Russia's military is citing fresh 'successes' in the Donbas region after reports days ago that Ukrainian forces may have stalled its advance in Sievierodonetsk. "The offensive in the Sievierodonetsk direction is developing successfully," Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a video address Sunday.
He said the key village of Metyolkine at the city's eastern edge had been taken. At the same time the Ukrainian governor of Luhansk province, Serhiy Haidai, admitted that "The situation in Severodonetsk is very difficult" as the Ukrainian fighters are outnumbered and outgunned.
At a moment that Sievierodonetsk is poised to fall to the advancing Russians, which a week ago reached the center of the city, Ukraine's government says Russia is trying to make Kharkiv "a front-line city" again as artillery is being moved toward the neighboring oblast, presumably in order to resume shelling.
Kharkiv is Ukraine's second-largest city with a pre-war population of about 1.4 million people, and is in the northeast. Early in the invasion it was scene of heavy bombardment and fighting.
"Russia is trying to make Kharkiv a frontline city," Ukrainian Interior Minister Vadym Denysenko said Sunday of the largely Russian speaking city which lies just 30km from the Ukraine-Russia border.
According to Reuters, "Within hours of his warning, Russia's Defense Ministry claimed it had struck a tank-repair plant in Kharkiv with Iskander missiles." This underscored Kiev's belief that Russia's military is preparing for another assault on the large city.
"Kharkiv's defenders last month appeared to have pushed Russian forces back from an encirclement operation around the city," Reuters noted further.
"Last week, reports suggested Russian forces had deployed artillery to thwart a Ukrainian counteroffensive near Kharkiv," the report adds.
Likely the Russian will seek to deliver a final and full victory over Luhansk before a major operation focused on Kharkiv. Early in the invasion, swathes of Kharkiv districts were destroyed in weeks of heavy shelling.
In describing the situation in Luhansk, which Russia at this point controls nearly the entirety of, Gov. Haidai described that he's preparing for "the worst".
International correspondents have described ongoing street-by-street fighting for the city, as retreating Ukrainian forces erect roadblocks, burning vehicles and barbed-wire in an attempt to slow the Russian force advance.
Haidai urged for more "long-range weaponry to arrive as soon as possible" from Ukraine's backers, but also underscored, "The fact that the West is helping us is good, but it’s [too] late."
President Zelensky has meanwhile been pressuring leaders in the West to urgently approve more weaponry as his army continues steadily losing ground in the east.
After lying for months, the media are preparing the public for Ukraine’s military collapse...
Diogenes, one of the ancient world’s illustrious philosophers, believed that lies were the currency of politics, and those lies were the ones he sought to expose and debase. To make his point, Diogenes occasionally carried a lit lantern through the streets of Athens in the daylight. If asked why, Diogenes would say he was searching for an honest man.
Finding an honest man today in Washington, D.C., is equally challenging. Diogenes would need a Xenon Searchlight in each hand.
Still, there are brief moments of clarity inside the Washington establishment. Having lied prolifically for months to the American public about the origins and conduct of the war in Ukraine, the media are now preparing the American, British, and other Western publics for Ukraine’s military collapse. It is long overdue.
The Western media did everything in its power to give the Ukrainian defense the appearance of far greater strength than it really possessed. Careful observers noted that the same video clips of Russian tanks under attack were shown repeatedly. Local counterattacks were reported as though they were operational maneuvers.
Russian errors were exaggerated out of all proportion to their significance. Russian losses and the true extent of Ukraine’s own losses were distorted, fabricated, or simply ignored. But conditions on the battlefield changed little over time. Once Ukrainian forces immobilized themselves in static defensive positions inside urban areas and the central Donbas, the Ukrainian position was hopeless. But this development was portrayed as failure by the Russians to gain “their objectives.”
Ground-combat forces that immobilize soldiers in prepared defenses will be identified, targeted, and destroyed from a distance. When persistent overhead intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets, whether manned or unmanned, are linked to precision guided-strike weapons or modern artillery systems informed by accurate targeting data, “holding ground” is fatal to any ground force. This is all the more true in Ukraine, because it was apparent from the first action that Moscow focused on the destruction of Ukrainian forces, not on the occupation of cities or the capture of Ukrainian territory west of the Dnieper River.
The result has been the piecemeal annihilation of Ukrainian forces. Only the episodic infusion of U.S. and allied weapons kept Kiev’s battered legions in the field; legions that are now dying in great numbers thanks to Washington’s proxy war.
No comments:
Post a Comment