WASHINGTON, July 23 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that while Ukraine has reconquered half the territory that Russia initially seized in its invasion, Kyiv faced a “a very hard fight” to win back more.
“It’s already taken back about 50% of what was initially seized,” Blinken said in an interview to CNN on Sunday.
“These are still relatively early days of the counteroffensive. It is tough,” he said, adding: “It will not play out over the next week or two. We’re still looking I think at several months.”
Hopes that Ukraine could quickly clear Moscow’s forces from its territory following the launch of a summer counteroffensive are fading as Kyiv’s troops struggle to breach heavily entrenched Russian positions in the country’s south and east.
Late last month President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was quoted as saying that progress against Russian forces was “slower than desired” but that Kyiv would not be pressured into speeding it up.
What false things have I said? The troop build up they’ve been doing has been well known for a long time now, like literally months they’ve been doing this buildup for. Many are talking about it, both pro-russian and pro-ukrainian.
https://youtu.be/38Mcg_hrQLk
https://youtu.be/PXhg9DfTIVg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTTxcfKAmqA
https://t.me/Slavyangrad/56341
https://t.me/rybar/50008
https://t.me/DeepStateUA/17195
It’s like some of you aren’t actually paying any attention to anything other than ABC/Reuters/CNN. These outlets are useless for speculation content you have to go elsewhere for it.
What are the potential targets of the build-up? Just advancing the line after Ukraine has exhausted a lot of it’s force on its counteroffensive? Or would there be a option between a few cities? Maybe cities that sit in the middle of several supply routes?
https://youtu.be/VBpwIqdEPtY
Update, movement happening. Maybe not a push to Kupyansk? Borove and Kruhlyakivka look like other possibilities to me. Could be the entire front moves and all of these happen but I suspect it would be one at a time.
Thanks for the update. Do you know if civilians are still living in these areas? Or have they been evacuated in advance?
There are always evacuations offered by the russians but there’s also always plenty of civilians that do not leave. Either due to age, inability or stubbornness “this is my home”. My understanding is that the Ukrainian side tends not to do this, and has some pretty bad habits of camping out near local civilian populations as a method of deterring missile/artillery fire against their armour. Major civilian buildings like schools and rec centres usually get turned into small bases or supply centres since they’re not being used for anything else when on the front line of a war.
If the rumours are true that Ukraine only has 1 line of defence here then things will move very quickly following a breakthrough like this. But I don’t think anyone really has reliable information on what the trench/defensive lines look like for Ukraine. The Russian defensive lines being 3 layers with shark teeth in between on the other hand is very well understood.
Real shame about the civilians. I can understand the will not to leave one’s home. But imagine just waiting on the edge of a battle not knowing whether the next missile will accidentally land in your flat. Traumatic. I wonder if people’s mind’s protect them by just zoning out the reality of it all.
Strange that the Ukrainians would only have one line. To my knowledge the Soviets learned this tactic fighting the Nazis. I’d have thought the Ukrainian military would not make the same mistakes as the early WWII Soviet army. If they do only have one line, it suggests that resources and reserves are in a dire condition. If Ukraine can only manage one line of defence, it would suggest that the war can’t last much longer, though—and it will be ‘easy’ for Russia to isolate troops and starve them out; and the sooner this shit ends, the better.
I think the concern is less the missiles and more the artillery, which can be fairly inaccurate at times when the wrong numbers get punched in.
To my knowledge the ukrainian doctrine has not changed much at all and still has the soviet structure. They really didn’t have a military to speak of until 2014 happened too, which is why they had the fascist militias fighting the front of the war vs the separatists for so long. Nato have been changing their structure and tactics through external training of specific batallions but I’m not sure we have much idea of whether those are performing any better. Given how poorly the ukrainian offensive went I’m leaning towards nato tactics and structure being completely unprepared for an artillery war and trench battle of this kind. It’s closer to ww1 than anything with heavily dug in lines that spend most of their time looking out at a no man’s land.
I don’t think Russia taking more land will end it. Russia will continue this war until they take Odessa and Mykolaiv to landlock Ukraine. At that point it loses all sovereignty as it will have to negotiate for port usage to export grain. So to be honest unless negotiations open up between the US and RU I expect this to last 1-2 more years at the current pace, especially if every major city takes as long as Bakhmut.
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Looks like it’s Svatova with a push that looks intended to go towards the Kupyansk direction to me but it’s hard to tell, a big push could change quickly depending on level of resistance and any encirclements that might happen. Assuming they actually broke the line in some way. The Russian attempt to do a big offensive could go as badly as the Ukrainian one, I wouldn’t rule that out with the cluster munitions which could easily slow them down.
I remember reading a Mearsheimer article about the problem with offensives. Whoever defends, traditionally has a 3:1 advantage by virtue of staying still. But in a war like this, that can change from day to day or month to month. So while Ukraine doesn’t seem to be doing much of significance in its counter-offensive, I agree that Russia will have a hard time when it goes on the offensive again.
Still, the problem for Ukraine seems to be its size in comparison tp Russia. Going by the same article, Russia has a 5:1 to 10:1 artillery advantage and a 2:1 casualty rate in its favour. The longer the war, the greater Russia’s advantage, and every offensive and counter-offensive contributes to that advantage. What is 2:1 today will become 3:1, 4:1, etc, as the toll will always be worse for Ukraine, unless something drastic changes, which would come as a surprise if it happens.
As you say elsewhere, it’s all just a massive waste of lives. The sooner the decision-makers realise that and negotiate for peace, the better.
Can’t say that would enjoy walking into that kind of maelstrom.
I don’t think size is an issue. You need to think of the war as Ukraine supplying the bodies and the entirety of nato supplying the combined weapons, funding, manufacturing, strategy, intelligence and planning. Ukraine has the bodies necessary to make numerical advantages moot.
I suspect that negotiations won’t come until after this christmas, going into the string of upcoming elections.
To decision makers it’s not though, this is the problem. They’re all perfectly happy to sacrifice all these lives, the US warmongers are happy to sacrifice any foreign lives against their adversaries while the Ukrainian bourgeoisie have used the war as cover for some of the most brutal right wing crackdowns I’ve ever seen, complete banning of all left parties, shutdown of media, and the complete and total rollback of 100% of workers rights. They have created a state that allows for absolute maximum exploitation of the people with no left opposition. The ruling class see this as a great win for them, the true-believers of the ideological fascists probably genuinely care about the borders of the nation but the bourgeoisie couldn’t give a fuck. So this leaves it up to the US really when to end the war by allowing negotiations, since its only the west propping up Ukraine that allows it to continue it will always lie in their hands to decide. I suspect that will come with a combination of elections (both US, Ukraine and several in Europe) and them wanting to switch their attention to China.
It’s an easy way to make progress slow. Just cover the land in deadly munitions. Nevermind the fact that for the next 50 years 98% of the deaths they cause will be civilians :/
There is a 0% chance Russia has “thousands of functioning tanks” that mysteriously weren’t deemed necessary during their worldwide embarrassment of logistics last year.
I didn’t say thousands. I said a thousand. It’s actually estimated closer to 900 in this buildup along with the 100k troops but that’s neither here nor there really. Maybe if you actually bothered to read or watch anything I send you then you would know this? The issue here is that you’re unwilling to take onboard any information unless it comes from your little circle of neoliberal media sources, which are always late, and always doing an incredibly repetitive narrative that really doesn’t serve to learn or understand much at all. This leaves you completely unaware of what is actually happening.
It’s less that I don’t believe you (or can’t click links) and more that I doubt, severely, Russia’s ability to employ said armor to any degree of effectiveness.
Another
https://youtu.be/OAoYZ850cg0
Fair warning Mercouris is a tory fuckhead. However I suspect that will appeal to a neoliberal like yourself. He’s also a london barrister working in constitutional law and human rights.
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I’m much more of a libdem than a Tory , and wavering battle lines do not an offensive make. Can’t hold territory if you can’t resupply.
Biden is to the right of the tories lmao.
With that said, you do seem like a Nick Clegg kinda person. He runs meta as Zuckerberg’s equal these days lmao. Lib dems.
Yeah that’s fair. But what’s happening is the biggest movement we’ve seen in months, and the numbers flying around (build has been since february) are fine. Like I’ve said elsewhere though I also think it’s possible this offensive will get bogged down in cluster bombs. We shall see.
At least we’re not in the “you’re talking bullshit” headspace now. You at least understand I’m not just making shit up.
I’ve never thought you were making shit up (except “Biden is right of Tories” lmao). I said your conclusions were wrong.
He’s a bigger warmonger, a bigger strikebreaker, doesn’t want universal free at point of service healthcare, starts more wars, and keeps more children in cages. Although with our new prison boat they’re certainly trying to catch up.
I’m fairly confident Biden would be fine if I was shot for climbing on a weapons factory roof and smashing the building up, that or guantanamo’d. We do it on the regular and far from getting shot we don’t even get prosecuted. Been doing it to Elbit factories that make weapons for Israel for over a year and a half now without a single prosecution.
I think a fairly good litmus test for “who is further right” is to check which one of them would disappear me to a blacksite for being an effective leftist, and that isn’t the tories I’m afraid mate. America has marched incredibly far right. It has no left, not electorally anyway, local wins excluded.
The effectiveness of the armour entirely depends on how many Javelins Ukraine have left in my opinion. These were causing the bulk of Russian losses. The way this has been dragged on and delayed and delayed and delayed could imply that the Russians have been aiming to deplete the supplies and munitions that the Ukrainians have in order to make an offensive viable. The west doesn’t really have much left of this shit to give them either without taking it literally out of the hands of active units. Western manufacturing is not keeping up with the rate at which things are getting used.
I’m not ruling out that their offensive will go as badly as the Ukrainian one. It really depends on what they have left, how many weapons supply dumps the Russians have been managing to destroy with those regular missile attacks, etc etc.
No, it’s mines and artillery.
Dude this started out with Ukrainians making molotovs. Now they are getting shipments of Bradleys and multiple types of tanks. The west is capable of sustaining Ukraines ammo needs for a while. The US has already went from producing 14k shells a month to 24 with the goal of 85k a month by 2028. That’s just the US, now factor in all the European countries doing the same.
You need to stop listening to whatever sources you are reading.