Posted on 02/26/2023 2:27:58 PM PST by delta7
“I regularly read and listen to a lot of sources slanted from both sides.”
And yet, you only post or champion one side. Putin loves you for it.
“I suspect Delta7 is a Russian bot.”
He has admitted having lived in Russia.
“We’ve certainly heard various parties claim that Russia wanted to overrun Kiev, or Kyiv, or Keeeve or whatever we’re supposed to be calling it now, but to the best of my awareness, Russia has never claimed to want to occupy that city, or the surrounding territory for that matter.”
Then you haven’t been following this war since Day One.
“This is the Russian equivalent of our taking Saipan in 44.”
You know nothing of history. The US took Saipan in 3 weeks; Russia is still struggling with Ukraine after a year.
Ukrainian forces have one road that Russians have fire control over and the daytime temps are over the freezing point now so resupply of Bahkmut is almost impossible without heavy casualties.
Send Nuland and Sullivan to prison.
“Western media turned the town into a “Stalingrad” moment. If they withdraw or suffer defeat the cheerleaders in the West may withdraw funding.”
Western military strategists said the exact opposite: That Bakhmut had little real strategic value, and that Ukraine should not exhaust a lot of effort for it.
It’s a modest sized town. It has little strategic value. Learn how to read a map.
The smart ones are telling them to withdraw, but there are not a lot of “smart” people in the West who are in charge.
I genuinely believe that Zelensky and the Ukrainian government fear that a withdrawal will appear to be a defeat and they are asking (demanding) the West for a lot more weapons right now.
Optics might be more important to Zelensky who is openly talking about taking back Crimea from the Russians and he wants the weapons to do it.
I feel sorry for the poor bastards in the trenches because they are getting the crap shelled out of them. This is NOT the kind of fight the Ukrainians are built for.
NATO Fops andd Neocon Wankers: "YEAY LITTLE WEEWEE! GO GET HIM LITTLE WEEWEE!! YOU CAN DO IT LITTLE WEEWEE!!!!!!!!!
BWWAAAAAAHAHAHA hahahaha ha ha ha ho ho ho hoho hoho hoho har har hoho hoho hoho har har hoho hoho hoho har har hoho hoho hoho har har hoho hoho hoho har har hoho hoho hoho har har hoho hoho hoho har har hoho hoho hoho har har hoho hoho hoho har har hoho hoho hoho har har hoho hoho hoho har har hoho hoho hoho har har hoho hoho hoho har har hoho hoho hoho har har hoho hoho hoho har har hoho hoho hoho har har hoho hoho hoho har har hoho hoho hoho har har hoho hoho hoho har har hoho hoho hoho .....
Looking past the tragic waste of this conflict, I was impressed with how the Ukrainians fought last year. They punched way above their weight in many ways and while they had some tactical defeats, they did thwart the efforts of a much larger, but very clumsy, foe.
However, they have been drawn into a meat grinder style of fighting now and the new battle allows the Russians to better mask their deficiencies (logistics and combined arms warfare) and rely on their strength - artillery.
They faced the 1941 Russian last year. How much did Ivan figure out in the past few months after the withdrawal to the current lines? We will see.
Putin thought he was just going to drive across the border and the Ukraine would quickly surrender, much like what happened in Crimea. His military was obviously not prepared for the fight and the Ukrainians were much more prepared and better equipped.
From article posted: “There are reports of Wagner approaching Bogdanovka (west of Bakhmut) which increases the threat of encirclement.”
Those reports appear confirmed. In response, the Ukrainian forces blew the dam and flooded parts of northern and eastern Bakhmut. Cool animation on map here:
https://t.me/boris_rozhin/79173
There were credible reports that Bakhmut was operationally encircled (every road susceptible to Russian fire) so no wonder the Ukrainians wanted to slow the Russians down.
It’s starting to look like Russians taking Bakhmut is matter of when, not if.
Wars are so ghastly. Drone footage of Bakhmut (heartbreaking):
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/drone-bakhmut-russia-ukraine-b2289937.html
“This is NOT the kind of fight the Ukrainians are built for.”
They sure as hell have been fighting Russia effectively.
When will Putin restore the names Leningrad and Stalingrad? You should like this given your love of obsolete names.
So, is Bakhmut “of strategic military importance” or not? The answer seems to depend on who is doing the talking and when. Last summer, I remember Western sources seemed to think it important. Now they don’t.
From last summer:
“Bakhmut, the third key city in the region, is situated by a highway leading to Lysychansk. This highway is deemed an essential route for keeping Ukrainean troops supplied. Heavy battles were fought here in 2014 and 2015.”
DW still seemed to think there was strategic value in December:
https://www.dw.com/en/seizing-soledar-would-be-a-strategic-victory-for-russia/a-64357268
I don’t know anything about this Turkish site or its worth but:
Makes some sense.
So, was it important last summer but not now?
Whatever, Zelensky has poured a lot of resources into it. Apparently he thinks it is important. Same for the Russians. So are both Zelensky and the Russians stupid?
Or is the media claiming it’s not important now because Western military analysts figured the Ukrainians could not hold it against the Russians and passed along the “not important” story to the media? Who knows?
Lots of death and destruction. That we do know. Kyrie Elieson.
Putin tried everything he could think of to avoid this conflict since he wanted to view hohos as fellow orthodox
Christians. When his hand was finally forced he entered Ukraine with an expeditionary force hoping to force some sort of negotiations. In fact that plan did work and a peace treaty was there waiting to be signed at Istanbul when NATO stepped in and forced hohos to back out of the deal. At this point, Russians are convinced that the leadership of the West is totally insane, that they have nobody they can bargain with, and that their security can only be preserved by inflicting a massive defeat on both Ukraine and nato. That is where we are now.
I have been very clear from the outset that I blame the West as much as I blame Putin. I have never wavered from that belief. I don’t like Putin and I certainly don’t view him as some kind of champion of “Western values”. He is incredibly corrupt and is probably the wealthiest person in the world while his citizens are not doing so well.
I also thought that he had negotiated his position prior to the invasion which seemed to be an irrational choice at the time. Perhaps he did not see a path forward against the never-ending encroachment of NATO. Perhaps he thought he could easily capture Ukraine and profit from it along with his inner circle of oligarchs. I don’t know. I do know that the idea of “NATO” or the “EU” wanting to invade Russia is incredibly absurd.
The bottom line is tragic. I don’t see a way out of this now and there is real potential it can grow far worse and involve us directly since our warmonger Ivy-league idiots and military industrial complex are hellbent on squeezing every dollar from every ounce of Ukrainian blood that they can.
I do believe Biden/Johnson shut down the best chance at peace talks and here we are. In the final accounting I don’t know that it makes much difference to the average civilian or soldier on either side. They are dying for a game of the elites, by the elites, and for the elites. The older I get the more convinced I am that if you really want peace you should have a very strong military that annihilates your foe in the rare instance they need to be used AND you should get rid of EVERY Victoria Nuland, John Bolton, and Lindsey Graham you can find inside your government.
I am tired of my own country screwing around all over the globe non-stop. It means very little to me and it is the antithesis of what our founding fathers wanted for the nation. Many have struggled to define this conflict as “you support Putin” or “you support Soros and the globalists”. I support neither. I support the future and welfare of my own children and the children of the Ukraine and Russia and the sooner this ends the better for all children it will be.
Ok dear
They parked their huge column and didn’t invade Kiev
What do u think was the point of that
You act like you know
Bakhmut is NOT worth the blood it is costing the Ukrainians. That is my opinion. The media is worthless and they sell infotainment more than sage wisdom.
The Russians have sucked at combined arms warfare and they seem very uncoordinated. The Ukrainians took advantage of that and they were able to effectively exploit the Russian ineptitude to fight them off. However, I expect the Russians will be better than they were last year (how could they not) because they have had time to reflect on why they were so bad, but who knows how this will go? Based on interviews of soldiers from the front line the Russians are grinding the Ukrainian forces down in this fixed position trench warfare and Putin does not care how many men he feeds into the meat grinder. He can better afford the losses than the Ukrainians can.
Their economy is in bad shape and they have lost a lot of financial and human capital - they could not afford to lose either before the war. They are basically a gas station with a flag and they are not making money on “oil” like people say they are..... they want high gas prices because it cost them more to get theirs and bring it to market than it does OPEC nations.
At this point, in my estimation, keeping your veteran forces intact is more important for the Ukrainians than holding a spot on a map that has been destroyed.
The longer this drags on the more likely it will be that nuclear weapons will be used or other nations (NATO nations) might become involved. The longer this drags on the more likely that the geniuses in charge of our nation will increase our involvement.
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