Putin on the Ukraine

[Malcolm]

Ironic for more than 2 years Russia has being attacking the Ukraine  schools, hospitals , civilians and I guess that was considered to be OK by Putin.  However he is describing the same type of warfare by the UKRAINE  against Russia over the past two days.......

Quote

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin broke his silence on Wednesday on Ukraine's cross-border armored assaults into the Kursk region of western Russia, calling the operation a "large-scale provocation."

"We have to start with the events in the Kursk region," he said at a meeting of his Security Council. "As you know, the Kyiv regime has carried out another large-scale provocation, firing indiscriminately with various types of weapons, including missiles, at civilian buildings, residential buildings, and ambulances."

 

Putin accuses Ukraine of a ‘large-scale provocation’ with its raid in southwestern Russia (msn.com)

 

[Malcolm]

State of emergency declared as Ukraine launches raid into Russia

7 hours ago

Putin accuses Ukraine of 'provocation' amid alleged border incursion (bbc.com)

[Malcolm]

Russia's military has said it is "continuing to repel" a Ukrainian cross-border incursion into the western Kursk region - a surprise attack now in its fourth day.

The Russian defence ministry said Ukraine lost more than 280 military personnel in the past 24 hours - a claim that has not been independently verified.

Reports suggest that Ukrainian troops are operating more than 10km (six miles) inside Russia - the deepest cross-border advance by Kyiv since Moscow launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Ukraine has not openly admitted the incursion, but President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday that Moscow must "feel" the consequences for its invasion.

 

Meanwhile, 12 people have been killed and at least 44 injured in a Russian strike on a shopping centre in the Ukrainian town of Kostiantynivka, close to the frontline in Donetsk region, Ukraine's Interior Ministry says.

Residential buildings, shops and more than a dozen cars were also damaged in the attack.

[deicer]

Two things to think of here...

Ukraine is getting Russia to split it's forces.

If they capture Russian territory, it could lead to a land swap.

[Malcolm]

1 hour ago, deicer said:

Two things to think of here...

Ukraine is getting Russia to split it's forces.

If they capture Russian territory, it could lead to a land swap.

Or sadly an escalation to battle field nukes.

[Airband]

11 hours ago, deicer said:

If they capture Russian territory, it could lead to a land swap.

They won't hold it long enough to swap it. Settlement, in the end, will have Ukraine ceding territory to Russia.

[deicer]

20 hours ago, Malcolm said:

Or sadly an escalation to battle field nukes.

I believe the possibility of that will come when Putin realizes that he is losing.

[deicer]

10 hours ago, Airband said:

They won't hold it long enough to swap it. Settlement, in the end, will have Ukraine ceding territory to Russia.

Now that the weapons supply issues are sorted out, let's see what happens in the next few months.

[Malcolm]

Ukraine and Russia at war

 

Russia evacuated parts of a second region next to Ukraine after Kyiv sharply increased military activity near the border just days after its biggest incursion into sovereign Russian territory since the start of the 2022 war. Breaking News Lead Writer for Russia, Mark Trevelyan, tells Reuters World News podcast how Ukraine has changed the narrative of the war with this incursion - listen now.

[Malcolm]

Cry Me a River

Putin claims Ukraine trying to 'sow discord' in Russia with offensive into Kursk region

I guess having the shoe on the other foot is hurting.

Putin claims Ukraine trying to 'sow discord' in Russia with offensive into Kursk region (msn.com)

 

[Airband]

Russia Closes In on Key Eastern Ukrainian City Despite Kursk Incursion

A Russian advance toward Pokrovsk casts doubts on Ukraine’s hopes that its cross-border offensive will prompt Moscow to scale back attacks elsewhere

Firing toward Russian positions in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine last month

Fri Aug 16, 2024 - The New York Times
By Constant Méheut - Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine

Russian troops are closing in on the strategic eastern Ukrainian town of Pokrovsk, according to open-source battlefield maps, casting doubts on Ukraine’s hopes that its new offensive into western Russia will prompt Moscow to scale back its attacks elsewhere on the battlefield.

After capturing several villages in the area and pushing along a railway line, Russian forces are now about eight miles from Pokrovsk, one of Ukraine’s main defensive strongholds in the Donetsk region, according to the maps, which are based on combat footage and satellite images.

The capture of the city would bring Russia a step closer to its long-held goal of seizing the entire Donetsk region, much of which it already controls. Pokrovsk, a city with a prewar population of about 60,000, sits on a key road linking several cities that form a defensive arc protecting the part of Donetsk that is still held by Ukraine.

The situation is so dire that the city’s military administration has urged residents to leave, although it has not issued a formal order. “The enemy is rapidly approaching the outskirts of Pokrovsk,” Serhii Dobriak, the head of the military administration, said on Thursday. “Evacuation is underway in the community. Don’t delay!”

Russia’s advance toward Pokrovsk is a reminder that, despite Ukrainian forces’ successful incursion into Russia’s western Kursk region, they are still losing ground on their own territory. Ukrainian soldiers on the eastern front say that the fighting there has anything but abated, and that they remain outnumbered and outgunned by Russian troops.

Military experts say that one goal of the surprise cross-border assault that Ukraine began last week in Kursk is to compel Moscow to divert troops from the front lines in Ukraine to reinforce its own border region. But so far, Russia has withdrawn only a limited number of units from the Ukrainian battlefield, instead seeking to counter attacks with less experienced combat units in Russia, analysts and United States officials say.

U.S. officials added that Ukraine had drawn on its reserves for its cross-border offensive, meaning it could be more difficult for Kyiv to bolster its troops on the eastern front.

Ukraine’s offensive into Russia “does not affect the overall balance of the front line,” Thibault Fouillet, the deputy director of the Institute for Strategic and Defense Studies, a French research center, said in an interview. The main feature of the battlefield — Russian troops advancing slowly but steadily through bloody assaults — remained the same, he said.

Ukrainian soldiers said this week that Ukraine’s incursion into Russia had not led to a letup in Russian attacks in the Donetsk region. Serhiy Tsehotskiy, an officer with the 59th Motorized Brigade, told the Ukrainian news media on Friday that Russian forces had tried overnight to storm the town of Novohrodivka, which sits on the railroad into Pokrovsk.

“Attempts to assault and advance do not stop for a minute, and fighting continues around the clock,” he said.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said on Thursday that Pokrovsk and other nearby towns were “facing the most intense Russian assaults.”

cont.

[Malcolm]

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-russia-kursk-region-incursion-heres-what-to-know/

[Airband]

Volodymyr Zelenskyy faces backlash over Russia’s breach of eastern defences

Strategically important Pokrovsk resistance has been weakened by demands of Kursk incursion, say critics

Fri Aug 30, 2024 - Financial Times
by Christopher Miller in Kyiv

Quote

“Honestly, I have never seen anything like this. Everything is falling apart so quickly,” he warned. “Pokrovsk will fall much faster than Bakhmut did.”

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has come under a barrage of criticism from soldiers, lawmakers and military analysts over the rapid advances made by the Russian army in eastern Ukraine since Kyiv launched its bold incursion into Russia’s Kursk region.

Many Ukrainians celebrated their army’s invasion of Kursk on August 6, hoping the gamble would force Moscow to divert resources to the new front and swing the momentum of the war in Ukraine’s favour.

However, a breach in the frontline in the strategically important Donetsk region this week has triggered a backlash against the leadership in Kyiv, with critics arguing Ukraine’s positions were weakened by the redeployment of thousands of battle-hardened Ukrainian troops to the Kursk operation.

Russian forces are closing in on the strategically important city of Pokrovsk taking several nearby towns this week and forcing undermanned Ukrainian units to retreat from prepared defensive positions.

Pokrovsk is one of two key rail and road junctions in the Donetsk region and its loss would threaten the entire region’s logistics for Ukraine’s military, according to Frontelligence Insight, a Ukrainian analytical group.

Satellite imagery analysed by open-source investigators at the Finland-based Black Bird Group shows Russian forces now just 8km from Pokrovsk. In response, local authorities have ordered the evacuation of residents in the area.

Oleksandr Kovalenko, a military analyst at the Kyiv-based Information Resistance group, called the situation on the eastern edge of Pokrovsk “a complete defensive failure”.

“It’s not the fault of ordinary soldiers holding positions,” he wrote on Telegram. “The problem lies with those who make decisions for these soldiers,” he added, pointing to Ukraine’s leadership.

Several soldiers in the area expressed concerns about the defences around Pokrovsk.

Zhenya, a Ukrainian soldier in the 93rd Mechanized Brigade who fought in the gruelling 10-month battle of Bakhmut last year, described a fast-deteriorating situation in Pokrovsk. In a candid assessment on X, he criticised the military’s command structure, citing systemic failures and inadequate responses to evolving battlefield conditions.

“Honestly, I have never seen anything like this. Everything is falling apart so quickly,” he warned. “Pokrovsk will fall much faster than Bakhmut did.”

View of a school that was destroyed in a recent Russian airstrike in Pokrovsk, Ukraine.

Ukrainian troops this week pulled out of Novohrodivka, 8km south-east of Pokrovsk. The Centre for Defence Strategies (CDS), a Kyiv-based security think-tank, said the withdrawal indicated a shortage of defensive resources, despite Pokrovsk’s importance as a logistical hub.

Mariana Bezuhla, an MP and member of the defence committee in parliament, shared photos on Facebook from a visit last week to the frontline near Novohrodivka. She claimed they showed the path to Pokrovsk wide open.

“The trenches in front of Novohrodivka were empty. There was practically no Ukrainian army in the once 20,000-strong city,” she wrote in a scathing post.

Gen Oleksandr Syrsky, Ukraine’s top military commander, said in a statement on Thursday that he had visited the Pokrovsk area and was working “to strengthen the defence of our troops in the most difficult areas of the front, to provide the brigades with a sufficient amount of ammunition and other material and technical means”.

During a press conference in Kyiv on Tuesday, Zelenskyy described the situation on the frontline near Pokrovsk as “extremely difficult” but claimed that the Russian advance in the area had slowed following Ukraine’s offensive in Kursk.

In fact, Russian forces have advanced more rapidly in Donetsk since August 6 compared with the previous months, according to several military analysts, including Deep State, a Ukrainian group with close ties to Ukraine’s defence ministry that monitors frontline movements.

“There is complete chaos,” said Deep State’s Roman Pohorilyi pointing to the fall of key towns such as Novohrodivka and the looming threat to Pokrovsk.

In the past three weeks, Moscow’s forces have quickly captured more than two-dozen towns and villages with minimal resistance, including the long-held stronghold of Niu-York.

Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, attributed the Russian gains to a shortage of experienced Ukrainian infantry and the diversion of resources to the Kursk offensive.

“Ukraine committed reserves to Kursk, leaving fewer options to plug gaps elsewhere. Some of the more experienced brigades have been replaced by newer, less experienced units,” Lee said.

Soldiers who were mobilised this summer following the Ukrainian government’s new conscription laws meant to fill Kyiv’s dwindling ranks have been sent into the fray with little training or experience.

“They freeze . . . they don’t know what to do in real combat,” said a lieutenant whose troops are on the frontline near Pokrovsk. Many “turn and run at the first explosion”.

Soldiers in artillery units near Pokrovsk also highlighted a deficit in shells and a severe mismatch in firepower compared to Russian forces.

“Our shells are running out. We just don’t have enough,” said an artillery commander, noting that many resources had been redirected north to Kursk. For about the past month, his unit has had one shell for every six to eight fired by the Russians.

Ukrainian servicemen in Pokrovsk

Russian forces, meanwhile, maintain a significant tactical advantage, bolstered by superior aviation and drone capabilities as well as in artillery, the CDS think-tank said.

Stanislav Aseyev, a Ukrainian journalist and soldier currently on the eastern front, warned of the possible “destruction of the entire southern group of forces in the region, not just Pokrovsk”.

He cited “a complex of internal reasons: from the planting of flowers instead of fortifications to the lack of understanding on the part of high command of the problems evident to every soldier in the trenches”.

“What can be done for Pokrovsk?” he asked rhetorically. “Unfortunately, the only option is to evacuate as many people as possible. I think the town will soon cease to exist.”

Frontelligence said the Ukrainian leadership could yet shore up the frontline by deploying new brigades or repositioning forces from other areas. But if Pokrovsk were to fall, it could pave the way for Russian forces to push towards Dnipro, Ukraine’s fourth-largest city, extending their control further.

[Malcolm]

Canada delayed payment for air-defence system for Ukraine

 

It took Canada four months to send its payment after deciding to join a plan by the United States to buy urgently needed National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems for Ukraine, a lag Defence Minister Bill Blair insists has not contributed to the slow pace of acquiring the high-tech defensive capability.

[Malcolm]

Seems that Putin is not happy with sitting close to his colleagues

[Airband]

Comes a time when pluck is not enough...

Ukraine’s new infantry recruits ‘freeze’ in face of Russian onslaught

Inadequate training, burnout and rising age of soldiers affect survival on the battlefield after conscription drive

Ukrainian soldiers drape the national flag over the coffins of military personnel in Lviv 

Fri Sep 27, 2024 - Financial Times
by Christopher Miller near Kurakhove

Quote

“You literally see all layers of society represented in the infantry,” he added. “Not everyone is fit for the front.”

For six gruelling days earlier this month a small team of experienced Ukrainian soldiers managed to withstand Russia’s relentless assault on their position on the eastern front.

All aged under 40 and with two years of fighting experience, the six men held their ground despite a barrage of rockets and killed over 100 Russian soldiers, said their commander in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.

“When they rotated out, they were trembling. They hadn’t slept or rested,” their commander said near the frontline south-east of Pokrovsk, a city Russia is seeking to occupy. “But those guys did their job and held the line.”

The troops who replaced them were less successful. Of the eight soldiers rotated in, only two had previous combat experience. All six new conscripts — most over the age of 40 — were killed or wounded within a week, forcing the unit to retreat. 

Outmanned and outgunned since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, Ukraine’s troops have valiantly defended their territory from Russian bombardments, ground assaults and dirty tactics such as employing chemical weapons, which the US has said amount to war crimes.

Kyiv’s forces inflicted huge losses on the Russian army this year and proved they were still capable of seizing the initiative when they invaded Russia’s southern Kursk region.

But despite these achievements, Ukraine’s troops and their commanders are growing concerned over manpower problems, particularly the quality of new recruits and the speed at which they are injured or killed in combat.

The Ukrainian infantry is most acutely affected: its troops are grappling with exhaustion and flagging morale, leading some to abandon their positions and allow Russia to capture more land, according to frontline commanders.

Along the front in Donetsk, four commanders, a deputy commander and nearly a dozen soldiers from four Ukrainian brigades told the Financial Times that the new conscripts lack basic combat skills, motivation and often abandon their positions when they come under fire.

The commanders estimated that 50 to 70 per cent of new infantry troops were killed or wounded within days of starting their first rotation.

“When the new guys get to the position, a lot of them run away at the first shell explosion,” said a deputy commander in Ukraine’s 72nd mechanised brigade fighting near the eastern city of Vuhledar, a key bulwark that the Russians are attempting to flank.

This situation poses a significant challenge for Ukraine as it fights on the new front in Kursk while at the same time trying to fend off Moscow’s forces in its east. Kyiv is also pressing western partners for more assistance to help it turn the tide of the war.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy travelled to the US this week to try to get the Biden administration behind his “victory plan” and force Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table sooner rather than later. But to strike a deal with the Russian president that would not amount to capitulation by Kyiv, Zelenskyy needs greater western support, including unprecedented security guarantees, to help his struggling troops on the frontline.

“We are in desperate need of strong soldiers,” said a commander who goes by the nom de guerre “Lawyer” because he had worked as an attorney before the war.

Senior Ukrainian officials said a recent mobilisation drive had allowed Ukraine to draft about 30,000 soldiers a month since May, when a new conscription law came into force. That is on par with the number of troops Russia has been able to recruit by offering large bonuses and generous salaries.

But commanders on the ground and military analysts have warned that the newly drafted troops are not highly motivated, are psychologically and physically unprepared — and are being killed at an alarming rate as a result.

One commander, whose unit is defending positions around Kurakhove, where Russian forces have made gains in recent weeks, said that “some guys freeze [because] they are too afraid to shoot the enemy, and then they are the ones who leave in body bags or severely wounded”.

After difficult combat stints, many new conscripts go Awol, commanders said. Some return so shell-shocked and exhausted that they are checked into psychiatric wards.

Several bungled rotations in recent months have led to Russia making easier gains than expected towards Pokrovsk.

“We are most vulnerable during rotations,” said the deputy commander. “That’s when Russia is able to advance . . . The infantry is crucial to our defence.”

Seasoned soldiers “are being killed off too quickly”, said another commander on the eastern front, only to be replaced by mostly older men without experience and in worse physical shape.

Age is a key concern — the average person in Ukraine’s military is 45. Of about 30 infantry troops in a unit, said the deputy commander of the 72nd brigade, on average half were in their mid-40s, only five were under 30 and the rest were 50 or older.

“As infantry, you need to run, you need to be strong, you need to carry heavy equipment,” he added. “It’s hard to do that if you aren’t young.”

But the problems start long before the recruits reach the battlefield, the commanders and analysts said.

A former Ukrainian officer who operates the analytical group Frontelligence Insight blamed “long-standing systemic problems that were left unaddressed for years”. Largely composed of mobilised former civilians, the Ukrainian army is led by officers and generals who started their career in Soviet times and had “never been in combat”, he said.

Commanders lay part of the blame on military recruiters: “It would be wise to pay more attention to each person’s characteristics and background to see where the guys best fit instead of sending everyone to the infantry,” said Mykhailo Temper, a battery commander in the 21st battalion of Ukraine’s Separate Presidential Brigade.

“You literally see all layers of society represented [in the infantry],” he added. “Not everyone is fit for the front.”

Ukrainian conscripts queue outside a hall in Kyiv to update their registrations 

Temper, who is also the founder of a freeze-dried food company popular among outdoor adventurers and soldiers, said entrepreneurs like himself were often best equipped to serve in commander and officer roles, while some of his best trench fighters were former miners and factory workers.

Convicts released to serve in the army are also appreciated for their dedication and ability to adapt to the conflict zone, according to several commanders.

But every commander emphasised what they felt was inadequate military training for the new wave of draftees.

Temper said “trainers themselves don’t have real battle experience so they aren’t teaching what the newbies need to know to fight and, more importantly, to stay alive”.

Instead, conscripts were still receiving “Soviet-style” training, where “the army just passes everyone with good marks and sends them to the front”, said the deputy commander. New troops rarely practised with live rounds because of ammunition shortages, he added.

“Some of them don’t even know how to hold their rifles. They peel more potatoes than they shoot bullets,” he said, adding that he had bought paintball equipment to replace rifles and live rounds so that new recruits could get more practice without wasting precious ammunition.

Ukraine’s commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky said this month that he had ordered improvements to the quality of training for new recruits by selecting “motivated instructors with combat experience” and raised the possibility of setting up an instructor school.

But the commander of an artillery unit said the deaths of tens of thousands of experienced soldiers over the course of the war were taking a toll: “If there are not enough people to fight, there are not enough people to teach.”

The commanders all said they tried to rotate troops every three to six days, depending on the intensity and dynamics of the fighting. But sometimes those stints can last for two weeks, especially when Russian drones spot the rotation and attack soldiers when they are at their most vulnerable.

Because Ukraine has no law on demobilisation, the soldiers are rarely allowed to leave the war zone to rest or visit family.

“Skif”, commander of a drone reconnaissance unit, first signed a contract when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. He said that signing up for the army or being conscripted “is a one-way ticket” to the war.

The deputy commander echoed this, saying that he and his troops have not been reconstituted since the full-scale invasion.

“No rehabilitation time, no relief,” he said. “I see our guys when they leave the frontline . . . they are suffering burnout.”