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A Kharkiv Encirclement As Dreamed Up By ‘Sources’
Yesterday The Economist published about an alleged Russian plan to partially encircle Kharkiv:
Ukraine’s desperate struggle to defend Kharkiv (archived)
I find that this is unlikely to ever have been a Russian plan:
Retrieved military plans, details of which were shared with The Economist, suggest the Russians were probing to see if they could partially encircle Kharkiv and put pressure on the Ukrainian formations to the east of the Pechenihy reservoir. The operation was supposedly planned for May 15th-16th but was brought forward by nearly a week for unknown reasons.
According to the plans, the Russians had identified two axes of attack on either side of the reservoir. The push on the western axis was intended, over 72 hours, to bring Russian troops to within artillery range of Kharkiv city at the village of Borshchova. They were stopped by a rapidly redeployed grouping from the elite 92nd Brigade, which pushed them back a full 10km from their initial goal.
…
On the Vovchansk axis, further east, the Russian plan had been to fight past Anna’s father’s house on the reservoir, right down to the town of Pechenihy. The Russians initially made quick work of this operation, sweeping through an area that should have been prepared with minefields and serious engineering fortifications but wasn’t.
The piece includes this not very helpful map:
I have marked the LiveUAmap map of the Russian Kharkiv incursion with arrows from the border to the villages named in the Economist piece:
bigger
Borshchova is 15 kilometer (~10 miles) from the border.
The town of Pechenihy is west of the reservoir and the distance from the border is some 45 kilometer (~30 miles).
The whole Russian force used for the Kharkiv incursion is not larger than one division with some 12 to 15,000 men – most of them in back positions. Various videos from the operation show that the frontline forces mostly consist of infantry advancing on foot. There are only a few tanks, if any, and no large convoys of resupplies.
How such a forces would be supposed to do (within 72 hours) a five kilometer advance per day towards Borshchova or even a 15 kilometer advance per day towards Pechenihy is beyond me.
Such a move would require at least three divisions with a decent tank fist, absolute air superiority and highly mobile logistics. Given the prevalence of drones on both sides of the battlefield such an operation would certainly have incurred high losses for little but some tactical gain.
It would be totally untypical for the Russian force as it is currently fighting. Everything is done to avoid Russian losses. Artillery and air attacks are used to destroy the enemy. Only after that has happened will the infantry advance.
I do not know who made the plans the Economist published about. I do not know who 'retrieved' and 'shared' it. But I am pretty sure that neither has not involved anyone who is part of – or even near to – the Russian military.
It is disinformation with a likely purpose of demonstrating that the Russian forces are less capable than they really are:
"Look, they had such big plans but only achieved this little."
Do people still fall for such nonsense?
Timothy Snyder’s mind is toxic with distorted Racist hate for Russians. I don’t know why people can’t pick it up when he speaks. The poisonous sophistry of lies literally drip from his lips. No different than Cheney Applebaum, Pompeo, Clinton or Hitler.
fwiw for those unaware of this type of long term manipulations in the US. Stephen Cohen battled with the distortions of Snyder (and McFaul) his entire life almost.
Neoliberal Russophobes like Timothy Snyder have nothing but historical revisionist propaganda to offer, and everyone knows that Wikipedia is untrustworthy when it comes to controversial subjects that have explanations that differ from establishment narratives.
1997 “Russian commentators welcomed this development, viewing it as a positive shift in the global correlation of power and as an appropriate response to America’s sponsorship of NATO’s expansion. Some even sounded gleeful that the Sino-Russian alliance would give America its deserved comeuppance. However, a coalition allying Russia with both China and Iran can develop only if the United States is shortsighted enough to antagonize China and Iran simultaneously.”
― Zbigniew Brzeziński, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives
aka the Outlaw US Empire of Lies and Despotic Totalitarian Autocracy
2014 Quote
Stephen F. Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University.
he documented it all until his death September 18, 2020 as he was trying to prevent this war. you can read it all here: https://www.thenation.com/authors/stephen-f-cohen/
FEBRUARY 12, 2014
Distorting Russia
How the American media misrepresent Putin, Sochi and Ukraine.
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/distorting-russia/
“The Sochi Games will soon pass, triumphantly or tragically, but the potentially fateful Ukrainian crisis will not. A new Cold War divide between West and East may now be unfolding, not in Berlin but in the heart of Russia’s historical civilization. The result could be a permanent confrontation fraught with instability and the threat of a hot war far worse than the one in Georgia in 2008. These dangers have been all but ignored in highly selective, partisan and inflammatory US media accounts, which portray the European Union’s “Partnership” proposal benignly as Ukraine’s chance for democracy, prosperity and escape from Russia, thwarted only by a “bullying” Putin and his “cronies” in Kiev.
… Knight’s innuendo prefigured a purported report on Ukraine by Yale professor Timothy Snyder in the February 20 issue. Omissions of facts, by journalists or scholars, are no less an untruth than misstatements of fact. Snyder’s article was full of both, which are widespread in the popular media, but these are in the esteemed NYRB and by an acclaimed academic. Consider a few of Snyder’s assertions:
§ ”On paper, Ukraine is now a dictatorship.” In fact, the “paper” legislation he’s referring to hardly constituted dictatorship, and in any event was soon repealed. Ukraine is in a state nearly the opposite of dictatorship—political chaos uncontrolled by President Viktor Yanukovych, the Parliament, the police or any other government institution.
§ ”The [parliamentary] deputies…have all but voted themselves out of existence.” Again, Snyder is alluding to the nullified “paper.” Moreover, serious discussions have been under way in Kiev about reverting to provisions in the 2004 Constitution that would return substantial presidential powers to the legislature, hardly “the end of parliamentary checks on presidential power,” as Snyder claims. (Does he dislike the prospect of a compromise outcome?)
§ ”Through remarkably large and peaceful public protests…Ukrainians have set a positive example for Europeans.” This astonishing statement may have been true in November, but it now raises questions about the “example” Snyder is advocating. The occupation of government buildings in Kiev and in Western Ukraine, the hurling of firebombs at police and other violent assaults on law enforcement officers and the proliferation of anti-Semitic slogans by a significant number of anti-Yanukovych protesters, all documented and even televised, are not an “example” most readers would recommend to Europeans or Americans. Nor are they tolerated, even if accompanied by episodes of police brutality, in any Western democracy.
§ ”Representatives of a minor group of the Ukrainian extreme right have taken credit for the violence.” This obfuscation implies that apart perhaps from a “minor group,” the “Ukrainian extreme right” is part of the positive “example” being set. (Many of its representatives have expressed hatred for Europe’s “anti-traditional” values, such as gay rights.) Still more, Snyder continues, “something is fishy,” strongly implying that the mob violence is actually being “done by russo-phone provocateurs” on behalf of “Yanukovych (or Putin).” As evidence, Snyder alludes to “reports” that the instigators “spoke Russian.” But millions of Ukrainians on both sides of their incipient civil war speak Russian.
§ Snyder reproduces yet another widespread media malpractice regarding Russia, the decline of editorial fact-checking. In a recent article in the International New York Times, he both inflates his assertions and tries to delete neofascist elements from his innocuous “Ukrainian extreme right.” Again without any verified evidence, he warns of a Putin-backed “armed intervention” in Ukraine after the Olympics and characterizes reliable reports of “Nazis and anti-Semites” among street protesters as “Russian propaganda.”
§ Perhaps the largest untruth promoted by Snyder and most US media is the claim that “Ukraine’s future integration into Europe” is “yearned for throughout the country.” But every informed observer knows—from Ukraine’s history, geography, languages, religions, culture, recent politics and opinion surveys—that the country is deeply divided as to whether it should join Europe or remain close politically and economically to Russia. There is not one Ukraine or one “Ukrainian people” but at least two, generally situated in its Western and Eastern regions.
Such factual distortions point to two flagrant omissions by Snyder and other US media accounts. The now exceedingly dangerous confrontation between the two Ukraines was not “ignited,” as the Times claims, by Yanukovych’s duplicitous negotiating—or by Putin—but by the EU’s reckless ultimatum, in November, that the democratically elected president of a profoundly divided country choose between Europe and Russia. Putin’s proposal for a tripartite arrangement, rarely if ever reported, was flatly rejected by US and EU officials.
But the most crucial media omission is Moscow’s reasonable conviction that the struggle for Ukraine is yet another chapter in the West’s ongoing, US-led march toward post-Soviet Russia, which began in the 1990s with NATO’s eastward expansion and continued with US-funded NGO political activities inside Russia, a US-NATO military outpost in Georgia and missile-defense installations near Russia. Whether this longstanding Washington-Brussels policy is wise or reckless, it—not Putin’s December financial offer to save Ukraine’s collapsing economy—is deceitful. The EU’s “civilizational” proposal, for example, includes “security policy” provisions, almost never reported, that would apparently subordinate Ukraine to NATO.
Any doubts about the Obama administration’s real intentions in Ukraine should have been dispelled by the recently revealed taped conversation between a top State Department official, (Neocon Zionist) Victoria Nuland, and the US ambassador in Kiev. The media predictably focused on the source of the “leak” and on Nuland’s verbal “gaffe”—“Fuck the EU.” But the essential revelation was that high-level US officials were plotting to “midwife” a new, anti-Russian Ukrainian government by ousting or neutralizing its democratically elected president—that is, a coup.
Americans are left with a new edition of an old question. Has Washington’s twenty-year winner-take-all approach to post-Soviet Russia shaped this degraded news coverage, or is official policy shaped by the coverage? Did (warmonger extremist) Senator John McCain stand in Kiev alongside the well-known leader of an extreme nationalist party because he was ill informed by the media, or have the media deleted this part of the story because of McCain’s folly?
And what of Barack Obama’s decision to send only a low-level delegation, including retired gay athletes, to Sochi? In August, Putin virtually saved Obama’s presidency by persuading Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to eliminate his chemical weapons. Putin then helped to facilitate Obama’s heralded opening to Iran. Should not Obama himself have gone to Sochi—either out of gratitude to Putin, or to stand with Russia’s leader against international terrorists who have struck both of our countries? Did he not go because he was ensnared by his unwise Russia policies, or because the US media misrepresented the varying reasons cited: the granting of asylum to Edward Snowden, differences on the Middle East, infringements on gay rights in Russia, and now Ukraine? Whatever the explanation, as Russian intellectuals say when faced with two bad alternatives, “Both are worst.””
In class lecturing – Timothy Snyder: The Making of Modern Ukraine. Class 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJczLlwp-d8&t=982s
NATO-Russia John Mearsheimer & Timothy Snyder
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyT-krDx9Q0
Steven Cohen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-B1vWFdPXo
https://youtu.be/r0rtr-I0Zjc?si=S9_NVrBd4A-I40Dz&t=482
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6xIYhSd2gg
debate between Stephen F. Cohen and Michael McFaul (ex-Russia ambassador and professor)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUWAsTij9yg&t=6199s
Posted by: Lavrov’s Dog | May 22 2024 4:53 utc | 215
Why did Biden agree to TV debates with Trump?
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Last week, the headline made a splash that Biden agreed to TV debates with Trump. What could be the reason why the demented president was pressured into this?
from Anti-Spiegel
May 20, 2024 6:00 am
I’ve said it a few times, most recently in the last Tacheles broadcast. My guess is that Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report, written on behalf of the Democratic-led US Department of Justice, in which Hur describes Biden as an “old man with a poor memory” and gleefully lists events in his life that included The year of death of his favorite son, Joe Biden could no longer remember in his conversations with the investigator, was not a coincidence or an accident.
My guess is that after the primaries, which Biden will of course win due to the lack of an opposing candidate, the US Democrats will remove the US President based on the constitutional amendment that allows the removal of a president who is unfit for office. Biden, who cannot win the election against Trump without blatant voter fraud, must be replaced if the Democrats want to retain power.
The scenario I suspect is that the Democrats dump Biden before the August convention, where the Democrats formally choose their presidential nominee, and then pull a candidate out of the hat that appeals to the party’s elites. I don’t know who that will be, we’re talking about Michelle Obama, but one thing is certain: it won’t be Vice President Harris, who is even more unpopular in the USA than Biden himself.
The announcement of the TV debates fits into this scenario, the first of which takes place unusually early, namely on June 27th, a little over six weeks before the Democratic Party Convention. Until now, the TV debates have always taken place after the party conferences to ensure that the candidates actually nominated by the parties compete against each other.
If Biden embarrasses himself on June 27th and his dementia is presented to the whole world in a two-hour debate, that would be the starting point for the Democrats to remove Biden immediately before the party convention. I therefore see the date of the first TV debate as an indication that my assumption could come true.
This could also be seen in the report by the USA correspondent that Russian television showed on Sunday in its weekly news review. It also covered some other interesting and absurd topics from the past political week in the USA, which is why I translated the report again this week.
Start of translation:
TV debates with Trump could be disastrous for Biden
Americans are stocking up on popcorn. Biden’s campaign staff has agreed to televised debates with Trump and agreed on the dates: June 27 and September 10.
Biden’s entourage must be in panic, because journalists have counted that Biden has made 148 slips of the tongue since the beginning of the year. And that’s just in the transcripts on the White House website.
Early last week, more than 60 Republican members of Congress made an appeal to the White House urging Biden to undergo a cognitive test or withdraw from the campaign. Biden has so far refused. However, the TV debate with the sharp-tongued Donald Trump will be such a test.
American politics, both foreign and domestic, are rapidly turning into buffoonery. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken played guitar in warring Ukraine. And during a session of Congress, insults and bickering broke out between women. The highlight of the political carnival could be the duel between the aging presidential candidates. Biden, who had previously avoided meeting his opponent in person, was the first to throw down the gauntlet. “Donald Trump lost to me twice in debates in 2020. Now he wants to debate with me again. Make my day, mate. I heard that you have Wednesdays off,” Joe Biden addressed his opponent.
That was a not-so-subtle reference to Trump’s daily court sessions. Biden’s campaign staff’s desire to act as if everything is business as usual is already raising questions. For the first time, the TV debates will not take place in the fall as usual, but in the summer. And with a whole list of conditions, all of which are calculated against Trump. Broadcast only on television channels loyal to Biden, meeting under four sterile conditions.
“I think Donald Trump will wipe the floor with him. And it won’t matter if Biden gets high on caffeine and energy drinks again, like he did during his speech to Congress, or if it’s regular Joe, like he did yesterday when he barely made it off the stage.”
said Sean Hannity on Fox News.
By agreeing to everything, Trump accepts the challenge. But he also has his own conditions. Debates must take place standing and last at least two hours. What is good for Trump is deadly for Biden. Another requirement is a doping test. And that’s not a whim, but in Biden’s case a necessity. “I just want to debate this guy, but you know, I’m going to demand a drug test. No really. I don’t want him to act like he did in the speech to Congress. “He was totally drunk,” emphasized Donald Trump.
This gesture of desperation threatens to become a catastrophe for Biden. After all, the White House also knows that Trump is superior to him both verbally and when it comes to standing on his feet, but the poll numbers are miserable. Trump is in the lead in five of six important swing states. And that is already too dangerous. In Nevada, he has a 13-point lead over Biden. The swing states that Biden “won” in 2020 are drifting more and more towards Trump.
Migration crisis, rising prices and abortions, the country enters the debates with a bouquet of contradictions. The foreign policy agony influences domestic policy and there are no foreign policy victories at all. It will be impossible to present voters with a victory over Moscow, as they wanted two years ago. Ukraine is on the verge of collapse and this will have to be discussed in the debates. The 60 billion allocated came six months late. And now Biden is discussing with the generals about sending American trainers to Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the White House is deciding whether to approve attacks by Kiev with American weapons on facilities on Russian territory. “Ukraine has asked the Biden administration to help identify targets in Russia that Kiev could attack with its own weapons. It has also asked the United States to lift restrictions on the use of American-made weapons against military targets on Russian territory, according to US officials,” wrote US media familiar with the situation.
The success of the Russian offensive is driving official Washington to despair, as is corruption in Ukraine, which Robert Storch, the Pentagon’s state inspector general, described in his report as “the most corrupt state in Europe.” But the project still needs to be kept afloat.
“Obviously the situation is incredibly desperate. We know this is a difficult time, but we are also confident that military assistance can bring about change on the battlefield. Yesterday, the Secretary of State announced an additional $2 billion in aid,” said State Department Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel.
Relations with the eternal ally are also a boomerang for the White House. Why does the USA support Israel and what are the national interests here? The answer to this question is no longer all that obvious to Americans today.
Biden has just admitted that the bombs handed over to Israel in the Gaza Strip have killed thousands of civilians. But a third of Biden’s campaign donors are a symbiosis of the Israeli lobby and the American military-industrial complex, which thrive on the Iron Dome and the billions of dollars in contracts for the Israeli army.
And now, a week after suspending deliveries to Tel Aviv, the White House decides to restart the arms deal for Israel worth more than a billion dollars. But Washington appears to be prepared for the possibility that Israel may not win this time in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. An extensive investigation by the New York Times into the actions of Israeli settlers in the Palestinian territories leads to a clear conclusion: For decades, Orthodox Jews have been engaging in lawlessness with the help of right-wing extremist members of the Israeli government. Palestinian villages were systematically bulldozed and all complaints were silenced and ignored.
“The devastating Hamas attacks in Israel on October 7, the ongoing Israeli hostage crisis, and the subsequent Israeli invasion and bombing of the Gaza Strip may have focused the world’s attention on Israel’s continued failure to resolve the issue of Palestinian autonomy. But it is in the West Bank that the long-term effects of the occupation on Israeli law and democracy can be seen most clearly,” emphasizes the New York Times.
The radical ideology of Zionism in the short history of modern Israel has become the basis for the country’s current leadership, conclude the authors of the article
https://anti-spiegel.ru/2024/warum-hat-biden-tv-debatten-mit-trump-zugestimmt/
Posted by: ossi | May 22 2024 7:59 utc | 241
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