Topic: Russian Invasion of Ukraine[In Progress] - page 99. (Read 73604 times)

So all those people died just because she didn't know that Russia had 3x the population?! Can't believe that that's what they're actually going with!

Please, do respect basic Human Rights

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Please, do not spread fake.
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Resolution 217 a (III)

Article 19
Everyone has the right to freedom of expression and freedom of expression; This right includes freedom to attach opinions freely as well as to seek, receive and distribute information and ideas about the media of all kinds and regardless of limits.

False. He has not said at any point that the war is unwinnable, further from that he has declared that he has the highest conviction in victory. Please, do not spread fake.

""Ukrainian nationalists, often still cherished by the current authorities of this country, committed genocide, we simply need to face this truth. These facts are denied by the Ukrainian society. This is not a good page in the history of Ukraine. Russia will always want Ukraine and Poland quarrel, Ukraine must come to terms with its past." - says the Deputy Minister of Culture and National Heritage, Jarosław Sellin. "

https://tvrepublika.pl/Sellin-Ukraina-musi-pozwolic-Polsce-na-odnalezienie-ekshumacje-i-upamietnienie-ofiar-rzezi-dokonanej-przez-UPA-wideo,152298.html

Also:

"THE UKRAINE WAR’S “CRONKITE MOMENT”: Zelensky’s own inner circle tells TIME that the war is unwinnable."

https://twitter.com/DavidSacks/status/1719815317000733153

‘Nobody Believes in Our Victory Like I Do.’

The reason, he later said, was the exhaustion he felt that night, not only from the demands of leadership during the war but also the persistent need to convince his allies that, with their help, Ukraine can win.

Progress has been slow but analysts at the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) say they have confirmed that Ukrainian forces are operating armoured vehicles beyond the Russian anti-tank ditch and dragon's teeth obstacles in the area for the first time - just to the west of nearby Verbove

It has been under Russian control for several months but Ukraine has gained some ground in the surrounding areas and the MoD says Ukraine has now secured the villages of Klishchiivka and Andriivka, about 8km (five miles) south of the city.

Ukraine war: Why Kyiv's Dnipro east bank gain could be significant
Published 21 October
[...]
Ukrainian fighters on the frontline say troops have not only crossed into Russian occupied territory but held a position, apparently for the first time, on the fiercely defended east (or left) bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson region.

[...]

In a text exchange, the 46th brigade told the BBC that troops were engaged in heavy fighting as they try to take full control of the village of Krynky. If successful, the force said, the settlement would give advanced units a base from which to launch a larger offensive aimed at dividing Russian troops and cutting off their supply lines.

The US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said that Ukrainian forces were continuing larger than usual ground operations on the east bank and Russian military bloggers have also noted fighting in Krynky.

...Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, General Valery Zaluzhny, says the battlefield reminds him of the great conflict of a century ago. “Just like in the first world war we have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate,” he says. The general concludes that it would take a massive technological leap to break the deadlock. “There will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough.”

The course of the counter-offensive has undermined Western hopes that Ukraine could use it to demonstrate that the war is unwinnable–and thus change Vladimir Putin’s calculations, forcing the Russian president to negotiate. It has also undercut General Zaluzhny’s assumption that he could stop Russia by bleeding its troops. “That was my mistake. Russia has lost at least 150,000 dead. In any other country such casualties would have stopped the war.” But not in Russia, where life is cheap and where Mr Putin’s reference points are in the first and second world wars in which Russia lost tens of millions.

An army of Ukraine’s standard ought to have been able to move at a speed of 30km a day as it breached Russian defensive lines. “If you look at NATO’s text books and at the maths which we did [in planning the counter-offensive], four months should have been enough time for us to have reached Crimea, to have fought in Crimea, to return from Crimea and to have gone back in and out again,” General Zaluzhny says sardonically. Instead he watched his troops and equipment get stuck in minefields on the approaches to Bakhmut in the east, his Western-supplied equipment getting pummelled by Russian artillery and drones. The same story unfolded on the offensive’s main thrust, in the south, where newly formed and inexperienced brigades, despite being equipped with modern Western kit, immediately ran into trouble.
...
“The simple fact is that we see everything the enemy is doing and they see everything we are doing. In order for us to break this deadlock we need something new, like the gunpowder which the Chinese invented and which we are still using to kill each other,” he says.
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Joe Biden, America’s president, set objectives at the start of Russia’s invasion: to ensure that Ukraine was not defeated and that America was not dragged into confrontation with Russia. This means that arms supplied by the West have been sufficient in sustaining Ukraine in the war, but not enough to allow it to win.
...
Similarly, F-16 jets, due next year, are now less helpful, suggests the general, in part because Russia has improved its air defences: an experimental version of the S-400 missile system can reach beyond the city of Dnipro, he warns.
...
General Zaluzhny’s assessment is sobering: there is no sign that a revolutionary technological breakthrough, whether in drones or in electronic warfare, is around the corner. And technology has its limits. Even in the first world war, the arrival of tanks, in 1917, was not sufficient to break the deadlock on the battlefield: it took a suite of technologies, and more than a decade of tactical innovation, to produce the German blitzkrieg in May 1940. The implication is that Ukraine is stuck in a long war—one in which he acknowledges Russia has the advantage. Nevertheless, he insists that Ukraine has no choice but to keep the initiative by remaining on the offensive, even if it only moves by a few metres a day.
...
A collapse in Ukrainian morale and Western support is precisely what Mr Putin is counting on. There is no question in General Zaluzhny’s mind that a long war favours Russia, a country with a population three times and an economy ten times the size of Ukraine’s. “Let’s be honest, it’s a feudal state where the cheapest resource is human life. And for us…the most expensive thing we have is our people,” he says. For now, General Zaluzhny says, he has enough soldiers. But the longer the war goes on, the harder it will be to sustain. “We need to look for this solution, we need to find this gunpowder, quickly master it and use it for a speedy victory. Because sooner or later we are going to find that we simply don’t have enough people to fight.”

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/10/30/7426406/

"He also said some in Zelenskyy’s team are convinced that the president "deludes himself". "We’re out of options. We’re not winning. But try telling him that," one of Zelenskyy’s closest aides told Shuster."

"Some front-line commanders, he continued, have begun refusing orders to advance, even when they came directly from the Office of the President. "They just want to sit in the trenches and hold the line," the aide said. "But we can’t win a war that way." "

"political leadership in Kyiv demanded an operation to ‘retake’ the city of Horlivka, a strategic outpost in eastern Ukraine that the Russians have held and fiercely defended for nearly a decade. The answer came back in the form of a question: With what? ‘They don’t have the men or the weapons,’ says the officer. ‘Where are the weapons? Where is the artillery? Where are the new recruits?’," the author states. "


Sounds like a scene from movie "Downfall" when Hitler tried to command units that didn't exist anymore

He relied on his wife, First Lady Olena Zelenska, to carry his message of resilience on the stage beside him, while his own delivery felt stilted, as though he wanted to get it over with. At one point, while handing out medals after the speech, he urged the organizer to hurry things along.
...
It is only getting harder. Twenty months into the war, about a fifth of Ukraine’s territory remains under Russian occupation. Tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed, and Zelensky can feel during his travels that global interest in the war has slackened. So has the level of international support. “The scariest thing is that part of the world got used to the war in Ukraine,” he says. “Exhaustion with the war rolls along like a wave. You see it in the United States, in Europe. And we see that as soon as they start to get a little tired, it becomes like a show to them: ‘I can’t watch this rerun for the 10th time.’”

Public support for aid to Ukraine has been in decline for months in the U.S., and Zelensky’s visit did nothing to revive it. Some 41% of Americans want Congress to provide more weapons to Kyiv, down from 65% in June, when Ukraine began a major counteroffensive, according to a Reuters survey taken shortly after Zelensky’s departure. That offensive has proceeded at an excruciating pace and with enormous losses, making it ever more difficult for Zelensky to convince partners that victory is around the corner. With the outbreak of war in Israel, even keeping the world’s attention on Ukraine has become a major challenge.
...
“Now he walks in, gets the updates, gives the orders, and walks out,” says one longtime member of his team. Another tells me that, most of all, Zelensky feels betrayed by his Western allies. They have left him without the means to win the war, only the means to survive it.
...
On the contrary, his belief in Ukraine’s ultimate victory over Russia has hardened into a form that worries some of his advisers. It is immovable, verging on the messianic. “He deludes himself,” one of his closest aides tells me in frustration. “We’re out of options. We’re not winning. But try telling him that.”

Zelensky’s stubbornness, some of his aides say, has hurt their team’s efforts to come up with a new strategy, a new message. As they have debated the future of the war, one issue has remained taboo: the possibility of negotiating a peace deal with the Russians. Judging by recent surveys, most Ukrainians would reject such a move, especially if it entailed the loss of any occupied territory.
...
Zelensky describes it as a war of wills, and he fears that if the Russians are not stopped in Ukraine, the fighting will spread beyond its borders. “I’ve long lived with this fear,” he says. “A third world war could start in Ukraine, continue in Israel, and move on from there to Asia, and then explode somewhere else.” That was his message in Washington: Help Ukraine stop the war before it spreads, and before it’s too late. He worries his audience has stopped paying attention.

...
This time around, the atmosphere had changed. Assistance to Ukraine had become a sticking point in the debate over the federal budget. One of Zelensky’s foreign policy advisers urged him to call off the trip in September, warning that the atmosphere was too fraught. Congressional leaders declined to let Zelensky deliver a public address on Capitol Hill. His aides tried to arrange an in-person appearance for him on Fox News and an interview with Oprah Winfrey. Neither one came through.

Instead, on the morning of Sept. 21, Zelensky met in private with then House Speaker Kevin McCarthy before making his way to the Old Senate Chamber, where lawmakers grilled him behind closed doors. Most of Zelensky’s usual critics stayed silent in the session; Senator Ted Cruz strolled in more than 20 minutes late. The Democrats, for their part, wanted to understand where the war was headed, and how badly Ukraine needed U.S. support. “They asked me straight up: If we don’t give you the aid, what happens?” Zelensky recalls. “What happens is we will lose.”

Zelensky’s performance left a deep impression on some of the lawmakers present. Angus King, an independent Senator from Maine, recalled the Ukrainian leader telling his audience, “You’re giving money. We’re giving our lives.” But it was not enough. Ten days later, Congress passed a bill to temporarily avert a government shutdown. It included no assistance for Ukraine.
...
Russian attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure have damaged power stations and parts of the electricity grid, leaving it potentially unable to meet spikes in demand when the temperature drops. Three of the senior officials in charge of dealing with this problem told me blackouts would likely be more severe this winter, and the public reaction in Ukraine would not be as forgiving. “Last year people blamed the Russians,” one of them says. “This time they’ll blame us for not doing enough to prepare.”
...
At least one minister would need to be fired, along with a senior general in charge of the counteroffensive, they said, to ensure accountability for Ukraine’s slow progress at the front. “We’re not moving forward,” says one of Zelensky’s close aides. Some front-line commanders, he continues, have begun refusing orders to advance, even when they came directly from the office of the President. “They just want to sit in the trenches and hold the line,” he says. “But we can’t win a war that way.”
...
At one point in early October, he said, the political leadership in Kyiv demanded an operation to “retake” the city of Horlivka, a strategic outpost in eastern Ukraine that the Russians have held and fiercely defended for nearly a decade. The answer came back in the form of a question: With what? “They don’t have the men or the weapons,” says the officer. “Where are the weapons? Where is the artillery? Where are the new recruits?”

In some branches of the military, the shortage of personnel has become even more dire than the deficit in arms and ammunition. One of Zelensky’s close aides tells me that even if the U.S. and its allies come through with all the weapons they have pledged, “we don’t have the men to use them.”

...
Ukraine has refused to release official counts of dead and wounded. But according to U.S. and European estimates, the toll has long surpassed 100,000 on each side of the war. It has eroded the ranks of Ukraine’s armed forces so badly that draft offices have been forced to call up ever older personnel, raising the average age of a soldier in Ukraine to around 43 years. “They’re grown men now, and they aren’t that healthy to begin with,” says the close aide to Zelensky. “This is Ukraine. Not Scandinavia.”
...
Now recruitment is way down. As conscription efforts have intensified around the country, stories are spreading on social media of draft officers pulling men off trains and buses and sending them to the front. Those with means sometimes bribe their way out of service, often by paying for a medical exemption. Such episodes of corruption within the recruitment system became so widespread by the end of the summer that on Aug. 11 Zelensky fired the heads of the draft offices in every region of the country.

The decision was intended to signal his commitment to fighting graft. But the move backfired, according to the senior military officer, as recruitment nearly ground to a halt without leadership. The fired officials also proved difficult to replace, in part because the reputation of the draft offices had been tainted. “Who wants that job?” the officer asks. “It’s like putting a sign on your back that says: corrupt.”
...
One of the aides who traveled with Zelensky to the U.S. told me these proposals targeted the very top of the state hierarchy. “These were not suggestions,” says another presidential adviser. “These were conditions. [from US]”
...
Amid all the pressure to root out corruption, I assumed, perhaps naively, that officials in Ukraine would think twice before taking a bribe or pocketing state funds. But when I made this point to a top presidential adviser in early October, he asked me to turn off my audio recorder so he could speak more freely. “Simon, you’re mistaken,” he says. “People are stealing like there’s no tomorrow.”
...
When we sat down inside his office, Shurma told me the allegations against him were part of a political attack paid for by one of Zelensky’s domestic enemies. “A piece of sh-t was thrown,” he says, brushing the front of his sweater. “And now we have to explain that we are clean.” It did not seem to trouble him that his brother is a major player in the industry that Shurma oversees. On the contrary, he spent nearly half an hour trying to convince me of the gold rush that renewable energy would see after the war.

Perhaps, I suggested, amid all the concerns about corruption in Ukraine, it would have been wiser for Shurma to step aside while under investigation for embezzlement, or at least sit out Zelensky’s trip to Washington. He responded with a shrug. “If we do that, tomorrow everybody on the team would be targeted,” he says. “Politics is back, and that’s the problem.”
...From the earliest days of the Russian invasion, Zelensky’s top priority and perhaps his main contribution to the nation’s defense had been to keep attention on Ukraine and to rally the democratic world to its cause. Both tasks would become a lot harder with the outbreak of war in Israel. The focus of Ukraine’s allies in the U.S. and Europe, and of the global media, quickly shifted to the Gaza Strip.

“It’s logical,” Zelensky tells me. “Of course we lose out from the events in the Middle East. People are dying, and the world’s help is needed there to save lives, to save humanity.” Zelensky wanted to help. After the crisis meeting with aides, he asked the Israeli government for permission to visit their country in a show of solidarity. The answer appeared the following week in Israeli media reports: “The time is not right.”
...
But it was also an acknowledgment that, on its own, Ukraine aid no longer stands much of a chance in Washington. When I asked Zelensky about this, he admitted that Biden’s hands appear to be tied by GOP opposition. The White House, he said, remains committed to helping Ukraine. But arguments about shared values no longer have much sway over American politicians or the people who elect them. “Politics is like that,” he tells me with a tired smile. “They weigh their own interests.”

Update from the dnipro banks: it seems that there is certainly a mid-sized operation ongoing to cross the dniper in several points. Nothing to be scared of, just adjusting ownership of a few square kilometers of land, very close to Crimea and not covered by the so called "Surovikin line". It must be going well for Ukraine, because the local military chief psycho has been replaced with another psycho. The cannot fire the team, so they fire the coach.

These countries have strongest military

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/rankings/strong-military

I guess link is removed because it followed official CIA narrative? 

really?

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.63074850

Even Ukrainian own investigation concludes CIA sponsored nazis shoot their own people
at maidan, and not Yanukovich or Russians

https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/1717744385079890274?t=VKTlrQ_Z5q5BeZNHHEVoUQ&s=19

Even Ukrainian own investigation concludes CIA sponsored nazis shoot their own people
at maidan, and not Yanukovich or Russians

https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/1717744385079890274?t=VKTlrQ_Z5q5BeZNHHEVoUQ&s=19

On the news you choose, yes it is biased, you choose those that reinforce your beliefs and choose to ignore other equally important information (e.g. change of Government in Poland). Also, you choose to ignore the effect of the increase in number an effectiveness of the weapons available for Ukraine.

On the redefinition of winning... do you happen to have the phone of the Ruzzian Ministry of Propaganda? They have so much experience in re-defining victory that they could share some of their learnings. I mean... "we will change the Ukrainian government, demilitarise the country and stop NATO expansion...." to "We hope we do not loose the bridge to Crimea and keep a minimum buffer zone and have some fishing boats in Sebastopol".

You do not need a formula to understand the cost of territory. It is simply enough to understand if it is sustainable or not sustainable. Sufficient to say that there are abundant reports of North Korean supplies of shells and low-tech going to the front. Why do you think Ruzzia needs to import low-tech like shells, rifles and artillery from North Korea? Is it because they are producing enough?

https://www.thedefensepost.com/2023/10/10/north-korea-arms-russia-2/


Of course, no free lunch for Ruzzia at all:
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/south-korea-warns-russia-of-retaliation-if-missile-tech-supplied-to-north-korea/3034523


Ruzzia is banking on entrenching themselves to the point that Ukraine would need two years of intense war to drive them out have the US & other not willing to support Ukraine for that long. Avdiivka is strategic, but it is also an PR exercise for Putin that is why the losses are not being counted.

Wars Push Up Demand for Weapons, Sparking Fears of Shortages
...
Western defense officials worry that with Israel going to war as the West battles Russia by proxy in Ukraine, there won’t be enough artillery shells and other weapons to keep both allies in the fight.
...
“Of course” there are concerns about competition for military resources because of limited production capacity, said Göran Mårtensson, director general of the Swedish Defense Materiel Administration, which handles procurement for the country’s defense ministry. “There will be more need for that limited production capacity in Europe and the U.S.”
...
Since Russia launched its large-scale invasion of Ukraine roughly 20 months ago, defense contractors across the West have geared up production, but output remains below the volumes of ammunition and equipment being spent on Ukraine’s battlefields.
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With demand increasing faster than production, prices of some supplies have soared. NATO-standard 155-millimeter artillery shells, one of the West’s most basic armaments, had cost governments about $2,100 apiece before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, said Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer, Stoltenberg’s top military adviser, at the NATO forum.
The price of those shells, which Bauer dubbed “one of the most coveted objects in the world right now,” has increased fourfold, to about $8,400, he said.
...
Sweden and three other Nordic countries earlier this month announced a rare multicountry order for 155mm shells for Kyiv, valued at roughly $54 million. At the prices NATO’s Bauer cited, that would deliver fewer than 7,000 rounds.
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“Everything is connected,” he said. “If Israel is helped out from the U.S. stockpiles, that’s taken away from something.”
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“The biggest one to highlight, and it sticks out, is on the artillery side,” said Chief Financial Officer Jason Aiken of the recent $106 billion supplemental funding request from the White House, which includes further support for Ukraine and Israel, as well as Taiwan. “The Israeli situation is only going to put upward pressure on that demand.”

The Pentagon has sent back to Israel stocks of its shells relocated this year to replenish U.S. forces in Europe, a senior defense official said this week.

“We have a huge deficit of ammunition not just in Ukraine but all over the world,” Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told the Financial Times. “We understand we should produce this here in Ukraine because all around the world it’s finished, it’s depleted. All the warehouses are empty.”
...
But building up a procurement industry for shells, artillery and air defence is a far more complex and ambitious undertaking than for drones, at a time of worldwide shortages of key components and raw materials. One official said they could not quickly transform shell production in the way they did for drones, not least because of the global “shortage of gunpowder”.

...
We must have a different definition for a "game changing" weapon. But that's good, now all we have to do is just redefine the definition of "winning" for Ukraine, they'll just need someone like yourself to help convince the population.

Yes, yes things will get even worse for Russia next week as Ukraine possibly looses even more land and once again just saying that Russia lost trillion of people/vehicles doesn't say anything at all, you really expect people to know if that's low or high for themselves? You need to also make up a low number of Ukrainian loses so you could lead people to you conclusion. How would Russia loosing X vehicles in a week and taking Z meters help your point, if Ukraine lost Z meters and X+Y vehicles in the same time period? So to be able to make a comparison, you need say that Ukraine losses are much less than 1/3 of X (account for population difference), as well as mention tiny Russian manufacturing capacity which should also be much less than Y vehicles lost.
...

‘Dramatic’ Increase in Rail Freight Traffic
It coincides with a “dramatic” increase in rail freight traffic at a North Korean railway facility bordering Russia, the US Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) reported citing satellite imagery.

The Tumangang railway station saw 73 freight railcars on October 5, the highest volume of traffic witnessed at the facility in five years.

South Korea on Friday warned Russia of retaliation if Moscow transfers its missile technology to North Korea.