Russian activity in the last 12 hours. They are taking land in other places while still fighting or holding the advance up north. Again, the only winners are the Weapon manufacturers and the politicians that receive their donations.
If I had to guess, this is Ukraine’s attempt to do the same thing as when Russia took a shot at Kiev.
Not a bad idea, in general.
This is a huge front (>1,200 miles of border), and in reality only some areas are being fought over and have large troop concentrations. So you find some soft spot along the Ukrainian/Russian border, ideally that has some military value, and punch through, going deep and far, hopefully causing Russia to react.
This causes (ideally) Russia to pull forces from those areas that are bitterly embattled in the East.
But, Russia isn’t stupid. The slow response is because instead of a knee-jerk and doing what Ukraine wants, Russia will push the Ukrainians back out, but the Russians didn’t react quite the way Ukraine had hoped. Other than the face-slap to Russia, is there an operational or strategic level impact this incursion can have if the Russians do not react? Kiev had an obvious value, but this? My initial assessment is that this is more PR stunt than militarily practical (affecting Russia militarily / economically / etc). The limited Russian response is because of the lack in a “so-what” factor.
Sadly, we are treated like mushrooms, so we don’t get true enemy BDA and friendly casualty/material loss reports. Every side has them. Even NATO and our DoD have them. But we get fed BS in order to react the way the puppet masters want us too. And our “watchdog of democracy” and “free” MSM plays along.
—The real determinant if this operation was a success IMHO is if Russia pulls forces that were in the East and you see a noticeable slowing of the Russian creep forward and easing off of the pressure in the East?
Did the mission achieve its desired objective?
—Also a factor in determining success or failure are the losses, i.e. what was the cost to Ukraine and Russia?
Was the ROI acceptable, i.e. did we get a great deal, break even or pay far-far to much for this?
Yes, as disgusting as it sounds, it is all about numbers (the McNamara Vietnam body counts).
In this case, it’s not a fallacy. It is actually in this case, fairly telling, since it’s a protracted war of attrition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy
But in those regards, i.e. the news that really matters and would let me determine on my own what the outcome is/was, will be entirely buried assuming it was ever released in the first place. Nothing but junk/trash news that tells me absolutely nothing.
You have to use correlating indicators to make assumptions, but are not provided any actionable information.
Imaginary numbers of Russian casualties that are far inflated, entirely missing Ukrainian casualties and material losses. BUT lots of trash stories about some glorious Ukrainian fighter or evil Russian action that is intended to stir up emotions. Some story again about a Russian missed bomb, or Putin freaking out and having some mental disease etc. (Our news kept talking about that since 2014 but ignored the obvious decline of Biden as he mumbled, stumbled and fumbled when not staring emptily into space).
There really isn’t much of a border. That’s the point of all this. Russian chauvists want to incorporate stolen Ukrainian lands into their rebuilt empire. So naturally they haven’t fortified the Russian/Ukrainian border from there side since the plan is for it to be GONE ASAP.
Obviously, Ukraine can’t sustain the level of casualties that a much bigger Russia can. This is what genocidal Nazism looks like. Everyone who opposes Russian revanchism is to be is displaced or killed. What can’t be stolen is destroyed. We’ve seen this movie from Moscow many times over the last hundreds of years of Russian history. Ukrainians know their history. And that is why they fight and defend their borders, language and culture against a much bigger force of invaders.
Russian activity in the last 12 hours. They are taking land in other places while still fighting or holding the advance up north. Again, the only winners are the Weapon manufacturers and the politicians that receive their donations.