Russian Ukrainian War

I was talking about Selidovo. It's a question for several months.
As for Lukashenko's regime, it will be overthrown. Just not now. Now we will resolve the issue of Russia's aggression. He thinks that he has strangled his own opposition, but his rating among the Belarusian people is 3%
That's why I am surprised when they talk about Pokrovsk as if the issue has been resolved. I don't have maps of the operational headquarters, but in August Ukraine captured 1,300 square kilometers in the Kursk region. This is more than the Russian army captured in 8 months. And that part of the Donetsk region is flat steppe. There are very small rivers there, but they can be jumped over. How much more territory we will capture is a question with an asterisk. The Russian army is forced to transfer its troops from the Kharkov and Kherson directions. Accordingly, we are pressing in these places (it was not for nothing that I mentioned villages in the Belgorod oblast).
21.08.2024 Author: Brian Berletic

Kursk: Fighting Russia to the Last Ukrainian​




Kursk: Fighting Russia to the Last Ukrainian


In the lead up to the Ukrainian military’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, even Western headlines were dominated by reports of Ukraine’s gradual demise. Ukraine is admittedly suffering arms and ammunition shortages, as well as facing an unsolvable manpower crisis. Russia has been destroying Ukrainian military power faster than Ukraine and its Western sponsors can reconstitute it.

Western headlines have also been admitting the scale on which Russia is expanding its own military power as its Special Military Operation (SMO) continues into its third year.

While the launch of Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk has diverted attention away from Ukraine’s collapsing fighting capacity, the incursion itself has not only failed to address the factors leading to this collapse, it is already accelerating it.

Politico in an August 15, 2024 article titled, “As Kyiv makes gains in Kursk, Russia strikes back in Donetsk,” cites the spokesman of Ukraine’s 110th Mechanized Brigade who would admit, “since Ukraine launched the Kursk offensive I would say things have become worse in our part of the front. We have been getting even less ammo than before, and the Russians are pushing.”

The same article would also cite “Deep State,” a mapping project Politico claims is “close” to Ukraine Ministry of Defense, claiming, “over the past 24 hours, Russia occupied the villages of Zhelanne and Orlivka and made advances in New York, Krasnohorivka, Mykolaivka and Zhuravka in Donetsk.”

Thus, while Ukraine claims gains in Kursk, it comes at the expense of territory everywhere else along the line of contact.

Because of the nature of the fighting in Kursk where Ukrainian forces have come out from behind extensive defensive lines and are operating out in the open, they are suffering much greater losses than Ukrainian units being pushed back along the line of contact, according to even the Western media.

Superficial Success, Strategic Suicide

Despite this reality, the Western media has invested heavily in depicting Ukraine’s Kursk incursion as a turning point in the fighting.
CNN in its August 15, 2024 article, “Russia appears to have diverted several thousand troops from occupied Ukraine to counter Kursk offensive, US officials say,” attempts at first glance to portray the Ukrainian operation as having successfully diverted Russian forces from the front lines.

Buried deeper in the article, however, CNN reveals that whatever troops Russia is moving are relatively insignificant compared to the number of Russian forces still fighting along the line of contact primarily in Kherson, Zaporozhye, the Donbass, and Kharkov.

In the short-term, experienced forces utilized as a mobile reserve are likely being moved to Kursk until Russian reserves within Russia itself can be sufficiently mobilized and moved to the area of fighting. The vast majority of Russia’s forces not only remain along the actual line of contact, they continue making progress at an accelerated rate.

The same CNN article would quote US officials, saying:

Some officials also raised concerns that Ukraine, which one western official said has sent some of its more experienced forces into Kursk, may have created weaknesses along its own frontlines that Russia may be able to exploit to gain more ground inside Ukraine.

“It’s impressive from a military point of view,” the official said of the Kursk operation. But Ukraine is “committing pretty experienced troops to this, and they can’t afford to lose those troops.”

“And having diverted them from the front line creates opportunities for Russia to seize advantage and break through,” this person added.
Buried under optimistic headlines across the Western media regarding this latest incursion is an ominous truth – that an operation aimed at humiliating Russia, boosting morale, and raising the political, territorial, and military costs for Russia, has only brought Ukraine deeper into its growing arms, ammunition, and manpower crisis.

Toward what end does an incursion accelerating the collapse of Ukraine’s fighting capacity serve?

Washington’s, Not Kiev’s Ends

CNN would also attempt to convince readers that the Kursk incursion took the US itself entirely by surprise. This is untrue.

The United States, following its political capture of Ukraine in 2014, admittedly took over Ukraine’s intelligence networks. These are the same networks that would have been required to organize this most recent incursion.

A New York Times article, “The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin,” not only admits to the CIA’s role in training, shaping, and directing Ukrainian intelligence operations, but also admits to a network of CIA bases along the Ukrainian-Russian border and the fact that the CIA stood up covert military units specifically for crossing over into Russian territory and conducting operations there.

The CIA and other US military and intelligence agencies have been involved in Ukrainian military operations leading up to and all throughout the duration of Russia’s SMO. The Washington Post admits that the US worked with Ukraine to “build a campaign plan” ahead of the failed 2023 Ukrainian offensive.

It is inconceivable Ukraine moved multiple brigades of manpower and equipment, including US-European trained soldiers and Western military equipment to Sumy where the Kursk incursion was launched without Washington’s involvement, let alone without Washington’s knowledge.

Why then did the US organize such an incursion, one admittedly overstretching Ukrainian forces already crumbling under the growing weight of Russian military power? Why, amid Russia’s strategy of attrition, have US planners decided to launch an incursion that will accelerate the loss of Ukrainian manpower, arms, and ammunition it does not have to spare?

In a much wider geopolitical context – Washington’s geopolitical context – the incursion helps raise the cost of victory for Russia in Ukraine as the US seeks to place pressure on and overextend Russia elsewhere within and along its borders.

Years before the SMO even began, as far back as at least 2019, US policymakers openly sought to draw Russia into a costly conflict in Ukraine, just one among many other proposals meant to overextend Russia.

The RAND Corporation in its 2019 paper “Extending Russia” would explain the benefits of “providing lethal aid to Ukraine,” stating:

Expanding U.S. assistance to Ukraine, including lethal military assistance, would likely increase the costs to Russia, in both blood and treasure, of holding the Donbass region. More Russian aid to the separatists and an additional Russian troop presence would likely be required, leading to larger expenditures, equipment losses, and Russian casualties. The latter could become quite controversial at home, as it did when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.
Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk has – at a minimum – raised the political cost of Russia’s ongoing SMO. This most recent incursion into Kursk almost certainly had hoped to reach the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant, just 35 kilometers beyond the furthest extent the incursion has reached as of this writing. Had Ukrainian forces reached the power plant, the price would have been even higher.

In many ways, however, the Kursk incursion has created a much greater strategic dilemma for Ukraine that it has for Russia. While it has unfolded on the wrong side of the border, the outcome is the same as the Kharkov front Russia opened earlier this year.

Regarding the Kharkov front, the New York Times in its May 2024 article, “Facing Russian Advance, a Top Ukrainian General Paints a Bleak Picture,” would admit, “the Russian attacks in the northeast are intended to stretch Ukraine’s already thin reserves of soldiers and divert them from fighting elsewhere,” and that, “the Ukrainian army was trying to redirect troops from other front-line areas to shore up its defenses in the northeast, but that it had been difficult to find the personnel.”

By committing thousands of Ukrainian troops and large amounts of Ukraine’s best military equipment to an incursion into Kursk, it is creating the same overextension of its own forces Russia had created in Kharkov last May, but with the added complication of needing to extend logistics and other means of supporting Ukrainian operations beyond Ukrainian territory itself.
The same RAND Corporation paper proposing to draw Russia into a costly conflict with Ukraine would also discuss the consequences this conflict would have for Ukraine itself, explaining:

…such a move might also come at a significant cost to Ukraine and to U.S. prestige and credibility. This could produce disproportionately large Ukrainian casualties, territorial losses, and refugee flows. It might even lead Ukraine into a disadvantageous peace.
The plan from the very beginning was to lure Russia into a costly conflict in the hopes of precipitating a Soviet-style collapse, but at the expense of Ukraine’s own survival. Thus, what we see unfolding in Ukraine today is simply the consequences predicted by the RAND Corporation in 2019.

Dangerous Escalation and the Long Game

Perhaps most concerning of all is the looming prospect of the US intervening more directly, including in the form of a “buffer zone” similar to that created by the US and its Turkish allies in the east and north of Syria during Washington’s proxy war there.

For this intervention to succeed, Russia would have to be compelled to restrain itself from attacking Western forces arriving in Ukraine.

The possibility of this happening is difficult to predict.

On one hand, Russia has demonstrated immense patience amid other US proxy wars. Russian patience in Syria is finally paying off after almost a decade of enduring US provocations and the presence of US troops east of the Euphrates River. The US now finds itself isolated and vulnerable in Syria, its forces under regular attack there, and a disproportionate amount of US military hardware remains committed to both Syria and the surrounding region, limiting US combat power ahead of a potential conflict with Russia in Eastern Europe or China in the Asia-Pacific.

Moscow may determine that a Western intervention directly into Ukraine will, over time, collapse under its own weight in a similar manner. In the long term, the US is only going to grow weaker and more isolated as a result of its unsustainable, overreaching foreign policy. Initiating direct conflict with the US now, when it is inevitably going to be weaker later, would be permitting the US a potential and unnecessary advantage.

Instead, Russia and its allies may find an opportunity to exercise many of the means of escalation (short of direct conflict with the US itself) they have held in reserve throughout the duration of this conflict. This includes more open and direct military cooperation between Russia and China, including the arming of Russian forces with Chinese manufactured weapons and ammunition.

On the other hand, Russia may decide to restrain itself from attacking Western forces arriving in Ukraine’s westernmost regions, but continue military operations along the line of contact and obviously within Kursk itself to expel Ukrainian forces. The US would seek to test the limits of Russian resolve, seeking to constrain Russian operations as much as possible, just as the US did in Syria from 2015 onward.

Throughout this process, the potential for escalation and direct conflict between Russia and the US will grow.

Despite the continued collapse of Ukraine’s fighting capacity because Ukraine is ultimately a proxy of the United States, a difficult and dangerous transition period lies ahead dependent on the extent to which the US seeks to mitigate Ukraine’s subsequent political and territorial collapse.

Only time will tell whether the US cuts and runs as it did in Afghanistan, or doubles down as it did in Syria. It should be pointed out, however, that the US withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021 to redirect its resources ahead of Russia’s SMO in 2022. Were the US to cut Ukraine loose, it would only be because the US requires resources for a larger, more dangerous conflict elsewhere – namely in the Asia-Pacific region against China.

Either way, when Ukraine’s fighting capacity nears its end, it is likely only wider conflict awaits.
 
21.08.2024 Author: Brian Berletic

Kursk: Fighting Russia to the Last Ukrainian​




Kursk: Fighting Russia to the Last Ukrainian


In the lead up to the Ukrainian military’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, even Western headlines were dominated by reports of Ukraine’s gradual demise. Ukraine is admittedly suffering arms and ammunition shortages, as well as facing an unsolvable manpower crisis. Russia has been destroying Ukrainian military power faster than Ukraine and its Western sponsors can reconstitute it.

Western headlines have also been admitting the scale on which Russia is expanding its own military power as its Special Military Operation (SMO) continues into its third year.

While the launch of Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk has diverted attention away from Ukraine’s collapsing fighting capacity, the incursion itself has not only failed to address the factors leading to this collapse, it is already accelerating it.

Politico in an August 15, 2024 article titled, “As Kyiv makes gains in Kursk, Russia strikes back in Donetsk,” cites the spokesman of Ukraine’s 110th Mechanized Brigade who would admit, “since Ukraine launched the Kursk offensive I would say things have become worse in our part of the front. We have been getting even less ammo than before, and the Russians are pushing.”

The same article would also cite “Deep State,” a mapping project Politico claims is “close” to Ukraine Ministry of Defense, claiming, “over the past 24 hours, Russia occupied the villages of Zhelanne and Orlivka and made advances in New York, Krasnohorivka, Mykolaivka and Zhuravka in Donetsk.”

Thus, while Ukraine claims gains in Kursk, it comes at the expense of territory everywhere else along the line of contact.

Because of the nature of the fighting in Kursk where Ukrainian forces have come out from behind extensive defensive lines and are operating out in the open, they are suffering much greater losses than Ukrainian units being pushed back along the line of contact, according to even the Western media.

Superficial Success, Strategic Suicide

Despite this reality, the Western media has invested heavily in depicting Ukraine’s Kursk incursion as a turning point in the fighting.
CNN in its August 15, 2024 article, “Russia appears to have diverted several thousand troops from occupied Ukraine to counter Kursk offensive, US officials say,” attempts at first glance to portray the Ukrainian operation as having successfully diverted Russian forces from the front lines.

Buried deeper in the article, however, CNN reveals that whatever troops Russia is moving are relatively insignificant compared to the number of Russian forces still fighting along the line of contact primarily in Kherson, Zaporozhye, the Donbass, and Kharkov.

In the short-term, experienced forces utilized as a mobile reserve are likely being moved to Kursk until Russian reserves within Russia itself can be sufficiently mobilized and moved to the area of fighting. The vast majority of Russia’s forces not only remain along the actual line of contact, they continue making progress at an accelerated rate.

The same CNN article would quote US officials, saying:


Buried under optimistic headlines across the Western media regarding this latest incursion is an ominous truth – that an operation aimed at humiliating Russia, boosting morale, and raising the political, territorial, and military costs for Russia, has only brought Ukraine deeper into its growing arms, ammunition, and manpower crisis.

Toward what end does an incursion accelerating the collapse of Ukraine’s fighting capacity serve?

Washington’s, Not Kiev’s Ends

CNN would also attempt to convince readers that the Kursk incursion took the US itself entirely by surprise. This is untrue.

The United States, following its political capture of Ukraine in 2014, admittedly took over Ukraine’s intelligence networks. These are the same networks that would have been required to organize this most recent incursion.

A New York Times article, “The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin,” not only admits to the CIA’s role in training, shaping, and directing Ukrainian intelligence operations, but also admits to a network of CIA bases along the Ukrainian-Russian border and the fact that the CIA stood up covert military units specifically for crossing over into Russian territory and conducting operations there.

The CIA and other US military and intelligence agencies have been involved in Ukrainian military operations leading up to and all throughout the duration of Russia’s SMO. The Washington Post admits that the US worked with Ukraine to “build a campaign plan” ahead of the failed 2023 Ukrainian offensive.

It is inconceivable Ukraine moved multiple brigades of manpower and equipment, including US-European trained soldiers and Western military equipment to Sumy where the Kursk incursion was launched without Washington’s involvement, let alone without Washington’s knowledge.

Why then did the US organize such an incursion, one admittedly overstretching Ukrainian forces already crumbling under the growing weight of Russian military power? Why, amid Russia’s strategy of attrition, have US planners decided to launch an incursion that will accelerate the loss of Ukrainian manpower, arms, and ammunition it does not have to spare?

In a much wider geopolitical context – Washington’s geopolitical context – the incursion helps raise the cost of victory for Russia in Ukraine as the US seeks to place pressure on and overextend Russia elsewhere within and along its borders.

Years before the SMO even began, as far back as at least 2019, US policymakers openly sought to draw Russia into a costly conflict in Ukraine, just one among many other proposals meant to overextend Russia.

The RAND Corporation in its 2019 paper “Extending Russia” would explain the benefits of “providing lethal aid to Ukraine,” stating:


Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk has – at a minimum – raised the political cost of Russia’s ongoing SMO. This most recent incursion into Kursk almost certainly had hoped to reach the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant, just 35 kilometers beyond the furthest extent the incursion has reached as of this writing. Had Ukrainian forces reached the power plant, the price would have been even higher.

In many ways, however, the Kursk incursion has created a much greater strategic dilemma for Ukraine that it has for Russia. While it has unfolded on the wrong side of the border, the outcome is the same as the Kharkov front Russia opened earlier this year.

Regarding the Kharkov front, the New York Times in its May 2024 article, “Facing Russian Advance, a Top Ukrainian General Paints a Bleak Picture,” would admit, “the Russian attacks in the northeast are intended to stretch Ukraine’s already thin reserves of soldiers and divert them from fighting elsewhere,” and that, “the Ukrainian army was trying to redirect troops from other front-line areas to shore up its defenses in the northeast, but that it had been difficult to find the personnel.”

By committing thousands of Ukrainian troops and large amounts of Ukraine’s best military equipment to an incursion into Kursk, it is creating the same overextension of its own forces Russia had created in Kharkov last May, but with the added complication of needing to extend logistics and other means of supporting Ukrainian operations beyond Ukrainian territory itself.
The same RAND Corporation paper proposing to draw Russia into a costly conflict with Ukraine would also discuss the consequences this conflict would have for Ukraine itself, explaining:


The plan from the very beginning was to lure Russia into a costly conflict in the hopes of precipitating a Soviet-style collapse, but at the expense of Ukraine’s own survival. Thus, what we see unfolding in Ukraine today is simply the consequences predicted by the RAND Corporation in 2019.

Dangerous Escalation and the Long Game

Perhaps most concerning of all is the looming prospect of the US intervening more directly, including in the form of a “buffer zone” similar to that created by the US and its Turkish allies in the east and north of Syria during Washington’s proxy war there.

For this intervention to succeed, Russia would have to be compelled to restrain itself from attacking Western forces arriving in Ukraine.

The possibility of this happening is difficult to predict.

On one hand, Russia has demonstrated immense patience amid other US proxy wars. Russian patience in Syria is finally paying off after almost a decade of enduring US provocations and the presence of US troops east of the Euphrates River. The US now finds itself isolated and vulnerable in Syria, its forces under regular attack there, and a disproportionate amount of US military hardware remains committed to both Syria and the surrounding region, limiting US combat power ahead of a potential conflict with Russia in Eastern Europe or China in the Asia-Pacific.

Moscow may determine that a Western intervention directly into Ukraine will, over time, collapse under its own weight in a similar manner. In the long term, the US is only going to grow weaker and more isolated as a result of its unsustainable, overreaching foreign policy. Initiating direct conflict with the US now, when it is inevitably going to be weaker later, would be permitting the US a potential and unnecessary advantage.

Instead, Russia and its allies may find an opportunity to exercise many of the means of escalation (short of direct conflict with the US itself) they have held in reserve throughout the duration of this conflict. This includes more open and direct military cooperation between Russia and China, including the arming of Russian forces with Chinese manufactured weapons and ammunition.

On the other hand, Russia may decide to restrain itself from attacking Western forces arriving in Ukraine’s westernmost regions, but continue military operations along the line of contact and obviously within Kursk itself to expel Ukrainian forces. The US would seek to test the limits of Russian resolve, seeking to constrain Russian operations as much as possible, just as the US did in Syria from 2015 onward.

Throughout this process, the potential for escalation and direct conflict between Russia and the US will grow.

Despite the continued collapse of Ukraine’s fighting capacity because Ukraine is ultimately a proxy of the United States, a difficult and dangerous transition period lies ahead dependent on the extent to which the US seeks to mitigate Ukraine’s subsequent political and territorial collapse.

Only time will tell whether the US cuts and runs as it did in Afghanistan, or doubles down as it did in Syria. It should be pointed out, however, that the US withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021 to redirect its resources ahead of Russia’s SMO in 2022. Were the US to cut Ukraine loose, it would only be because the US requires resources for a larger, more dangerous conflict elsewhere – namely in the Asia-Pacific region against China.

Either way, when Ukraine’s fighting capacity nears its end, it is likely only wider conflict awaits.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj7QYXF6OUE
 
21.08.2024 Author: Brian Berletic

Kursk: Fighting Russia to the Last Ukrainian​




Kursk: Fighting Russia to the Last Ukrainian


In the lead up to the Ukrainian military’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, even Western headlines were dominated by reports of Ukraine’s gradual demise. Ukraine is admittedly suffering arms and ammunition shortages, as well as facing an unsolvable manpower crisis. Russia has been destroying Ukrainian military power faster than Ukraine and its Western sponsors can reconstitute it.

Western headlines have also been admitting the scale on which Russia is expanding its own military power as its Special Military Operation (SMO) continues into its third year.

While the launch of Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk has diverted attention away from Ukraine’s collapsing fighting capacity, the incursion itself has not only failed to address the factors leading to this collapse, it is already accelerating it.

Politico in an August 15, 2024 article titled, “As Kyiv makes gains in Kursk, Russia strikes back in Donetsk,” cites the spokesman of Ukraine’s 110th Mechanized Brigade who would admit, “since Ukraine launched the Kursk offensive I would say things have become worse in our part of the front. We have been getting even less ammo than before, and the Russians are pushing.”

The same article would also cite “Deep State,” a mapping project Politico claims is “close” to Ukraine Ministry of Defense, claiming, “over the past 24 hours, Russia occupied the villages of Zhelanne and Orlivka and made advances in New York, Krasnohorivka, Mykolaivka and Zhuravka in Donetsk.”

Thus, while Ukraine claims gains in Kursk, it comes at the expense of territory everywhere else along the line of contact.

Because of the nature of the fighting in Kursk where Ukrainian forces have come out from behind extensive defensive lines and are operating out in the open, they are suffering much greater losses than Ukrainian units being pushed back along the line of contact, according to even the Western media.

Superficial Success, Strategic Suicide

Despite this reality, the Western media has invested heavily in depicting Ukraine’s Kursk incursion as a turning point in the fighting.
CNN in its August 15, 2024 article, “Russia appears to have diverted several thousand troops from occupied Ukraine to counter Kursk offensive, US officials say,” attempts at first glance to portray the Ukrainian operation as having successfully diverted Russian forces from the front lines.

Buried deeper in the article, however, CNN reveals that whatever troops Russia is moving are relatively insignificant compared to the number of Russian forces still fighting along the line of contact primarily in Kherson, Zaporozhye, the Donbass, and Kharkov.

In the short-term, experienced forces utilized as a mobile reserve are likely being moved to Kursk until Russian reserves within Russia itself can be sufficiently mobilized and moved to the area of fighting. The vast majority of Russia’s forces not only remain along the actual line of contact, they continue making progress at an accelerated rate.

The same CNN article would quote US officials, saying:


Buried under optimistic headlines across the Western media regarding this latest incursion is an ominous truth – that an operation aimed at humiliating Russia, boosting morale, and raising the political, territorial, and military costs for Russia, has only brought Ukraine deeper into its growing arms, ammunition, and manpower crisis.

Toward what end does an incursion accelerating the collapse of Ukraine’s fighting capacity serve?

Washington’s, Not Kiev’s Ends

CNN would also attempt to convince readers that the Kursk incursion took the US itself entirely by surprise. This is untrue.

The United States, following its political capture of Ukraine in 2014, admittedly took over Ukraine’s intelligence networks. These are the same networks that would have been required to organize this most recent incursion.

A New York Times article, “The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin,” not only admits to the CIA’s role in training, shaping, and directing Ukrainian intelligence operations, but also admits to a network of CIA bases along the Ukrainian-Russian border and the fact that the CIA stood up covert military units specifically for crossing over into Russian territory and conducting operations there.

The CIA and other US military and intelligence agencies have been involved in Ukrainian military operations leading up to and all throughout the duration of Russia’s SMO. The Washington Post admits that the US worked with Ukraine to “build a campaign plan” ahead of the failed 2023 Ukrainian offensive.

It is inconceivable Ukraine moved multiple brigades of manpower and equipment, including US-European trained soldiers and Western military equipment to Sumy where the Kursk incursion was launched without Washington’s involvement, let alone without Washington’s knowledge.

Why then did the US organize such an incursion, one admittedly overstretching Ukrainian forces already crumbling under the growing weight of Russian military power? Why, amid Russia’s strategy of attrition, have US planners decided to launch an incursion that will accelerate the loss of Ukrainian manpower, arms, and ammunition it does not have to spare?

In a much wider geopolitical context – Washington’s geopolitical context – the incursion helps raise the cost of victory for Russia in Ukraine as the US seeks to place pressure on and overextend Russia elsewhere within and along its borders.

Years before the SMO even began, as far back as at least 2019, US policymakers openly sought to draw Russia into a costly conflict in Ukraine, just one among many other proposals meant to overextend Russia.

The RAND Corporation in its 2019 paper “Extending Russia” would explain the benefits of “providing lethal aid to Ukraine,” stating:


Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk has – at a minimum – raised the political cost of Russia’s ongoing SMO. This most recent incursion into Kursk almost certainly had hoped to reach the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant, just 35 kilometers beyond the furthest extent the incursion has reached as of this writing. Had Ukrainian forces reached the power plant, the price would have been even higher.

In many ways, however, the Kursk incursion has created a much greater strategic dilemma for Ukraine that it has for Russia. While it has unfolded on the wrong side of the border, the outcome is the same as the Kharkov front Russia opened earlier this year.

Regarding the Kharkov front, the New York Times in its May 2024 article, “Facing Russian Advance, a Top Ukrainian General Paints a Bleak Picture,” would admit, “the Russian attacks in the northeast are intended to stretch Ukraine’s already thin reserves of soldiers and divert them from fighting elsewhere,” and that, “the Ukrainian army was trying to redirect troops from other front-line areas to shore up its defenses in the northeast, but that it had been difficult to find the personnel.”

By committing thousands of Ukrainian troops and large amounts of Ukraine’s best military equipment to an incursion into Kursk, it is creating the same overextension of its own forces Russia had created in Kharkov last May, but with the added complication of needing to extend logistics and other means of supporting Ukrainian operations beyond Ukrainian territory itself.
The same RAND Corporation paper proposing to draw Russia into a costly conflict with Ukraine would also discuss the consequences this conflict would have for Ukraine itself, explaining:


The plan from the very beginning was to lure Russia into a costly conflict in the hopes of precipitating a Soviet-style collapse, but at the expense of Ukraine’s own survival. Thus, what we see unfolding in Ukraine today is simply the consequences predicted by the RAND Corporation in 2019.

Dangerous Escalation and the Long Game

Perhaps most concerning of all is the looming prospect of the US intervening more directly, including in the form of a “buffer zone” similar to that created by the US and its Turkish allies in the east and north of Syria during Washington’s proxy war there.

For this intervention to succeed, Russia would have to be compelled to restrain itself from attacking Western forces arriving in Ukraine.

The possibility of this happening is difficult to predict.

On one hand, Russia has demonstrated immense patience amid other US proxy wars. Russian patience in Syria is finally paying off after almost a decade of enduring US provocations and the presence of US troops east of the Euphrates River. The US now finds itself isolated and vulnerable in Syria, its forces under regular attack there, and a disproportionate amount of US military hardware remains committed to both Syria and the surrounding region, limiting US combat power ahead of a potential conflict with Russia in Eastern Europe or China in the Asia-Pacific.

Moscow may determine that a Western intervention directly into Ukraine will, over time, collapse under its own weight in a similar manner. In the long term, the US is only going to grow weaker and more isolated as a result of its unsustainable, overreaching foreign policy. Initiating direct conflict with the US now, when it is inevitably going to be weaker later, would be permitting the US a potential and unnecessary advantage.

Instead, Russia and its allies may find an opportunity to exercise many of the means of escalation (short of direct conflict with the US itself) they have held in reserve throughout the duration of this conflict. This includes more open and direct military cooperation between Russia and China, including the arming of Russian forces with Chinese manufactured weapons and ammunition.

On the other hand, Russia may decide to restrain itself from attacking Western forces arriving in Ukraine’s westernmost regions, but continue military operations along the line of contact and obviously within Kursk itself to expel Ukrainian forces. The US would seek to test the limits of Russian resolve, seeking to constrain Russian operations as much as possible, just as the US did in Syria from 2015 onward.

Throughout this process, the potential for escalation and direct conflict between Russia and the US will grow.

Despite the continued collapse of Ukraine’s fighting capacity because Ukraine is ultimately a proxy of the United States, a difficult and dangerous transition period lies ahead dependent on the extent to which the US seeks to mitigate Ukraine’s subsequent political and territorial collapse.

Only time will tell whether the US cuts and runs as it did in Afghanistan, or doubles down as it did in Syria. It should be pointed out, however, that the US withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021 to redirect its resources ahead of Russia’s SMO in 2022. Were the US to cut Ukraine loose, it would only be because the US requires resources for a larger, more dangerous conflict elsewhere – namely in the Asia-Pacific region against China.

Either way, when Ukraine’s fighting capacity nears its end, it is likely only wider conflict awaits.
Let me quote from this article. "This most recent incursion into Kursk almost certainly had hoped to reach the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant, just 35 kilometers beyond the furthest extent the incursion has reached as of this writing. Had Ukrainian forces reached the power plant, the price would have been even higher." I said this days ago. This was the goal, and Ukraine failed, period.
 
Even the pro Ukrainian media just reported the Kursk failure. It's pathetic. Gen. Syrsky said
"Colonel General Aleksandr Syrsky, Ukraine’s top military commander, stated that Kiev failed to achieve its objective in Kursk. According to him, the operation was mainly aimed at diverting Moscow’s attention, forcing the Russians to withdraw troops from Donbass and send them to the northern border. In this way, the Ukrainians hoped to make significant territorial gains in Donbass, facing unguarded Russian positions.

Syrsky acknowledges that the real result of the Kursk invasion was different: Russia further expanded its positions in Donbass, gaining new territories and deploying even more troops in the region. The Ukrainian commander believes that currently the main fronts in the Donbass are Pokrovsk and Kurakhovsk, in the west of the Donetsk People's Republic. These cities have key strategic positions for the supply lines to Zaporozhye and Dnepropetrovsk. Since 2014, Kiev has been concerned about maintaining military fortifications in both cities, but constant Russian attacks threaten Ukrainian stability in the region.

"One of the tasks of conducting an offensive operation in the Kursk direction was to divert significant enemy forces from other directions, first and foremost the Pokrovsk and Kurakhovsk directions (...) Of course, the enemy understands this, so it continues to focus its main efforts on the Pokrovsk direction, where its most combat-ready units are concentrated (...) The enemy is trying to withdraw units from other directions, while in the Pokrovsk direction, on the contrary, it is increasing its efforts," he said.

In other words, Kiev’s maneuver in Kursk was a desperate Ukrainian attempt to prevent – or at least delay – the inevitable Russian victory in Donbass. Kiev expected a Russian withdrawal from strategic cities in the disputed zone in order to strengthen the border positions in Kursk, which sounds like a serious strategic mistake on the part of the Ukrainians."

 
What an achievement ! While russia grinded the most heavily fortified fronts built over 10 years of preparation at eastern donbass region, still steamrolling it through cities after cities well fortified, ukraine found a area thanks to US satt overwatch, which was least guarded or guarded with some handfull of conscripts, steamrolled it toward the NPP, in the way killed many of the civilians just for being russian, spectacularly failed to even reach it's 20 km perimeter, then lobbed some himars cluster projectioles at NPP !!!!, lost about 7k of it's most experienced battle hardened units, lost about 20%+ of it's total mechanised units, destroyed 3 bridges( against which russia lay-ed dozens more pontoon bridges instead) with projectiles for which further use permission was denied by US( atleast officially), now the whole concentration is inside a bubble, susceptible of getting hammered from 3 sides! Apart from the blister, now Luko Mister is standing with his army at north to wall any further sudden moves.... while presumably Poland and Finland indicated inability to further supply any war merchandise....



All Ukraine can come with....
View attachment 7986

BTW-- Rumor is-- Some meme is going that some baltic nation is going to donate 20 civilian cars impounded from drunk drivers adding about 150k Euros in donation. What a day came!

The gas pipe line seems to be farfetched to be captured now... if ukraine can capture it, it will be a turning point - indeed.

And the killings of Russian citizens have only hardened Russian resolve to finish the Ukrainian conflict on Russian terms. Ukraine have only succeeded in convincing Russia populace that it is an existential crisis for Russia and that Russia has to win it at all costs.
 
21.08.2024 Author: Brian Berletic

Kursk: Fighting Russia to the Last Ukrainian​




Kursk: Fighting Russia to the Last Ukrainian


In the lead up to the Ukrainian military’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, even Western headlines were dominated by reports of Ukraine’s gradual demise. Ukraine is admittedly suffering arms and ammunition shortages, as well as facing an unsolvable manpower crisis. Russia has been destroying Ukrainian military power faster than Ukraine and its Western sponsors can reconstitute it.

Western headlines have also been admitting the scale on which Russia is expanding its own military power as its Special Military Operation (SMO) continues into its third year.

While the launch of Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk has diverted attention away from Ukraine’s collapsing fighting capacity, the incursion itself has not only failed to address the factors leading to this collapse, it is already accelerating it.

Politico in an August 15, 2024 article titled, “As Kyiv makes gains in Kursk, Russia strikes back in Donetsk,” cites the spokesman of Ukraine’s 110th Mechanized Brigade who would admit, “since Ukraine launched the Kursk offensive I would say things have become worse in our part of the front. We have been getting even less ammo than before, and the Russians are pushing.”

The same article would also cite “Deep State,” a mapping project Politico claims is “close” to Ukraine Ministry of Defense, claiming, “over the past 24 hours, Russia occupied the villages of Zhelanne and Orlivka and made advances in New York, Krasnohorivka, Mykolaivka and Zhuravka in Donetsk.”

Thus, while Ukraine claims gains in Kursk, it comes at the expense of territory everywhere else along the line of contact.

Because of the nature of the fighting in Kursk where Ukrainian forces have come out from behind extensive defensive lines and are operating out in the open, they are suffering much greater losses than Ukrainian units being pushed back along the line of contact, according to even the Western media.

Superficial Success, Strategic Suicide

Despite this reality, the Western media has invested heavily in depicting Ukraine’s Kursk incursion as a turning point in the fighting.
CNN in its August 15, 2024 article, “Russia appears to have diverted several thousand troops from occupied Ukraine to counter Kursk offensive, US officials say,” attempts at first glance to portray the Ukrainian operation as having successfully diverted Russian forces from the front lines.

Buried deeper in the article, however, CNN reveals that whatever troops Russia is moving are relatively insignificant compared to the number of Russian forces still fighting along the line of contact primarily in Kherson, Zaporozhye, the Donbass, and Kharkov.

In the short-term, experienced forces utilized as a mobile reserve are likely being moved to Kursk until Russian reserves within Russia itself can be sufficiently mobilized and moved to the area of fighting. The vast majority of Russia’s forces not only remain along the actual line of contact, they continue making progress at an accelerated rate.

The same CNN article would quote US officials, saying:


Buried under optimistic headlines across the Western media regarding this latest incursion is an ominous truth – that an operation aimed at humiliating Russia, boosting morale, and raising the political, territorial, and military costs for Russia, has only brought Ukraine deeper into its growing arms, ammunition, and manpower crisis.

Toward what end does an incursion accelerating the collapse of Ukraine’s fighting capacity serve?

Washington’s, Not Kiev’s Ends

CNN would also attempt to convince readers that the Kursk incursion took the US itself entirely by surprise. This is untrue.

The United States, following its political capture of Ukraine in 2014, admittedly took over Ukraine’s intelligence networks. These are the same networks that would have been required to organize this most recent incursion.

A New York Times article, “The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin,” not only admits to the CIA’s role in training, shaping, and directing Ukrainian intelligence operations, but also admits to a network of CIA bases along the Ukrainian-Russian border and the fact that the CIA stood up covert military units specifically for crossing over into Russian territory and conducting operations there.

The CIA and other US military and intelligence agencies have been involved in Ukrainian military operations leading up to and all throughout the duration of Russia’s SMO. The Washington Post admits that the US worked with Ukraine to “build a campaign plan” ahead of the failed 2023 Ukrainian offensive.

It is inconceivable Ukraine moved multiple brigades of manpower and equipment, including US-European trained soldiers and Western military equipment to Sumy where the Kursk incursion was launched without Washington’s involvement, let alone without Washington’s knowledge.

Why then did the US organize such an incursion, one admittedly overstretching Ukrainian forces already crumbling under the growing weight of Russian military power? Why, amid Russia’s strategy of attrition, have US planners decided to launch an incursion that will accelerate the loss of Ukrainian manpower, arms, and ammunition it does not have to spare?

In a much wider geopolitical context – Washington’s geopolitical context – the incursion helps raise the cost of victory for Russia in Ukraine as the US seeks to place pressure on and overextend Russia elsewhere within and along its borders.

Years before the SMO even began, as far back as at least 2019, US policymakers openly sought to draw Russia into a costly conflict in Ukraine, just one among many other proposals meant to overextend Russia.

The RAND Corporation in its 2019 paper “Extending Russia” would explain the benefits of “providing lethal aid to Ukraine,” stating:


Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk has – at a minimum – raised the political cost of Russia’s ongoing SMO. This most recent incursion into Kursk almost certainly had hoped to reach the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant, just 35 kilometers beyond the furthest extent the incursion has reached as of this writing. Had Ukrainian forces reached the power plant, the price would have been even higher.

In many ways, however, the Kursk incursion has created a much greater strategic dilemma for Ukraine that it has for Russia. While it has unfolded on the wrong side of the border, the outcome is the same as the Kharkov front Russia opened earlier this year.

Regarding the Kharkov front, the New York Times in its May 2024 article, “Facing Russian Advance, a Top Ukrainian General Paints a Bleak Picture,” would admit, “the Russian attacks in the northeast are intended to stretch Ukraine’s already thin reserves of soldiers and divert them from fighting elsewhere,” and that, “the Ukrainian army was trying to redirect troops from other front-line areas to shore up its defenses in the northeast, but that it had been difficult to find the personnel.”

By committing thousands of Ukrainian troops and large amounts of Ukraine’s best military equipment to an incursion into Kursk, it is creating the same overextension of its own forces Russia had created in Kharkov last May, but with the added complication of needing to extend logistics and other means of supporting Ukrainian operations beyond Ukrainian territory itself.
The same RAND Corporation paper proposing to draw Russia into a costly conflict with Ukraine would also discuss the consequences this conflict would have for Ukraine itself, explaining:


The plan from the very beginning was to lure Russia into a costly conflict in the hopes of precipitating a Soviet-style collapse, but at the expense of Ukraine’s own survival. Thus, what we see unfolding in Ukraine today is simply the consequences predicted by the RAND Corporation in 2019.

Dangerous Escalation and the Long Game

Perhaps most concerning of all is the looming prospect of the US intervening more directly, including in the form of a “buffer zone” similar to that created by the US and its Turkish allies in the east and north of Syria during Washington’s proxy war there.

For this intervention to succeed, Russia would have to be compelled to restrain itself from attacking Western forces arriving in Ukraine.

The possibility of this happening is difficult to predict.

On one hand, Russia has demonstrated immense patience amid other US proxy wars. Russian patience in Syria is finally paying off after almost a decade of enduring US provocations and the presence of US troops east of the Euphrates River. The US now finds itself isolated and vulnerable in Syria, its forces under regular attack there, and a disproportionate amount of US military hardware remains committed to both Syria and the surrounding region, limiting US combat power ahead of a potential conflict with Russia in Eastern Europe or China in the Asia-Pacific.

Moscow may determine that a Western intervention directly into Ukraine will, over time, collapse under its own weight in a similar manner. In the long term, the US is only going to grow weaker and more isolated as a result of its unsustainable, overreaching foreign policy. Initiating direct conflict with the US now, when it is inevitably going to be weaker later, would be permitting the US a potential and unnecessary advantage.

Instead, Russia and its allies may find an opportunity to exercise many of the means of escalation (short of direct conflict with the US itself) they have held in reserve throughout the duration of this conflict. This includes more open and direct military cooperation between Russia and China, including the arming of Russian forces with Chinese manufactured weapons and ammunition.

On the other hand, Russia may decide to restrain itself from attacking Western forces arriving in Ukraine’s westernmost regions, but continue military operations along the line of contact and obviously within Kursk itself to expel Ukrainian forces. The US would seek to test the limits of Russian resolve, seeking to constrain Russian operations as much as possible, just as the US did in Syria from 2015 onward.

Throughout this process, the potential for escalation and direct conflict between Russia and the US will grow.

Despite the continued collapse of Ukraine’s fighting capacity because Ukraine is ultimately a proxy of the United States, a difficult and dangerous transition period lies ahead dependent on the extent to which the US seeks to mitigate Ukraine’s subsequent political and territorial collapse.

Only time will tell whether the US cuts and runs as it did in Afghanistan, or doubles down as it did in Syria. It should be pointed out, however, that the US withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021 to redirect its resources ahead of Russia’s SMO in 2022. Were the US to cut Ukraine loose, it would only be because the US requires resources for a larger, more dangerous conflict elsewhere – namely in the Asia-Pacific region against China.

Either way, when Ukraine’s fighting capacity nears its end, it is likely only wider conflict awaits.
Too much reading. I'm too lazy. I don't know English well enough to skim read.
Indeed, we were pushed towards negotiations that looked more like capitulation. But we don't agree and after the invasion of the Kursk region there will be only one player left.
Any article is a piece of paper for the ass. I don't know from what slums these analysts were found: I already said that there is an open example with AD.
It is probably us who use T-55 and GT-MU and other equipment from the 50s, as MLRS use RBU-6000, and 73-mm guns from BMP-1 are mounted on carriages and they replace 82-mm mortars, which the Russians lack. The appearance of ancient M-30 is also an indicator that Malva is a PR campaign. I don't know what blind person doesn't see this.
Who lacks equipment. Using the example of the Kursk region - we have various types of AV there. Russian Tigers and other similar vehicles have almost no analogues. So this is just a picture, like the one where Putler attacked Florida.
photo_2024-08-16_14-33-28.webp
 

Lololol as I said. Superiority of western jets and untouchable image of USAF jets created during Iraq war and Gulf war is going to vanish.

Ganging up on weak un-coordinated airforces with 12:1 air superiority is one thing, going against a proper enemy with complex EW, AD and properly trained AF is another thing.
 
This is war. Don't make some kind of cult out of damaged Western equipment
There are different cases. Once a MiG-29 shot down a Sh-136 with a cannon and the debris hit the jet. The altitude was decent and the pilot managed to eject. If the F-16 caught cruise missiles like that, then they fly at an altitude of 50-100 meters. So a sharp maneuver after the explosion and the ground is very close.
 
Evolving scenario, evolving tactics...
more and more 12 bore s with birdshots and Saiga 12 s with multiple wielders are getting common to find.

factually, shotgun is the best possible way to counter the incoming FPV drones coupled with EW jammers.

1725032818551.webp

Was reading somewhere that, due to intense EW jamming, only 15% of Ukrainian FPV drones can find it's target at saturated spaces, while it goes 60% while at free space.
 
"Russia has continued to make rapid advances in eastern Ukraine toward the key city of Pokrovsk, sparking public criticism of the Ukrainian military leadership and raising questions about Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s decision to launch a bold incursion into the Russian Kursk region."

 
This is war. Don't make some kind of cult out of damaged Western equipment
There are different cases. Once a MiG-29 shot down a Sh-136 with a cannon and the debris hit the jet. The altitude was decent and the pilot managed to eject. If the F-16 caught cruise missiles like that, then they fly at an altitude of 50-100 meters. So a sharp maneuver after the explosion and the ground is very close.
I was wonder what your thoughts on the US restricting Ukraine from using western weapons to attack inside Russia. This is why the Kursk offensive failed, but at least Ukraine is now redeploying the 47th brigade to the Pokrovsk direction, but it's too late now to make much difference.
 
I was wonder what your thoughts on the US restricting Ukraine from using western weapons to attack inside Russia. This is why the Kursk offensive failed, but at least Ukraine is now redeploying the 47th brigade to the Pokrovsk direction, but it's too late now to make much difference.
:facepalm2:
How much crap is inside your head.
The 47th Brigade was not involved in the Kursk operation. Did you see even one Bradley there? This is the easiest clue.
At the initial stage of the operation, airborne assault brigades were involved in the AV and APC. Now motorized infantry units have appeared there, but there are no mechanized (on the IFV) or tank brigades there.
What failed is the Russian offensive in the Kharkiv direction, but not in the Kursk direction. Have they already driven the Ukrainian army out of there or at least eliminated the encirclement in the Glushkovsky district?

View: https://youtu.be/KPqgw-tvUY4

But if the airborne units disappeared from there, then we do not know in which region of Russia there will be another breakthrough. Or maybe it will be in Transnistria.;)
 

Latest Replies

Featured Content

Trending Threads

VPN-HSL-250-X250
Back
Top