Ukraine war’s geographic reality: Russia has seized much of the East

Russia’s nearly 3-month-old invasion of neighboring Ukraine has been punctuated by flawed planning, poor intelligence, barbarity and wanton destruction. But obscured in the daily fighting is the geographic reality that Russia has made gains on the ground.

The Russian Defense Ministry said Tuesday that its forces in eastern Ukraine had advanced to the border between Donetsk and Luhansk, the two Russian-speaking provinces where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukraine’s army for eight years.

The ministry’s assertion, if confirmed, strengthens the prospect that Russia could soon gain complete control over the region, known as the Donbas, compared with one-third of it before the Feb. 24 invasion.

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That is a far cry from what appeared to be the grand ambitions of President Vladimir Putin of Russia when he launched the invasion: quick and easy seizure of vast swaths of Ukraine, including the capital, Kyiv, the overthrow of a hostile government and a replacement with unquestioned fealty that would ensure Ukraine’s subservience.

Nonetheless, the Donbas seizure, combined with the Russian invasion’s early success in seizing parts of southern Ukraine adjoining the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014, gives the Kremlin enormous leverage in any future negotiation to halt the conflict.

And the Russians enjoy the added advantage of naval dominance in the Black Sea, the only maritime route for Ukrainian trade, which they have paralyzed with an embargo that could eventually starve Ukraine economically and is already contributing to a global grain shortage. All-terrain armoured vehicles of pro-Russian troops drive along a road during Ukraine-Russia

What the war is really about:

The billion-dollar-a-day Afghanistan money spigot was turned off, and the MIC needed to find a new money spigot ASAP.

So Putin invaded Ukraine so the US Military Industrial Complex can get money.

Putin is an American puppet…

This may be the dumbest theory yet.

Yes, the pro-Russian India whore media BS. The Uks fought them to a dead stalemate...by themselves...with Obama blanket type support from the West. Now they have modern weaponry and tons of 155s, drones and soon missiles with reach. Russia will eventually need to commit the bulk of her forces to prevent the pushback. Russia is in a very very bad spot. It will take 400,000 troops to hold Ukraine. They ain’t got it. Real analyst knew that the day they invaded...before the West really got involved.

Strawman on your part.

Actually, if you were logical, you would understand that the MIC can take advantage of the situation to launder just as they can also initiate wars in Iraq and elsewhere via lies and use that to launder.

” the pro-Russian India whore media”

The Biden gang turned a friend into an enemy.

Now you are calling that former friend names.

In my view India made the right choice for its own people given the totality of the circumstances.

Biden etal own this.

Don’t blame India.

BTW, it was the TV and the MSM like the useless NYT that repeatedly said here is what Putin wants, and then when it doesn’t happen they say Putin didn’t achieve his objectives and some F,mreepers keep believing whatever the NYT, WaPo, etc publish because they like liberal sources for information.

Point is, a counter argument can be made that the troops near Kiev, as one example, were meant to hold 3X as many Ukrainian troops there.

In the end though, no one can say for sure if Putin did or didn’t only want the Eastern provinces, but yet people keep listening to globalist media anyway.

Because they are libtards.

For the last 15 years, Russia has said, loud and clear, "UKRAINE JOINING NATO WILL BE A CAUSE OF WAR."

Even a week before the war, the invasion would not have happened with 5 words from Zelensky: "Ukraine will not join NATO."

But Zelensky is surrounded by Azov Nazis 24/7 who will kill him if he actually did what he ran on: follow the Minsk Accords, and find peace with Russia over the Donbass.

So, with the billion-dollar-a-day MIC A-stan cash pipeline turned off....a replacement had to be found.

I keep having to explain to my elderly mum what’s actually going on, as she watches cable news. So I show her videos and articles from everywhere else in the world outside of the Nato News countries. I occasionally stumble upon Nato news on Twitter... it’s so farfetched from what is being reported, also by independent journalists who unlike the wussy western journos holed up in Kiev and Lviv... are actually making their way to Luhansk and Donetsk. I don’t remember that we censored the news from the other side before, but I may be wrong. I find it astounding we can’t post about what the other sources are seeing... particularly since its not our soldiers in the field.

Actually...in ww2 times, after the French and English did not attack Hitler immediately after he took Poland(as they had agreed to do pre invasion of Poland)....it was called Sitzkrieg then. The Brits and French didn’t really know what to do. Reported in RISE AND FALL OF THIRD REICH by Shirer

“Russian Defense Ministry said Tuesday that its forces in eastern Ukraine had advanced to the border between Donetsk and Luhansk”

The border between Donetsk and Luhansk has been Russian controlled since 2014. So Russia is now boasting about advancing to a position they have been at for the last 8 years?

I suppose when everywhere else you are retreating, the only thing you have left is to write about where your forces haven’t collapsed yet.

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The Russian Defense Ministry said Tuesday that its forces in eastern Ukraine had advanced to the border between Donetsk and Luhansk.

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