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Ukraine SitRep: The ‘Sanitary Zone’ On The Northern Border With Russia
In today's Daily Report the Russian Ministry of Defense confirmed Ukrainian reports that it had launched an attack from Russia into the Kharkiv area in north-east Ukraine:
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As a result of offensive operations, units of the Sever Group of Forces have liberated Borisovka, Ogurtsovo, Pletenevka, Pylnaya, and Strelechya (Kharkov region).
Russian troops have defeated manpower and hardware of 23rd and 43rd mechanised brigades, 120th and 125th brigades of the AFU and the 15th State Border Covering Force close to Volchansk, Vesyoloye, Glubokoye, Neskuchnoye, and Krasnoye (Kharkov region).
The enemy losses were up to 170 troops, three armoured fighting vehicles, and four motor vehicles.
If the numbers in the Daily Report are somewhat correct the Ukrainian losses yesterday included 1620 dead and/or severely wounded, 21 tracked fighting vehicles and tanks, 30 trucks, 47(!) artillery pieces of various types, 4 expensive air defense systems and 6 field ammunition depots. 35 Ukrainian soldiers were taken prisoner.
These losses are about double the usual count.
The opening of a new front towards the Kharkiv region might have one or more of three purposes.
- To surround and eventually take Kharkiv city, the second biggest one in Ukraine.
- To create a buffer zone along the border to prevent Ukrainian attacks on Russian grounds.
- To divert Ukrainian reserves and to prevent them from joining the intensifying fight in the Donbas region.
To 1: Kharkiv has more than a million inhabitants. To surround and eventually take it would require a force of more than 100,000 soldiers. There are no observations or reports about Russian forces of that size anywhere near the larger area.
To 2: There is a lot speaking for this intent. On March 18, following several attacks by Ukraine towards Belgorod, President Putin had announced that a buffer zone would eventually be needed:
“We will be forced at some point, when we consider it necessary, to create a certain ‘sanitary zone’ on the territories controlled by the (Ukrainian government),” Putin said late Sunday.
This “security zone,” Putin said, “would be quite difficult to penetrate using the foreign-made strike assets at the enemy’s disposal.”
To 3: Diverting enemy forces from the main axis is always a benefit when intense fighting is going on. In this the operation towards Kharkiv has already been successful. The Ukrainians have ordered their reserves to move into the Kharkiv region. In yesterday's evening address the Ukrainian president Zelenski said:
"We are adding more troops to Kharkiv fronts. Both along our state border and along the entire frontline, we will invariably destroy the invaders to disrupt any Russian offensive intentions."
Thus the Kharkiv offensive seems designed to create a buffer zone, maybe 6 miles / 10 kilometers deep, on Ukrainian land along the norther border with Russia. That it diverts Ukrainian forces from elsewhere and positions them in mostly open land for their eventual destruction is just a welcome side effect.
It is my understanding that any further liberation of large cities in Ukraine will have to wait until the majority of the Ukrainian forces is utterly destroyed or defeated and incapable of resisting further onslaughts.
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A Pessimistic Economist Laments The End Of Order
The magazine for and by multi-millionaires and billionaires, The Economist, warns that the end is imminent:
The liberal international order is slowly coming apart – (archived)
Its collapse could be sudden and irreversible
For years the order that has governed the global economy since the second world war has been eroded. Today it is close to collapse. A worrying number of triggers could set off a descent into anarchy, where might is right and war is once again the resort of great powers. Even if it never comes to conflict, the effect on the economy of a breakdown in norms could be fast and brutal.
It is, in my view, true that the 'liberal international order', which after World War II largely regulated world trade and politics is in demise.
But who's fault is that?
The examples The Economist gives to support its central claim point to one culpable nation:
Cont. reading: A Pessimistic Economist Laments The End Of Order
Ukrainian Losses And The Role An Austrian Archduke Has Had In Them
A recent piece in the New York Times connects us to a name which played a serious role in the last century of Ukrainian 'nationalism'.
The history of the western Ukrainian region is, like in some other European areas, a quite convoluted drama that still plays out today.
The first reports of war fatigue in the 'nationalist' western Ukraine are coming in. Natalia Yermak, a Ukrainian cartoon producer turned New York Times journalist, reports from the Galician area near Lviv:
In Western Ukraine, a Community Wrestles With Patriotism or Survival (archived) – New York Times
As the war drags on, communities that were steadfast in their commitment to the war effort have been shaken by the unending violence on the front line.
It was sunset when Maj. Kyrylo Vyshyvany of the Ukrainian army stepped into the yard of his childhood home in Duliby, a village in western Ukraine, just after his younger brother, also a soldier, had been buried. Their mother was still crying in the living room.
“I can already see that she’ll be coming to visit him every day,” he said that day. He was right, but he would not be by her side. A few days after the funeral, in March 2022, he was killed in a Russian missile strike on a Ukrainian military base and buried next to his brother, Vasyl.
The Vyshyvany brothers were the first deaths from Duliby and the surrounding community after Russia began its full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022. Since then, 44 more Ukrainian soldiers from the area have been killed — more than four times the local death toll from the previous eight years of fighting Russian-backed separatists in the east.
For Duliby and its surrounding enclave of Khodoriv — total population around 24,000 people — waiting for the next solemn death notification and the funeral that follows has become a bitter routine. But even as the town meets and buries the fallen with modest ceremony, some neighbors are quietly weighing the price they are willing to pay for a war with no end in sight.
Divisions have started to form between residents agnostic about the war — often those whose family members have dodged the draft or fled the country — and those who have loved ones on the front line or who fully support the war effort.
The name Vyshyvany looked quite familiar to me. I'll come back to it.
The reporter depicts Galicia, the hotbed of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) fascists, as 'nationalist':
Cont. reading: Ukrainian Losses And The Role An Austrian Archduke Has Had In Them
NATO To Officially Reject Ukraine Intervention
After some recent threats from 'western' countries to intervene with their own troops in the war in Ukraine Russia responded by revealing a deadly threat:
Russia also announced a spontaneous drill of the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons:
Russia has threatened to strike British military facilities and said it will hold drills simulating the use of battlefield nuclear weapons in response to UK weapons being used by Ukraine to strike its territory.
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It is the first time Russia has publicly announced drills involving tactical nuclear weapons, although its strategic nuclear forces regularly hold exercises.
The exercises will be held by the southern group of Russian forces which is also involved in the special military operation in Ukraine.
This should for now shut up the loud voices who dream of defeating Russia in Ukraine.
It now seems that the treat achieved its purpose.
The Italian broadsheet Corriere Della Serra reports (in Italian, edited machine translation):
"No boots on the ground". This, according to the Courier, is one of the key phrases contained in the original draft of the document and will be approved by Nato summit, held in Washington from 9 to 11 July. The reference is to the Ukraine: the North Atlantic alliance will not send soldiers into battle ("no boots on the ground"). The strategy, dictated by the United States, does not change. At the same time, however, western leaders prepare for a change of pace.
An official NATO decision, not to send any soldiers to Ukraine, is an assurance to Russia. It is also an attempt to block certain presidents, in this case the French Emmanuel Macron, from contradicting that strategy. That is at least how the Ukrainian outlet Strana as well as long time Russia correspondent Gilbert Doctorow interpret it. Strana (machine translation):
Cont. reading: NATO To Officially Reject Ukraine Intervention
Palestine Open Thread 2024-133
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Ukraine Open Thread 2024-132
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Open (Neither Ukraine Nor Palestine) Thread 2024-131
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Short and to the point: At Dien Bien Phu (archived) – LRB
Ukraine SitRep: Eating The Seed Corn – Intervention Threats And Responses
Dima of the Military Summary Channel and others have mentioned that the Ukrainian army has deployed its police and military cadets to the front line.
This is like farmer who, during a winter famine, eats his seed corn for the next year. It will only prolong the crisis and guarantee that there will be even more hunger during the following winter.
Where will the next generation of Ukrainian army officers come from when the cadets are all dead?
Over the last days the Democratic Minority Leader in the House Hakeem Jeffries suggested that U.S. troops would have to intervene in Ukraine:
In an interview with CBS News, Jeffries expressed concerns that despite billions of dollars in military aid from the United States, if Ukraine cannot secure victory over Russia, America may be compelled to intervene directly in the conflict.
The British Foreign Minister David Cameron has invited Ukraine to use British delivered weapons against Russian territory:
David Cameron said Ukraine “absolutely has the right” to conduct attacks inside Russia with British weapons as he made his second visit to Kyiv since becoming foreign secretary.
Lord Cameron said it was up to Kyiv to decide how to use the ammunition supplied by Britain.
“In terms of what the Ukrainians do, in our view, it is their decision about how to use these weapons, they are defending their country, they were illegally invaded by Vladimir Putin and they must take those steps,” he said.
France has allegedly deployed parts of its Foreign Legion to Ukraine. The report follows musings by the French president Macron about putting French troops onto the ground in Ukraine.
All this was a bit too much for Russia. It invited the British ambassador to its Foreign Ministry to get an earful of serious talk:
Russia's foreign ministry said the UK's ambassador to Moscow had been "summoned" to make him "reflect on the inevitable catastrophic consequences of such hostile steps by London".
Russia also announced a spontaneous drill of the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons:
Russia has threatened to strike British military facilities and said it will hold drills simulating the use of battlefield nuclear weapons in response to UK weapons being used by Ukraine to strike its territory.
…
It is the first time Russia has publicly announced drills involving tactical nuclear weapons, although its strategic nuclear forces regularly hold exercises.
The exercises will be held by the southern group of Russian forces which is also involved in the special military operation in Ukraine.
This should for now shut up the loud voices who dream of defeating Russia in Ukraine.
There is zero hope that this could be achieved. The Ukrainian army has had 600-700,000 soldiers, maybe even more. It has been defeated. How many soldiers could France deploy into Ukraine? 5,000-10,000? And all NATO together? 100,000?
No western force is currently configured and equipped to defeat a near peer competitor force. Twenty-five years of 'war of terror' have left those armies in a very sorry state. At least during the first year of an expanded war their troops would have no chance to survive. The Russian forces, by now a well oiled machine with plenty of excellent weapons, would defeat them within one or two weeks. What then?
Since February 2022 Russia's old and new president Vladimir Putin has warned against all interventions:
Let me emphasise once again: if anyone intends to intervene from the outside and create a strategic threat to Russia that is unacceptable to us, they should know that our retaliatory strikes will be lightning-fast. We have the tools we need for this, the likes of which no one else can claim at this point. We will not just brag; we will use them if necessary. And I want everyone to know this; we have made all the decisions on this matter.
I for one do not take that lightly.
Another Zionist Crime – The Psychopathic Destruction Of Rafah
This morning the Israeli army ordered hundred thousands of refugees to move from the eastern part of Rafah to the already destroyed and likewise overcrowded area around Khan Younis. Hours later it started to bomb and destroy the place.
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The eastern part of Rafah includes the Rafah crossing to Egypt through which food an other necessities enter Gaza. It also includes the largest still existing healthcare facility.
As the Zionist entity will likely continue in its usual pattern the eastern part of Rafah will be completely destroyed. After that it will do the same with its western part.
There will not be one building left in Gaza that is inhabitable.
I mostly refrain from writing about the crimes of the colonial settler regime. It is simply beyond my emotional capabilities.
This poem, by Caitlin Johnstone, is probably the best way to express my feelings:
I Oppose Israel’s Atrocities In Gaza Because I’m Not A Psychopath
I don’t oppose the butchery in Gaza because I love Hamas or hate Jews or love Islam or hate America. I don’t oppose the butchery in Gaza because I’m a lefty or a commie or an anarchist or an anti-imperialist. I oppose the butchery in Gaza because I’m not a fucking psychopath.
Every one who openly or silently supports the Zionist in this should be in jail.
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Ukraine Open Thread 2024-129
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The MoA Week In Review – OT 2024-128
Last week's posts on Moon of Alabama:
Meta:
b here:
I am still feeling drained and not up to any challenge. It will probably take another two week of low ops to get me back into some tolerable state. Please bear with me.
When it came out in March I had read and linked to the latest Alex Vershinin piece at RUSI:
The Attritional Art of War: Lessons from the Russian War on Ukraine. – RUSI
The attritional character of the war was obvious since Putin ordered the de-militarization of Ukraine. It is finally getting some discussion.
Vershinin is thus right in that the war in Ukraine is a war of attrition. But it is a one-sided one. It is only NATO and its proxy force Ukraine which get attrited while the Russian military gains in quality and quantity.
Still, it's a must read:
The fastest way to lose a war of attrition is to focus on manoeuvre, expending valuable resources on near-term territorial objectives.
This is exactly what Ukraine has done so far (Bakhmut, Krinky).
This is the current phase of the war, with SecDef Shoigu now officially talking of an ongoing Russian offensive:
When the second phase [of attritional warfare] begins, the offensive should be launched across a broad front, seeking to overwhelm the enemy at multiple points using shallow attacks. The intent is to remain inside the layered bubble of friendly protective systems, while stretching depleted enemy reserves until the front collapses. There is a cascading effect in which a crisis in one sector forces the defenders to shift reserves from a second sector, only to generate a crisis there in turn. As forces start falling back and leaving prepared fortifications, morale plummets, with the obvious question: ‘If we can’t hold the mega-fortress, how can we hold these new trenches?’ Retreat then turns into rout. Only then should the offensive extend towards objectives deeper in the enemy rear.
The 'west' (i.e. the U.S.) has lost its mind on the issue:
If the West is serious about a possible great power conflict, it needs to take a hard look at its industrial capacity, mobilisation doctrine and means of waging a protracted war, rather than conducting wargames covering a single month of conflict and hoping that the war will end afterwards.
See also:
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Other issues:
Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – OT 2024-128
Palestine Open Thread 2024-127
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Smearing The ‘Enemy’ – A Typical U.S. Info-Op
Here is an example of a fairly typical U.S. information operation – this one against China.
On April 20 the New York Times, in collaboration with some German media, came up with this sensational headline:
Top Chinese Swimmers Tested Positive for Banned Drug, Then Won Olympic Gold – New York Times
China's own doping agency had detected tiny amounts of a banned drugs in some athletes of its swimming team. It informed, as it should do, the World Anti Doping Agency WADA and started to investigate the case:
China acknowledged the positive tests in a report by its antidoping regulator, saying that the swimmers had ingested the banned substance unwittingly and in tiny amounts, and that no action against them was warranted.
But an examination by The New York Times found that the previously unreported episode sharply divided the antidoping world, where China’s record has long been a flashpoint. American officials and other experts said the swimmers should have been suspended or publicly identified pending further investigation, and they suggested that the failure to do so rested with Chinese sports officials; swimming’s international governing body, World Aquatics; and the World Anti-Doping Agency, the global authority that oversees national drug-testing programs.
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Even after other national and international antidoping officials repeatedly provided the global regulator, known as WADA, with intelligence suggesting a cover-up and doping by Chinese swimmers, the agency chose not to try to hold the athletes accountable, asserting “a lack of any credible evidence” to challenge China’s version of events. WADA defended its decision not to take action, calling the criticism unsubstantiated.
The Chinese anti-doping agency as well as WADA handled the case by the book. There was a plausible explanation of a food contamination with tiny amounts of the drug during a swimming event in China. No other test before and after that event had been positive. The amount of drugs involved was too tiny to make a difference. WADA did not put out a public notice about the incident as no further action was required. No athletes were publicly named and shamed as none had been proven to be guilty.
But that did not fit the U.S. messaging agenda that was designed to defame China. Thus other headlines in the usual western propaganda media were following up:
In a long press conference (video) WADA went public to defend itself. It had done all what it was supposed to do in that case.
WADA says it astonished by 'completely false, defamatory' remarks by USADA chief in case of Chinese swimmers – Global Times
A fairly neutral report on the issue came out in support of WADA:
Cont. reading: Smearing The ‘Enemy’ – A Typical U.S. Info-Op
Prime Minister Of Georgia Exposes U.S. Regime Change Attempt
In the April 18 I had mentioned a recent color revolution attempt in Georgia:
U.S./EU Lobby Against Georgian Law That Would Reveal Their Secret Influence
Those organization who currently receive money from the various U.S. or EU government or non-government organizations are of course not amused that they will have to reveal their association with such sources. They want to lobby for foreign positions without being identified as foreign influencers.
They have therefore launched protests against their country's government and parliament which has passed the law in the first reading. Two further readings will be required to finalize the law.
The protesters against the law claim that it is a "Russian law" against "foreign agents".
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However neither is the law "Russian style" – it is a copy of FARA – nor does the law include the loaded word "agent". It does not accuse anyone of being such but seeks public transparency over foreign financial influences which would of course also include Russian ones.
Despite violent protests by the usual suspects the relevant bill has passed its second reading in the Georgian parliament. A third and final reading is expected in the mid of May.
The 'NGO' complex of U.S./EU regime change organizations in Georgia is enormous:
Lord Bebo @MyLordBebo – 8:20 UTC · May 3, 2024
🇬🇪 “Georgia has one of the highest amount of NGOs per capita!
– 20,000 NGOs are active in Georgia!
– 1 NGO per 148 citizens!
– 90% get their funding from foreign countries!”
-> He is not pro Russia, he is pro Georgia and the protesters are pro money!
-> BBC interview with Nikoloz Samkharadze, Chair, Foreign Relations Committee, Parliament of Georgia (vid)
The current government of Georgia has a solid majority and obviously knows what is happening in its country.
It has rejected a recent – conditional – invitation to the U.S.:
The Government of Georgia has declined an invitation from the US to discuss strategic partnership and assistance, reports Ekho Kavkazu.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia confirmed receiving the invitation from the Prime Minister. However, before the visit, parliament was supposed to temporarily suspend consideration of the bill On Transparency of Foreign Influence.
Well, the parliament did not do so.
Now witness this very public slap-in-the face which Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze is handing out to Derek H. Chollet, the Counselor of the U.S. State Department:
Cont. reading: Prime Minister Of Georgia Exposes U.S. Regime Change Attempt
Ukraine SitRep: Niu-York Cauldron – Sumi Diversion – Supplying Crimea
A current look at the map in the east of Ukraine:
April 03, 2024
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The above maps are of the eastern front in Ukraine on April 3 and May 3. Opening them side by side one can see two significant moves by Russian forces. In the north the forces are moving west towards Chasiv Yar which is a high ground controlling anything further west of it.
On the southern part of the map, north of Avdiivka, the Russian forces have taken Ocheretyne and Keramik.
Both movements together let one anticipate a larger two pronged plan:
Cont. reading: Ukraine SitRep: Niu-York Cauldron – Sumi Diversion – Supplying Crimea
Palestine Open Thread 2024-126
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Ukraine Open Thread 2024-125
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Open (Neither Ukraine Nor Palestine) Thread 2024-124
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