This thing isn't going the way it's supposed to, is it? I mean despite all the Russian tanks that the Ukes have supposedly blown up, the long-promised "counter offensive" is really looking like a dud, eh?
US News and World Report: Russia Advances in Ukraine as Zelenskyy Stresses: ‘We Have No Lost Positions’
Oh лайно! That's not sounding very good, Speedy. I'm surprised given all the tanks that they have blown up that this is even theoretically possible.
I like the Polo shirt variation on his usual costume - VZ President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s recent adamance about Ukrainian forces’ early success in the country’s highly anticipated counteroffensive is clashing with mounting evidence that Russia’s invading forces are taking new ground.“We have no lost positions,” Zelenskyy stressed in his nightly video address on Sunday. “In some areas, our warriors are moving forward. In some areas, they are defending their positions and resisting the occupiers' assaults and intensified attacks.”
But, he concluded, “We have no lost positions. Only liberated ones. They have only losses.” Zelenskyy’s positive assessment aligns with the need of any embattled government to maintain national morale and to affirm confidence in top military commanders’ plans – but also to reassure Western benefactors eagerly watching what the newly empowered Ukrainian military is capable of doing with their months-long, multibillion-dollar investments.
Yet despite broad calls for patience with what will surely be a drawn-out campaign and reassurances from military commentators that all large offensives begin with stumbles and probing skirmishes, a growing chorus of analysts and Western officials now observe that Russia is holding fast – and is taking new ground in some limited locations.
Sure - that's what happened! And Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide - REALLY!The realities represent a perhaps inevitable shift in the tone of the war. The first few months of President Vladimir Putin’s invasion were defined by embarrassing failures on the part of a Russian military charging at targets only to be cut down by Ukraine’s defenders or to collapse under its own dysfunction.
Now, the invading troops can capitalize on the months they’ve spent entrenching their fallback positions, bolstering their defenses and building traps that snarl Ukraine’s new attacks.
British military intelligence concluded in an assessment over the weekend that Russia is employing “relatively effective defensive operations,” referencing a spike in fighting in the south – considered one of the regions Ukraine was expected to prioritize early in the counteroffensive. It noted that both sides are taking increasingly high casualties as the fighting accelerates.
A separate U.K. military assessment also noted Russia’s decision to deploy 20 attack helicopters to southern Ukraine to reinforce its forces there – a move that other analysts noted demonstrates an effective command-and-control among Russia’s war planners.
“It is likely that Russia has gained a temporary advantage in southern Ukraine, especially with attack helicopters employing longer-range missiles against ground targets,” it stated.
And another notes that Russia has effectively surged ground troops to the regions where Ukraine appears to be attacking, both in the east and in the south where local residents and forces on both sides recover from the devastating downstream effects of the apparent Russian decision to blow up Ukraine’s second-largest dam at Kakhovka on the Dnieper River.