From a handbill at a University of Wyoming protest, photo by MKTH.
March 27, 2022
Russo-Ukrainian War
In a typical year, the Wars and Rumors of Wars thread last the entire year. Not this year, we're on to the fourth edition, and the war in Ukraine is the reason why.
Let's start with the situation on the ground, and the status of that is this. Over the last week, the Russians lost ground.
March 27, 2022
By Viewsridge - Own work, derivate of Russo-Ukraine Conflict (2014-present).svg by Rr016Missile attacks source: BNO NewsTerritorial control source: ISW & Template:Russo-Ukrainian War detailed map, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=115506141
While it would probably serve to compare this to the map last put up in the prior edition of this tread, we'll simply note here that the Russians lost a lot of ground in the north. But they also lost it in the south. From the appearances of things, the Ukrainians are mounting a relief effort on Mariupol, and they've made up a lot of lost ground.
As we noted yesterday:
March 26, 2022
Russia declared yesterday that its goal in the war had been to take all the Donbas region and that the larger offensive was just a diversion, a claim that's fairly obviously baloney. More likely, this signals an effort to recast the war in that light, perhaps to the Russians themselves, in an effort to declare victory and potentially wind the operation down in light of the difficulties it has been facing.
The announcement is quite significant, however, as it signals the war has likdly entered a new phase with Russian forces going, at least temporarily, into a defensive posture.
Russian forces have ceased offensive actions near Kyvi and gone on the defensive. Ukrainian forces have been on the offensive there in recent days.
The BBC reports that the Russians have lost a total of six generals in the war in Ukraine. In contrast, the United States lost 12 generals during the long Vietnam War, and one in Afghanistan.
Quite frankly, this war has been amazingly revealing regarding Russia and its military capabilities. The West has consistently overestimated the fighting capacity of Russia, dating back at least to World War One, and it very obviously did so again. The Russian Army was widely assumed to essentially be the Red Army with a new name, and that in fact may be its trouble.
The troops are bottom of the barrel conscripts, armed for the most part with outdated equipment. Russian tanks, always thought to be beyond reproach since the truly excellent T-34 and other late World War Two Soviet tanks, are junk. Their design thesis, which emphasized low profile and low weight, proves to have been spectacularly in error. That the Russians are now ceasing the offensive gives strong evidence of this. Ukrainian infantrymen repeatedly destroying Russian tanks with shoulder fired missiles as if they're opening cans with a can opener can't be ignored forever.
Ukraine's military, in contrast, has had a decade of Western assistance and is evolving into a Western army. President Zelinskyy pointedly noted this last week when, addressing NATO, he noted that he didn't ever want to hear again that Ukraine's army isn't up to NATO standards.
Zelinskyy has begged for heavier Western weapons, and frankly in my view he should be given them. Western nations maintain thousands of older weapons that, frankly, are better than those which are first line for the Russians. In terms of armor, stored M60 and late M48 tanks are pretty clearly better than the Russian ones, as the late use of M60s in Iraq by the Marine Corps demonstrated. Assistance now needs to emphasize offensive weapons, of which we have a fair number of older stored models. As Volodymyr Zelenskyy has pointed out, even a small percentage of our newer ones would be significant assistance to Ukraine.
In the long run, that assistance would be assistance to Russia and the world as well. Putin cannot survive defeat in Ukraine, and it's questionable whether he can survive what has, in effect, been a massive military failure. In 1990, it looked for a time as if Russia would evolve into a real democracy, something that Russian democrats have struggled to create since the late 1800s. Under Yeltsin, it was on its way, until Putin, dragged it back. If Putin falls, Russia may fall into democracy, at long last.
March 28, 2022
Ukraine signaled yesterday that it would consider as a negotiation result for an end to the war, or a ceasefire, a Russian withdrawal to that territory Russia occupied prior to the war and an official neutral status for Ukraine, with that neutrality guaranteed by outside powers.
Russians are laying mines in the areas that they have dug in at, north of Kyiv.
President Biden in a speech stated that Putin could not remain in power, a statement that was walked back by the administration nearly immediately thereafter.
On the weekend shows, Face The Nation had really good analysis of the state of the war, something television and the news in general frequently does not.
March 30, 2022
While the claim was greeted with nearly universal skepticism, the Russians claim that they are pulling back from the area around Kyiv in a show of good faith.
March 31, 2022
Declassified US intelligence reports indicate that Putin is being misled by his own advisors on the progress of the war in Ukraine. Putin has reportedly become very isolated in general, and his advisors apparently fear telling him the truth.
Russia has kept up strikes on cities in spite of its promise to pull back. US defense analysis feel that Russia is merely redeploying its forces to the east, but that may fail to give credit to the level of attrition that forces around Kyiv have sustained which may, in fact, make them incapable of being redeployed.
Ukraine hit targets inside of Russia with artillery yesterday for the first time in the war.
President Biden promised Ukraine 500,000,000 in additional aid.
March 31, 2022 cont:
Ukrainians have retaken Chernobyl.
Russian soldiers who were at Chernobyl are now sick with acute radiation poisoning. Several days ago it was noted that they had dug into radioactive soil.
Russian Air Force planes armed with nuclear weapons violated Swedish airspace on March 2, interrupting a joint Swedish/Finnish exercise.
April 1, 2022
It seems relatively well established that Ukrainian helicopters raided an oil storage facility at Belgorod today. Belgorod is north of Kharkiv, in Russia.
The odd thing is the Russians are complaining about it.
What kind of weird mindset do you actually have to be possessed of in order to invade a neighboring country, and bombard its cities for days, and then be shocked, amazed, and upset, when they cross your border and wipe something out?
The more amazing thing, I suppose, is that the Ukrainians have recovered the initiative to this extent and that the Russians are doing so badly that their border, at least in this instance, is now porous.
April 2, 2022
Ukraine has now pushed the Russians out of the areas that they had taken near Kyiv.
April 2, 2022
By Viewsridge - Own work, derivate of Russo-Ukraine Conflict (2014-present).svg by Rr016Missile attacks source: BNO NewsTerritorial control source: ISW & Template:Russo-Ukrainian War detailed map, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=115506141
In the east, an offensive had recaptured an area in the northeast all the way to the Russian border.
In the south, the Russians have gained ground west of the Dneiper.
The Pentagon is warning of a major Russian offensive in the east being imminent.
Withdrawing Russian forces are mining some of the areas they are withdrawing from.
Ukrainian Generals Naumov Andriy Olehovych and Kryvoruchko Serhiy Oleksandrovych, both of whom had intelligence roles, have been cashiered from the Ukrainian Army under allegations of treason.
April 3, 2022
Former United Nations chief prosecutor for war crimes tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, Carla Del Ponte, has called for an international arrest warrant to be issued for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Maks Levin (Максим Євгенович Левін) Ukrainian press photographer, was killed by Russian soldiers while covering the Russian invasion of Ukraine where he had recently been documenting Russian war crimes.
April 5, 2022
North Korea v. South Korea.
North Korea's Kim Yo Jong, sister of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un, issued a statement in which she declared that North Korea is prepared to eliminate the South Korean military. This followed a South Korean statement the other day that labeled North Korea as the enemy and declared that South Korean is capable of taking out the North Korean military in a preemptive strike.
The war in Ukraine has to be unsettling to North Korea in that its military is based on the Soviet model, as are their weapons, both of which are failing at an epic rate right now.
April 5, 2022, cont:
Russo Ukrainian War
The Czech Republic has been and is sending T-72 tanks to Ukraine. It's considering repairing Ukrainian tanks inside the Czech Republic. Other rolling equipment is being sent as well.
April 6, 2022
Russo Ukrainian War
President Zelenskyy basically called the United Nations out on the carpet yesterday, pointing out the irony that an organization in which Russia has a veto can't really stand for its principals. He asked for the UN to reform itself, and to aid Ukraine.
This situation map has changed dramatically in the last view days.
April 6, 2022
By Viewsridge - Own work, derivate of Russo-Ukraine Conflict (2014-present).svg by Rr016Missile attacks source: BNO NewsTerritorial control source: ISW & Template:Russo-Ukrainian War detailed map, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=115506141
The war is now concetrated in the east and southeast, with the Russian offensive in the north not only halted, but all Russian gains eliminated due to Ukrainian counteroffensives and successful defensive operations, resulting in Russian withdrawals. Defense analysts repeated warn that Russian forces are redeploying, which may be correct. Ukrainain forces are also redeploying, however, and have much shorter interior lines. My guess is that Russian forces will be completely pushed out of the northeast in the next few days.
An open question is the extent to which Russian forces are actually being withdrawn as they've been destroyed to teh level of being combat ineffective, something that has received little attention. The units in the north were engaged in heavy combat since the start of the war and may be so seriously depoeted in men and equipment that they cannot be reconstituted and returned to combat quickly, if at all.
Russian forces in the southeast have regained ground that they'd earlier taken but were pushed out of last week.
The Russians have been hitting Odessa with missles which has led to speculation on whether they intend to attempt to land there, although I doubt that they will.
As Russian forces have withdrawn, evidence of rape and murder, including the murder of women and children, has been coming forth. This has been a hallmark of the Russian forces since the late Second World War and is something that has been mentioned here already, but which has now appeared in several other venues, including written ones, and on Face The Nation. It's difficult to explain how this seems to have become such a feature of Russian forces, but its now been noted that not only was this a feature of their behavior in the late Second World War, but also in their more recent actions in Chechya. It's now been perpetrated against Ukrainians, which takes it to a new height, in a way, in that during the Second World War it was somewhat excused as actions taken in revenge for German atrocities on Soviet soil, and in Chechnya it was basically ignored as that conflict was basically ignored. Now, however, Russian soldiers are murdering members of a culture whose invasion was presented as one to "liberate" a people that Putin claims are really Russians.
All this gets back, of course, to yesterday's speech by Zelenskyy and an earlier statement by President Biden. The question of how Putin can remain in control of one of Russia, which has now invaded a neighbor and whose troops have engaged in rape and murder, is a good one. And how the UN can maintain legitimacy with Russia in the Security Council is as well.
April 11, 2022
Russo Ukrainian War
April 11, 2022
By Viewsridge - Own work, derivate of Russo-Ukraine Conflict (2014-present).svg by Rr016Missile attacks source: BNO NewsTerritorial control source: ISW & Template:Russo-Ukrainian War detailed map, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=115506141
Northern and Northeastern Ukraine have now been liberated from Russian control and the war, right now, is about the east and southeast.
Alexander Dvornikov, age 60, has been placed in commanad of the Russian effort. He has prior combat command experience from Syria. It is widely speculated that the Russians shall commences a renewed offensive in the east to consolidate their gains there.
The Russians hit a train station a couple of days ago in a missle strike, killing up to fifty civilians. One of the missles was marked "for the children".
Congo
The rebel group M23 from areas that it recently took in the eastern part of the country so that negotiations could take place. The group lead a rebellion in 2014.
April 11, 2022, cont.
Russo Ukrainian War
Russia, by requiring payment in rubles, is now regarded as having defaulted on its foreign debts.
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