No useful information about Ukraine can be obtained from Western media. The Russian military operates without the need of news releases, so little information is provided.
Last week Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said, “Of course they [Ukraine] can win this. The proof is literally in the outcomes that you’re seeing everyday.” Kirby must get his information from CNN. I don’t know of any battles the Ukrainians have won. I don’t know of any Ukrainian forces that are not surrounded and trapped, cut off from supplies. There are no offensive actions being conducted by Ukrainian military or Azov militia. Ukrainian military infrastructure and command and control systems have been destroyed. When the West delivers weapons, the weapons are destroyed on arrival as was the S-300 air defense system from Slovakia.
The Kremlin appointed a new commander of the operation, and the change in command has been presented by the Western media as an attempt to free Russian forces from a stalemate.
As there is no stalemate, the commander might have been replaced because of objection to the restricted use of Russian heavy weapons, which have mainly been restricted to the destruction of the Ukrainian military infrastructure. The Kremlin’s strategy means casualties among Russian troops who have to clear the surrounded areas in street fighting. Most generals don’t like this use of troops when heavy weapons can eliminate the opposing force.
Russian troops are operating only in eastern and southern Ukraine. The troops served the purpose of preventing a large Ukrainian army, now encircled and trapped, from conquering the two Donbass Russian republics recently recognized by Russia after an eight-year delay. The other task assigned to the Russian troops is to exterminate the neo-Nazi Azov militia that has committed atrocities against the Donbass Russians. The process has gone slowly, because the fighting is mainly in Donbass, which is populated by Russians, and the Kremlin wants to rescue the people, not kill them.
The mistakes the Kremlin made were eight years ago and in the eight years since. The Kremlin, focused on the Sochi Olympics, did not intervene and prevent Washington’s overthrow of the Ukrainian government. The Kremlin failed to pre-empt the crisis in Donbass when the Kremlin refused the Donbass appeal to be reincorporated in Russia like Crimea. The Kremlin, stupidly relying on negotiation with the West to enforce the Minsk Agreement to stop Ukraine’s attacks on Donbass, permitted eight years of Azov attacks on Donbass and erosion of Donbass territory, while Washington equipped and trained a Ukrainian army. In other words, the Kremlin had learned nothing from the Washington-organized attack on South Ossetia by Georgia in 2008.
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