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Another Zelensky Lie Debunked – White House Says Ukraine Must Give Up Territory
Yesterday I mentioned the burning shopping center in Kremenchuk, Ukraine, of which the Ukrainian president Zelensky falsely claimed that thousand people had been inside.
I asked:
Satellite pictures show that the shopping center is right next to the large Kredmash machine plant. Was that the real target of the attack with the shopping center being an unintended casualty?
It has now been confirmed that the answer to my question is 'yes'.
Today's report on the war by the Russian Defense Ministry says:
On June 27, in Kremenchug (Poltava region), Russian Aerospace Forces launched a high-precision air attack at hangars with armament and munitions delivered by USA and European countries at Kremenchug road machinery plant.
High-precision attack has resulted in the neutralisation of west-manufactured armament and munitions concentrated at the storage area for being delivered to Ukrainian group of troops in Donbass.
Detonation of the storaged munitions caused a fire in a non-functioning shopping centre next to the facilities of the plant.
Ahhh – "don't trust the Russians!" you say. Well, don't trust anyone I say, just scrutinize the facts.
The Ukrainians have published surveillance video from a park catching the moments of the two explosions. A large flash appears and people are running away as some debris falls down.
The park is around an artificial lake with an island in the middle that can be reached by a bridge. There is a small round building on the island.
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Here is a Google satellite view of the whole scene.
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The light gray shopping center roof can be seen south of the large Kredmash machine plant in the center. The small park from which the surveillance videos come is directly north of it. Google has marked it in green as some special recreational space. The factory has direct rail access at its southern side with several rail tracks for loading and unloading machinery. Rail access makes it an ideal space for preparing or repairing heavy weapons. It seems that the railway area was one of the two targets.
Still not convinced? Well, here is video from a Ukrainian TV station taken on the factory grounds. It is showing a crater and the debris of the factory. The areas where it was hit are pretty much destroyed.
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According to the Ukrainian emergence services the attack has caused the death of 16 people and wounded 59. So most of Zelensky's 'thousand' people inside the shopping center must have either survived or never existed at all with the later being the more likely case.
The shopping center was obviously as empty as its large empty parking space I mentioned yesterday. It somehow came on fire after the factory next door was bombed. Those who died were most likely soldiers or factory workers who were preparing 'western' weapons for delivery to the front.
Zelensky's lie has been debunked just as the other horror fictions he has told about Russians.
Meanwhile the White House is preparing for a retreat from Ukraine. CNN headlines:
Biden officials privately doubt that Ukraine can win back all of its territory
The piece is by the 'deranged conspiracy theorist and scandal plagued CIA propagandist' Natasha Bertrand. That makes it an official administration position.
That 'counteroffensive later this year' seems very unlikely to me. When the Russian forces see any buildup for one they will destroy it before it can take off.
The Ukraine will not regain any of the territory that the Russians do not want it to regain. It isn't in the position to do so militarily nor through negotiations. It will simply have to accept defeat and give up on the east and south and accept the loss of the source of 70-80% of its former GDP.
All this was completely foreseeable since the very first day of the war.
Thanks, all, for the many fine links and comments here. I typically post at a time when most of you are in bed and thus am usually late to the party.
@ Tom_Q_Collins | Jun 29 2022 0:54 utc | 189:
I’ve often had trouble picturing how Russia could take over the whole of Ukraine (minus perhaps the ‘rump state’ you mention) and keeping the peace. IOW, even if the Ukrainians are told to surrender by their FUKUS/NATO masters, and your scenario (or one very similar) happens, it would be very difficult to maintain order in such a large country with about half of the population identifying with the EU and not Russia. Wouldn’t that be a recipe for either a much larger civil war than what’s been raging (would need infusions of arms from the West) for the past 8 years and the possibility that Russia would need to implement some massive military occupation for a long time?
I have not been following this conflict closely in recent weeks other than the occasional sitrep or analysis by b and – when I have time – comments such as yours and others who know a lot more about it than I do at the moment.
I’ve been giving this a lot of thought, lately, and looking back at–for instance–operation Bagration in WWII, and how things progressed in Syria, the general way a victory seems to progress (and I believe I read some sort of excerpt from Clausewitz, regarding this) is that one army grinds upon the other one until finally the lines simply break.
We just saw that in Sievierdonetsk and Lisichansk: the lines there held right up until they couldn’t and then the troops in that cauldron broke and took flight.
Of course that’s just one of the main battles taking place, right now, but as Mercouris pointed out this victory is going to allow the Allied forces to smooth out their lines and eliminate the salient that Ukraine had been holding and exploiting to shell DPR/LPR territory. However, one main point that can’t be stressed enough is that, first, there are reports of as much as 80% casualty rates in that cauldron–and those are supposed to be UAFs most elite, experienced, and highly trained troops. Those troops simply cannot be replaced: there are no replacements available to send them, only very new, very green, and often very old conscripts.
An additional point, though, is that these troops are now going to need to rebuild and restock their defenses. The UAF personnel aren’t taking any of the heavy equipment with them; they’re fleeing with what they can carry.
That will give the RAF/Allied troops that have recently cleansed that salient and “cooked” that cauldron a lot of time to regroup, re-man and rebuilid the defenses from which the UAF personnel have just fled (much easier than building them from scratch, as the UAFs will more-or-less be faced with), and redeploy the less-exhausted troops against Zaporizhnia, Kharkhiv and–eventually–Odessa (via Kherson).
Someone was pointing out on a website I was reading, the other day (it may have been here) that if the RAF pursue a hard attack up the middle, through Zaporizhnia and establish a strong salient there–something I have no idea if they’re capable of doing, because as I have read that area is the most strongly fortified portion of the UAF lines–then that effectively divides the entire UAF fighting force into two large cauldrons while further opening up to the RAF/Allies the possibility of attacks deep upon the UAF’s rear.
My point is that what we are likely going to see is just what we’ve been seeing: the RAF/Allies will slowly grind their way through these entrenched fortifications and using their air and artillery to destroy as much of the heavy support weaponry as they can before it even makes it to the front. Then, once those lines break, RAF/Allied forces move forward in a rapid charge and take as much ground as they can before running into more fortifications.
Eventually, the war will reach a point where two things happen:
A) Ukrainian forces get caught facing a lot of open ground with no place they might expect to be able to flee to, and
B) There are no longer any plausibly trained and equipped reinforcements to resupply the UAF units with.
At that point the UAF forces will have been effectively divided up many isolated pockets (check out an interactive map of Bagration, some time, and you can see what I mean), the RAF/Allies will have…what…150,000 ground forces in reserve as well as the entire Belorussian army?
The only option for those troops facing annihilation will be surrender.
The way this will look to us–thanks to the “fog of war”–will be “Ukraine’s still talking about a counter offensive!” “How long is this going to take?” “Is Russia ever going to get this thing completed??”–and then POP! Suddenly it’s over.
There will be mopping up operations, of course: the Nazis aren’t going to give in so easily and there will likely be partisan operations out of the cities. But keep in mind that most people in Ukraine–outside of Galicia, of course–already speak Russian as their first or second language and it has traditionally served as the Lingua Franca of the region.
There will be plenty of native Ukrainians who will cooperate with the Russians in implementing their intended policies. I agree with RSH: I just can’t see Russia stopping any of this until it gets a complete, relatively unconditional surrender that delivers each and every political objective that Putin and Lavrov have laid out.
Moreover, I think it’s instructional to look at how the people of the Donbass have been receiving the Russians: largely, peace seems to have returned to those areas quite quickly, humanitarian operations are progressing well, and while the rebuilding hasn’t started yet there doesn’t seem to be any big problem with keeping law and order and getting along with the natives.
The farther west the RAF/Allied forces go the less true that will be, but it does seem to me as if, looking at ethnographic maps of the region, there will remain an awful lot of support for Russia even after crossing the Dnieper.
With Ukraine’s size I think it’s pretty clear that Russia/the Allies are going to need to set up puppet states in a lot of areas to handle the policing and government of the 404. I don’t see Russia itself sending in a million troops to occupy the place.
Posted by: Pacifica Advocate | Jun 29 2022 3:41 utc | 220
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