But so far the Russian military had to withdraw after keeping Kiev under siege for one month. It doesn’t look like the military operation is going so well, does it?
«It’s a large military operation, so it has secrets in the way it’s waged. What if the Kiev operation was meant to distract Ukrainian forces and keep them away from the main theater in the South and South-East? Maybe that was the plan. Moreover Russian troops have been very careful not to hit civilian targets, we used only 30-35% of the lethal weapons that we could use. If we had used everything, that would have meant the destruction of Ukrainian cities and a much quicker victory. We did not do carpet bombing like Americans in Iraq. The endgame probably will be a new treaty, maybe with Zelensky still there. Probably it would mean the creation of a country in South and South-East Ukraine that is friendly to Russia. Maybe there will be several Ukraines. But at this juncture it is impossible to predict because, of course, it’s an open-ended story. We are in the fog of war».
yeah ok, great fake out to lose some vdv battalions and commit some not-quite-holocaust genocide.
I assume the Ukrainians understand that any such peace only means Russia will take Ukraine piece by piece: first Crimea, then Donbas, then Luhansk etc.
Any concessions they make will only leave them weaker for the next conflict that is inevitably coming.
Well, E-3 and Global Hawk have different missions.
The E-3, or AWACS, is an airborne command and control platform. Think of it as a flying control tower.
The global hawk is a high-altitude, long-range spy drone that watches the ground.
I’m not sure why they’re saying the E-3 is replacing the Global Hawk in that area, other than we’re going from just watching to actually directing assets in the airspace.
ukraine has claimed to have hit large convoys near kharkiv and izyum which were preparing to move out into Donbass. by their descriptions those are reconstituted BTGs of both T72 and T80 tanks, which is a bit crazy because those tanks don’t use the same parts, but also use different fuel (diesel vs kerosene), doubling the logistical burden for the invasion force.
For more than a month, we Marines fought without ammunition resupplies, without food, without water, practically drinking from puddles and dying in heaps. […] The infantry is all dead, and now all the fighting is being done by the artillery gunners, the anti-aircraft gunners, the signalmen, the drivers, and the cooks. Even the band members. They’re dying, but they’re fighting. […] Nobody wants to communicate with us anymore because they’ve written us off. Today will likely be our final battle, since we’ve run out [of ammunition]. Next comes hand-to-hand. Then it’s death for some and captivity for others.
You say call an end to the war as if it’s a thing we can do. Even if that were so it’s a bad idea. You’re just giving Russia time to rearm for round 2 in 5 or 10 years. Even if Ukraine would agree to it.
There are only 2 states of eastern Europe that will be stable. Total Russian control of Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, the Baltic states, Poland east of the Vistula – or a Russia too weak to even think about invading any one of them.
Settling for anything less than the decimation of Russia’s capacity to wage war for a generation is a mistake here imo. This is Hitler in Czechoslovakia. Pay enough blood and treasure to stop him now or pay way more to stop him later.
We can continue to arm Ukraine to the teeth like we do with South Korea on the condition they don’t start an offensive in Crimea.
The West won’t stop giving weapons to Ukraine even after this war is over.
Sanctions on Russian economy and soon to be European disengagement from Russian oil and gas won’t give Putin the ability to rebuild a modern army in his life time.