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WASHINGTON, July 23 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that while Ukraine has reconquered half the territory that Russia initially seized in its invasion, Kyiv faced a “a very hard fight” to win back more.
“It’s already taken back about 50% of what was initially seized,” Blinken said in an interview to CNN on Sunday.
“These are still relatively early days of the counteroffensive. It is tough,” he said, adding: “It will not play out over the next week or two. We’re still looking I think at several months.”
Hopes that Ukraine could quickly clear Moscow’s forces from its territory following the launch of a summer counteroffensive are fading as Kyiv’s troops struggle to breach heavily entrenched Russian positions in the country’s south and east.
Late last month President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was quoted as saying that progress against Russian forces was “slower than desired” but that Kyiv would not be pressured into speeding it up.
Nah I’m not talking about Kyiv. The north east was hardly any troops, no supply, just empty roads that were taken with no resistance. And then they withdrew with no resistance too after the Kyiv attack failed. My point being that it’s hardly worth considering it as having been “taken” in the first place, and most don’t. The Kyiv part itself is fair to bring up, just easy to forget given how long ago it was.
Anyway people should be more concerned about the new russian offensive getting hyped up. A lot of rumours stirring around that look similar to the rumours before Bahkmut right now.
No resistance? They sieged Chernihiv from February 25-March 31.
You count Bakhmut as a Russian victory? Nobody won Bakhmut, Russian expended a massive ammout of manpower and resources for nothing. The front didn’t change in any meaningful way, hell the fact they are struggled so much to reclaim a town they captured in 2014 should tell you how bad things are for Russia. Seriously dude they drafted 300,000 and still the only way they made progress was by throwing prisoners at it.
Also spoiler alert they have been on the offensive this entire time. The only competent people have been removed from power. The one to order defensive lines made and mines laid backed Pringlez. Pringlez is also gone now so yeah I don’t really see this offensive playing out any way.
I didn’t say anything about victories. I couldn’t give a shit about who is winning or losing I would prefer the fighting to stop immediately it’s all a waste of lives and the destruction of families.
I don’t think we should be counting Pringlez as gone, Wagner are training Belarus troops I’m not convinced that he isn’t involved in that given that he moved to Belarus.~
What I’m talking about is the 100k troops and 1k tanks that have been built up for the new Russian push. We might see a big arrow offensive again instead of this attrition stuff that has been going on. It’s all speculation obviously but the telegrams feel a lot like they did before Bahkmut when the rumours were circling that it was going to be next, this makes me think that this is actually going to happen fairly soon. But hey I’ve been wrong before so ehhh
Bit annoying that just having any kind of conversation here gets you downvoted for apparently no reason at all. Weird userbase in this comm, doesn’t happen anywhere else on lemmy.
I downvoted you because you’re saying false/insane things. That’s the point of downvotes.
What false things have I said? The troop build up they’ve been doing has been well known for a long time now, like literally months they’ve been doing this buildup for. Many are talking about it, both pro-russian and pro-ukrainian.
https://youtu.be/38Mcg_hrQLk
https://youtu.be/PXhg9DfTIVg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTTxcfKAmqA
https://t.me/Slavyangrad/56341
https://t.me/rybar/50008
https://t.me/DeepStateUA/17195
It’s like some of you aren’t actually paying any attention to anything other than ABC/Reuters/CNN. These outlets are useless for speculation content you have to go elsewhere for it.
What are the potential targets of the build-up? Just advancing the line after Ukraine has exhausted a lot of it’s force on its counteroffensive? Or would there be a option between a few cities? Maybe cities that sit in the middle of several supply routes?
Looks like it’s Svatova with a push that looks intended to go towards the Kupyansk direction to me but it’s hard to tell, a big push could change quickly depending on level of resistance and any encirclements that might happen. Assuming they actually broke the line in some way. The Russian attempt to do a big offensive could go as badly as the Ukrainian one, I wouldn’t rule that out with the cluster munitions which could easily slow them down.
I remember reading a Mearsheimer article about the problem with offensives. Whoever defends, traditionally has a 3:1 advantage by virtue of staying still. But in a war like this, that can change from day to day or month to month. So while Ukraine doesn’t seem to be doing much of significance in its counter-offensive, I agree that Russia will have a hard time when it goes on the offensive again.
Still, the problem for Ukraine seems to be its size in comparison tp Russia. Going by the same article, Russia has a 5:1 to 10:1 artillery advantage and a 2:1 casualty rate in its favour. The longer the war, the greater Russia’s advantage, and every offensive and counter-offensive contributes to that advantage. What is 2:1 today will become 3:1, 4:1, etc, as the toll will always be worse for Ukraine, unless something drastic changes, which would come as a surprise if it happens.
As you say elsewhere, it’s all just a massive waste of lives. The sooner the decision-makers realise that and negotiate for peace, the better.
Can’t say that would enjoy walking into that kind of maelstrom.
I don’t think size is an issue. You need to think of the war as Ukraine supplying the bodies and the entirety of nato supplying the combined weapons, funding, manufacturing, strategy, intelligence and planning. Ukraine has the bodies necessary to make numerical advantages moot.
I suspect that negotiations won’t come until after this christmas, going into the string of upcoming elections.
To decision makers it’s not though, this is the problem. They’re all perfectly happy to sacrifice all these lives, the US warmongers are happy to sacrifice any foreign lives against their adversaries while the Ukrainian bourgeoisie have used the war as cover for some of the most brutal right wing crackdowns I’ve ever seen, complete banning of all left parties, shutdown of media, and the complete and total rollback of 100% of workers rights. They have created a state that allows for absolute maximum exploitation of the people with no left opposition. The ruling class see this as a great win for them, the true-believers of the ideological fascists probably genuinely care about the borders of the nation but the bourgeoisie couldn’t give a fuck. So this leaves it up to the US really when to end the war by allowing negotiations, since its only the west propping up Ukraine that allows it to continue it will always lie in their hands to decide. I suspect that will come with a combination of elections (both US, Ukraine and several in Europe) and them wanting to switch their attention to China.
It’s an easy way to make progress slow. Just cover the land in deadly munitions. Nevermind the fact that for the next 50 years 98% of the deaths they cause will be civilians :/
https://youtu.be/VBpwIqdEPtY
Update, movement happening. Maybe not a push to Kupyansk? Borove and Kruhlyakivka look like other possibilities to me. Could be the entire front moves and all of these happen but I suspect it would be one at a time.
Thanks for the update. Do you know if civilians are still living in these areas? Or have they been evacuated in advance?
There are always evacuations offered by the russians but there’s also always plenty of civilians that do not leave. Either due to age, inability or stubbornness “this is my home”. My understanding is that the Ukrainian side tends not to do this, and has some pretty bad habits of camping out near local civilian populations as a method of deterring missile/artillery fire against their armour. Major civilian buildings like schools and rec centres usually get turned into small bases or supply centres since they’re not being used for anything else when on the front line of a war.
If the rumours are true that Ukraine only has 1 line of defence here then things will move very quickly following a breakthrough like this. But I don’t think anyone really has reliable information on what the trench/defensive lines look like for Ukraine. The Russian defensive lines being 3 layers with shark teeth in between on the other hand is very well understood.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/VBpwIqdEPtY
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
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There is a 0% chance Russia has “thousands of functioning tanks” that mysteriously weren’t deemed necessary during their worldwide embarrassment of logistics last year.
I didn’t say thousands. I said a thousand. It’s actually estimated closer to 900 in this buildup along with the 100k troops but that’s neither here nor there really. Maybe if you actually bothered to read or watch anything I send you then you would know this? The issue here is that you’re unwilling to take onboard any information unless it comes from your little circle of neoliberal media sources, which are always late, and always doing an incredibly repetitive narrative that really doesn’t serve to learn or understand much at all. This leaves you completely unaware of what is actually happening.
It’s less that I don’t believe you (or can’t click links) and more that I doubt, severely, Russia’s ability to employ said armor to any degree of effectiveness.
Another
https://youtu.be/OAoYZ850cg0
Fair warning Mercouris is a tory fuckhead. However I suspect that will appeal to a neoliberal like yourself. He’s also a london barrister working in constitutional law and human rights.
The effectiveness of the armour entirely depends on how many Javelins Ukraine have left in my opinion. These were causing the bulk of Russian losses. The way this has been dragged on and delayed and delayed and delayed could imply that the Russians have been aiming to deplete the supplies and munitions that the Ukrainians have in order to make an offensive viable. The west doesn’t really have much left of this shit to give them either without taking it literally out of the hands of active units. Western manufacturing is not keeping up with the rate at which things are getting used.
I’m not ruling out that their offensive will go as badly as the Ukrainian one. It really depends on what they have left, how many weapons supply dumps the Russians have been managing to destroy with those regular missile attacks, etc etc.
Will you remove your downvote now that Kupyansk is almost taken by the Russians?
Nah
Ok champ
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/EF3g4Ua5e7k
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.