pretty good assessment....I do think that Russians worked with people in Kharkov, that's why you seeing a good progress there....There is a lot of Russian moles in Ukraine... Would not be surprised if there is another one or two more areas where the Ukrainian forces get stretched even further in the next few weeks (Sumi, Chernigov, other parts of Kharkov). Also, after Zelensky legitimacy runs out May 20th, there may be a shift how Russia deals with him or his cronies...
👍👍Two thumbs up for using "discombobulate" in the article. We need to keep that alive.
Thanks!
I've seen videos of Ukrainian soldiers surrendering to Russian troops. Many Ukrainians in the region are Russian and voted to join Russia. They asked Putin for help and protection. Ukraine is deep state central.
I personally think you're right that Kharkov city is not the real target, and the small-scale attack in the Kharkov oblast appears to be drawing resources away from Chasov Yar and Krinky, which is going to help Russia's efforts in those areas.
Yes. More evidence is that this attack is through the low ground. There are two high ridges that run all the way to Kharkov to the west of the invasion route which would need to be taken to seriously threaten it which they have avoided. I'm sure those ridges are where the vast majority of Ukrainian fortifications were. I think the Russians are probably thrilled the plan worked and Ukraine was forced by the optics/politics to send reserves and units scrounged from other fronts to stop the capture of non-strategic towns.
*edit: Russia is attacking down a ridgeline now but it deadends before the town of Lyptsi down into a valley that is still 20km from Kharkov. the two ridgelines I mentioned that are to the west of the Russian attack run all the way to Kharkov and overlook the town.
Being somewhat closer to the realist rather than the ideological group of western analysts I don't think we can discount the fact that people could be saying the goal is capturing Kharkiv so they can then say Russia has been defeated when it doesn't happen. After hearing Blinken and Biden and Sullivan say they already defeated Russia because Russia intended to conquer Ukraine when they invaded with just 50,000 combat troops in February (according to the CIA the equivelant of just 69 BTGs - with another 140,000 in support and service troops supplying and maintaining that combat force). At least Blinken and Sullivan must know that claim is absurd. But it serves a vital ideological purpose.
P.S. (as you no doubt now when America invaded Iraq, which was already a half dead corpse, in 2003 we brought ~165,000 in combat forces and had a total army size of 560,000)
Good observations
There are also complaints in Ukrainian Telegram channels that planned Kharkov Oblast defensive works were simply not built. This has actually made the BBC (!):
"The Russians simply walked in, Ukrainian troops in Kharkiv tell BBC"
Denys Yaroslavskyi is angry... [he] wants to know what happened to Ukraine’s defences.
He shows me video from a drone feed taken a few days ago of small columns of Russian troops simply walking across the border, unopposed.
He says officials had claimed that defences were being built at huge cost, but in his view, those defences simply weren’t there. “Either it was an act of negligence, or corruption. It wasn’t a failure. It was a betrayal”.
My pure SWAG is that the defenses were not built in large part due to a lack of warm live bodies.
$ went to pouring cement for foundations of villas built on the French Riviera and other exotic escapes. Massive grift of US taxpayers' $ will not stop...you are looking at the most corrupt (and the poorest) country on the continent.
New info regarding the trench grift :
Multi-million contracts for the construction of fortifications, for which they spent a total of 7 billion hryvnias there, were transferred by the Kharkiv OVA to front companies of avatars.
It so happened that the department of the Kharkiv OVA for defense purchases chose newly registered no-name firms and FOPs. Moreover, the owners of these firms do not resemble successful businessmen and businesswomen-they have dozens of court cases, from whiskey theft to domestic violence against their husband and mother, some of them are deprived of parental rights and have had enforcement proceedings for loans in banks.
Another interesting detail-it seems that these beneficiaries do not even know that they are millionaires. After all, they continue to work in shifts" in the fields " and factories.
I hope they just cut off Kharkov—the grift on weapons is high, but the possibilities of making a few $$ on massive reconstruction jobs can be more widespread—and go on for years.
To be fair, statistics on Ukrainian incomes and poverty come from official tax numbers.
Pro-tip - nobody in Ukraine, and certainly not the rich, actually pays taxes. That dude paid cash for his Maybach and his tax statement says he is on Ukrainian minimum wage.
Wildly corrupt? A friend tells me that there might be some corruption in Ukraine. And yes, the first thing an Ukrainian government official does with that money is get it offshore.
I know...my wife had 2 pay books...one "gray" and the other official. Notwithstanding that you can't work if the lights aren't on!
The money went to Swiss bank accounts
I saw that video but it was portrayed as Ukrainians surrendering which seemed slightly more likely. It's hard to believe that any group of 30 soldiers on either side would walk across a field together on an active front within 50km of the fighting. I've never seen anyone walk into a battle in a rural setting they always come mounted. Maybe it was taken by a drone deep inside Russia or Ukraine.
Agree with your comment that the goal is strategic level attrition. With that n mind there is no reason to fight in Kharkov. If the Russians are truly rotating in new units to gain experience, as seems likely, then over time their forces will both get larger and more and more experienced. Eventually you could even see them bypass and isolate bigger cities -which yes, takes immense numbers of troops, but that could be one long term goal. It would certainly enable them to fight more in the open, which they'd far prefer.
That's an interesting theory that maybe NATO was behind the potential Coup - change in leadership makes it easier to blame the old leader and force a peace treaty. Reminds me of the old Soviet joke about the deposed leader giving the new leader two letters and he says that when the first crisis hits the new leader should open the first letter and then when the second one hits, open the second. Sure enough, a crisis arises and the new leader opens the first letter which says "blame everything on me." So he does this and when the second crisis hits he opens the second letter and it says "write two letters."
I shoulda added that if the Red Army should have learned nothing else from 1941 and 1944 (and 2008) it is that cities make great speed bumps.
My impression recently - I guess since the fall of Avdiivka - is that the rather sclerotic old Russian command is starting to be a bit more creative in tactical and strategic moves at various levels.
After the failure of the initial blitzkrieg, both sides largely settled into a slow game of incremental and decremental attrition, house by house, street by street, trench by trench, field by field.
Russia was of course saved by Surovikin's major defensive line in 2023 (after playing both sides in the Wagner uprising, where is he now?).
Then after Avdiivka Russia seems to have been shaping their attack better by swift penetration and flanking, though that might have become easier against an army with failing numbers, matériel and morale.
But for me the great irony of the still unclear Northern strategy over the last week is that a stronger, more flexible Ukraine had wrongfooted Russia in Kharkiv oblast in September 2022, when Russia (not as now, Ukraine) was focused elsewhere.
I think you are about right, although I think the Russian way of war is different than how it is done in the US and Europe generally speaking. In the early part of the war the Russians were not coordinating their operations or their fires effectively and were not working with hard intel on the enemy. All that is now changed, although the level of coordination is not (at least on paper) at the level the US does it. They were also not only naive but contemptuous about the Ukrainians. Now they know better.
Actually the initial months brought Zelensky to the Turkey pow-wow where peace negotiations were shot down by Biden via his poodle BoJo. I think the RUssians miscalculated that sane minds were in charge of western foreign policy!
Throughout this war, Russia has consistently underestimated western sociopathy.
I meant to add that the aim of the initial blitz seemed to precipitate a diplomatic settlement' the rapid advance covered much territory up to the gates of Kiev. The advance was conditioned by the notion that this advance was against "brotherly people", fellow slavs, and casualties were to be minimized where possible. That it succeeded was evidenced by the talks in Turkey. That is was based on faulty intelligence which mis-read the degree to which Ukrainian sentiment would assist the capitulation is not in dispute.
Remember however that the Russians did not keep their intel apparatii in tact in the former republics with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Ukraine was considered to be in the russian family (as was Belarus) which precluded espionage activities on any scale as evidenced by the surprise of Maidan jumpers and injection of neo-nazis and mercs in the February coup. The CIA wasted no time since the first failed attempt in 2004 (Orange Revolution) and built a substantial network which only grew. Did the Russians make mistakes in the early months? Yes. Did they learn from them? Yes. Are their motives publicized? Yes. Are they attaining their welf-defined objectives? Seemingly so. Are we listening? ...well, some of us are such as Mr. Bryen but most inside the beltway seemly not.
What I find amazing is the apparent failure of the US IC to inform... Larry Johnson suggests that assessments are not provided to the WH deciders (nor wanted) because the decisions are based on dogma (hopium)! The sanctions blowback and Russia's ability to stand up an unrivaled war machine are the most glaring failures that come to the forefront.
"After the failure of the initial blitzkrieg" I see no evidence it was blitzkrieg. You don't send a half dozen understrength brigades to conquer a nation of 40 million that is supplied by NATO that is the size of Texas. We sent 165,000 combat troops in to Iraq in 2003 backed by an army of a total strength of 560,000. I think the evidence makes clear the attack was designed strictly to topple the government or bring it back to negotiations to implement minsk 3 - and in the latter it succeeded. By the end of March there was a preliminary peace agreement under which the status of Crimea and the Donbas and Ukraine neutrality was already agreed and all they were discussing to finalize it was the amount of forces the military of Ukraine was allowed to keep in their standing army. Of course that's when Boris Johnson arrived to brow beat Zelensky that the EU and NATO and the US would not guarantee Ukraine's status and territorial integrity as neutral nation under that agreement but they would fund a war until every last Ukrainian soldier was underground or Russia was defeated. Perhaps their were other threats, the Panama Papers showed that Zelensky has vast wealth stored off shore on banks America has access to. He'd also had his life credibly threatened by the Ukrainian Ultras a half dozen times before the war even started for being to conciliatory to Russia over Minsk. Half a dozen world leaders from Turkey, Israel, the EU, and officials in Ukraine itself have admitted this. So peace was cancelled.
It was the largest miltary operation in Europe since WW2, the largest Russsian operation since Berlin 1945.
When CNN arrived at Kyiv airport on 24 February and asked guards if the rumours of a Russian attack had any basis, a guard calmly said: We are Russian.
Six days later, the land corridor from Donetsk to Crimea was secured and Kherson on the right bank of the Dnieper had fallen.
A huge armoured column that had penetrated from Belarus via Chernobyl was on the right bank close to Kyiv.
But...
Von Mannstein, Guderian and Rommel would not have parked their column on a road flanked by higher wooded ground, running out of fuel, as vehicles were picked off day by day.
Only in that last sense was it not a blitzkrieg... or in my earlier phrase, a failed blitzkrieg.
As Stephen notes, Russian military structure and doctrine (now represented on the AFU side by Russian born and trained Syrsky) is historically different from NATO doctrine.
From before 1812, through Leningrad and Stalingrad to the Surovikin Line, they've excelled at stubborn defence, but often been inflexible in command and movement in attack.
The changes in Russian command structure in theatre and in Moscow since Winter 2021-2 are interesting, not least the firing of various more creative theatre commanders who dissented from the 'sclerotic' bureaucratic Moscow line of Shoigu and Gerasimov, long needed for political reasons by Putin, and now the 'kicking upstairs' of Shoigu as Putin seems finally to be adopting a more creative, dynamic approach, while doubtless also bearing in mind the failed intelligence and logistics filtered to him through the old military-political apparatus in Winter 2021-2.
Russia invaded with less than 1/3 of the size of the combat force that America invaded Iraq with in 2003. Iraq was an already destroyed country that had been sanctioned for 2 decades and had 19 of its 20 power plants destroyed by america in 1991. Iraq was 1/3 of the size of ukraine and had 1/2 the population of it. The only military units it had were even capable of combat operations was the republican guard and there is good evidence the guard struck a deal with the CIA to stay in the barracks and not intervene in the 'war', which they honored. And still America brought 3 times the force to Iraq as Russia brought to ukraine for that relatively pitiful task of beating a paraplegic man to death.
The russian invasion wasn't intended to conquer or even destroy the Ukrainian army. It was only meant to force the Kiev Govt back to negotiation. And it succeeded because a peace deal was almost signed in March 2022 until America arrived and probably told Zelensky you'll die if you make peace - we'll let the Ultras kill you and they already made many credible threats against your life (plus we know about your billions in the panama banks the CIA leaked the panama papers after all).
You sire, don't know anything about a whole lot. That's not a blitzkrieg. A blitzkrieg is by definition the act of bringing OVERWHELMING combined arms forces to overwhelm and gain operational depth and destroy an army or bring about a strategic defeat. It was never that. Russia faced a 3 to 1 disadvantage of combat power when they attacked. It was only designed to wake the Ukrainian government up so they finally understood the civil war would be settled with the Russian-Ukrainains in the Donbas having their civil rights restored as they remained in Ukraine and that Ukraine would be neutralized or there would be real war. And it did bring them to the table and they did initial the peace plan to respect human rights, to sign a lease for Crimea, and to become neutral. Those were the big pieces. The two side were down to negotiating how many tanks would be in Ukraine standing army when the US intervened to thwart a lasting peace.
How about this you learn some definitions and then get back to me.
Nobody will ask the US or NATO populaces whether they want to die for Ukraine or not.
The biggest problem with the initial blitzkrieg was that Russia tried to do it on the cheap, so to speak.
One possibility is that Russia will use formations made up of Ukrainian POWs to "liberate" Kharkov, then proceed to create an provisional government there. Basically repeating what the Soviets did in Poland.
Interesting idea, but I don't think Kharkov is their immediate objective.
Of course, if it suddenly appears comparatively easy to take, because Ukrainian forces are hopelessly split between defending against the main thrust and keeping Kharkov.........
Well, the Russian general staff can dream can't they? And they don't have to actually take it. They can just try to cut it off.
Ukraine can't let their center get backed up to the Dnieper and they can't appear to have lost Kharkov. They have already demonstrated that they are increasingly unable to hold the center. To me, this looks like a deliberately constructed end game that was at least a year in the planning.
I was inclined to agree with that assessment at the beginning, but I'm starting to suspect that the Russians are employing a double feign here. The main thrust might actually be in the direction of Kharkov or along the Sumy-Kiev axis. The Ukrainian armed forces have been weaken enough that it makes sense to attempt to land a fatal blow.
Your strategic reading makes much better sense given the relatively low number of Russian troops, except in the unlikely case that the Russians get welcomed as Liberators in Kharkov.
I can't rule that out. However, I think most of the population may already be evacuated.
Kharov is nazi central on steroids with extensive underground facilities bequeathed from Soviet times. Ain't gonna be nobody gonna stick their nose out till they leave..they saw how the nazis dealt with such people in the past (Odessa May 2014 was the event that riveted hearts and souls...and the torture and executions never stopped throughout the eastern oblasts...just not posted on Facebook and Telegram). Look for interesting times coming to Odessa....
Apparently there is Russian activity in Sumskaya Oblast.
Sumy is a city I know and love well, and humans and cats I love live there.
Correct
I agree that the Russian objective is to scatter the Ukrainian forces to further deplete their defenses. The political problems in Ukraine are serious and the western support has been more of a "shut up and quit complaining" rather than a true hands on effort to help Ukraine succeed . Biden's ambiguity is a prime example of his incompetence. He is the epitome of a fair weather "friend" who talks big and loud, but when the going gets tough, he is no where to be found. Russia is playing chess to Biden's checkers. It's time to put the adults in the room and stop the slaughter on both sides.
your conclusion is the right one but I don't see any move in that direction anywhere
" The video below is a captured French Foreign Legion soldier who says he is still on active duty and reports to the President of France. He says he and his cohorts operate drones and other equipment. While those in captivity generally want to please their captors, this is extraordinary because (a) the French insist they have no soldiers in Ukraine and (b) the Russians describe these soldiers as “mercenaries.” "
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No, Stephen. The video is of some bloke we know nothing about, who speaks Russian with another Russian bloke on a video showing no detail as to the location where the video was shot, and who makes an unsubstantiated claim about being a member of the French Foreign Legion. He does not demonstrate any tie to the French Foreign Legion, he does not even attempt to speak any French, he does not give any kind of element showing that he knows something about the French Foreign Legion, such as a menton of a unit or a place where he may have been trained, or a status, or how the Foreign legion works, etc.
All that the guy says is what the official Russian propaganda has been claiming in repeated loops for months: "I'm a member of the French Foreign Legion, the Legion knows I came here and did nothing to stop me, France is not officially at war with Russia but is sending people like me".
Problem: if he went to Ukraine on his own volition and "the Legion didn't stop" him, then he is a deserter, and he cannot be considered to still be a member of the Legion. If he is in Ukraine on orders, then the claim that the Legion didn't stop him is inconsistent. So, in short, his discourse is nothing but a big pile of horsesh*t, and it should be obvious to anyone with half a brain and some sense of honesty in the assessment.
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What's sure, is that an actual member of the Foreign Legion would have a sense of loyalty to the Legion that would bar him from speaking like this bloke speaks.
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Nothing even allows you to claim this guy ever was in Ukraine. Nothing allows to claim he ever was in France. Nothing allows to claim he ever was in the French Foreign Legion. Stephen, you are making yourself look silly, that's a shame.
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Given how easy it is for you to swallow any wild claim as if it were proven truth, I'm very tempted to abuse your gullibility. There it goes:
"Stephen... my name is Pierre, and I am the universally recognized Emperor and Overlord of Planet Earth. You have not paid your taxes to me yet and I will punish you unless you do. Make sure to transfer all your assets to me ASAP. You have 24 hours to DM me to sort this out."
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There. Easy gain for no effort, thanks to you Stephen.
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PS: if you need my message to be in Russian with some cheap and mistaken French subtitle to believe it more easily, just let me know, Chat-GPT will do this for me in no time.
Provided for comment, not necessarily for truth:
https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/leak-biden-admin-thinks-ukraine-will?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=7677&post_id=144627175&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1cc3o&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
A pretty good assessment....I do think that Russians worked with people in Kharkov, that's why you seeing a good progress there....There is a lot of Russian moles in Ukraine... Would not be surprised if there is another one or two more areas where the Ukrainian forces get stretched even further in the next few weeks (Sumi, Chernigov, other parts of Kharkov). Also, after Zelensky legitimacy runs out May 20th, there may be a shift how Russia deals with him or his cronies...