Posted on 06/23/2022 4:31:06 AM PDT by FarCenter
The city of Severodonetsk has been taken by Russian forces with the exception of holdouts in the Azot chemical fertilizer plant. That’s according to the Ukrainian head of the Luhansk Oblast administration, Serhii Haidai.
After pushing through the towns of Toshkivka and Myrna Dolyna, Russian forces are moving to surround from the south and west Severodonetsk’s twin city, Lysychansk, on the opposite side of the Donets River.
The main line of communication between the transport hub of Bakhmut in the west and Lysychansk in the east has been cut by Russian troops and rendered impassable.
Russian air force strikes on a shipbuilding plant in the Ukrainian port of Mikolaiv in the South killed as many as 500 troops of the Ukrainian 59th Mechanized Brigade on Tuesday, the Russian defense ministry claimed during its daily press briefing on Wednesday. There is independent verification of the strikes but not of the claimed casualty numbers.
The disruption of critical supplies by rail from Russia to its exclave of Kaliningrad through EU and NATO member Lithuania has been termed a “blockade” by Russia. The head of Russia’s Security Council, Nikolay Patrushev, said, “Of course, Russia will respond to hostile actions. Appropriate measures are in the works, and will be adopted in the near future.”
On a strategic scale, President Putin announced that Russia had “successfully tested the Sarmat heavy intercontinental ballistic missile. According to the plan, the first such system will enter combat duty at the end of the year,”
The Sarmat was test-fired in April.
(Excerpt) Read more at asiatimes.com ...
To me it’s so telling the effects of modern guided missiles and rockets on armor.
In WW2 or maybe even in the 70s-80s that entire pocket would have been enveloped by the Russian by now with their material advantage in AFVs, and with how many Ukrainians cut off. That’s good tank country, these new weapons just chew up armor when it gets close.
The guy who carries Putin’s nuke codes was found shot and in critical condition
Helicopters and attack aircraft also appear to be vulnerable and are even higher value targets.
That’s the reality. But as a US military intelligence observer notes, “in the meantime, there remains the cognitive dissonance from the [Western] reporting: The Russians are suffering from poor leadership, bad morale and poor weapons and the Ukrainians have superior weapons, superior leadership, off-the-scale morale and the home-field advantage. Yet the Russians are, at least for now, winning.”
When you physically prevent males from leaving, I think it is safe to say morale isn’t “off-the-scale”; as for leadership, Ukraine’s “leaders” had seven years to prepare for round 2 and didn’t bother.
You know Ukraine is losing badly when hearing the constant, desperate, public pleas for more help from Zelensky.
The war will be over in a couple of months. The only question is how much land will Russia take before they sit down to the peace talks? How long will it take for Americans to figure out all the money we send is going into corrupt people’s pockets (Europeans figured this out). A mean little war that will make lots of folks rich. The whole nation isn’t worth a single American Life.
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