Posted on 06/18/2023 1:39:37 PM PDT by delta7
Ukraine said its forces were advancing on several axes in their counteroffensive but were struggling to counter Russian air and artillery superiority hobbling its assaults in the east and south.
Now into its second week, Ukraine’s ambitious attempt to take back Russian-occupied land is proving to be a hard slog against dense minefields and well-prepared defenses. After Ukraine’s first probing attacks yielded mixed results, its forces have mostly paused their advances in recent days as commanders take stock of the past two weeks and analyze ways to punch through Russian lines without taking huge losses.
Russia has taken advantage of its superior air power and Kyiv’s limited air defenses to strike Ukrainian armored columns and stop several attacks, destroying some of the sophisticated Western weaponry Ukraine is fielding.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
“In 2021, a whopping 83 percent of Russian gas was exported to Europe. Russia’s total global exports of 7 million barrels of oil a day and 200 billion cubic meters (bcm) of piped gas a year accounted for about half of its federal revenue. Even more importantly, Russia’s commodities exports played a crucial role in global supply chains: Europe was reliant on Russia for 46 percent of its total gas supply, with comparable levels of dependence on other Russian products including metals and fertilizer....
Putin, on the other hand, has zero remaining leverage and no way to replace his erstwhile primary customer; he is finding out the hard way that it is much easier for consumers to replace unreliable commodity suppliers than it is for suppliers to find new markets. Already, Putin is drawing practically no profit from gas sales, as his prior 150 bcm sales of piped gas to Europe have been replaced by a measly 16 bcm to China and pocket change in global LNG sales, barely enough to cover expenses. There are no markets for Putin to replace anything close to that 150 bcm shortfall: China lacks the necessary pipeline capacity to take any more for at least a decade and prefers domestic and diversified sources of energy anyhow, while Russia’s laggard technology makes it impossible to scale LNG exports beyond a slow trickle....”
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/01/19/russia-ukraine-economy-europe-energy/
“When Trump gets elected he’ll tell Russia to take their invading troops back to Russia. The war will be over in 24 hours that way.”
Fine by me. All I care about is pulling back from the verge of World War 3, something that Biden and the Neocons seem to CLEARLY want to happen.
Glad we finally see eye-to-eye on something.
yea. the euroweenies pay 3 times the cost for NG that should have been used here, so our prices doubled too, and Bidet/CONgress keeps getting the “laundry” done in Ukraine.
That is in fact wrong. They're plainly #1.
“Russia was supposed to be the number two conventional army in the World.”
That is in fact wrong. They’re plainly #1.”
>>>>>>>>>>>
So how come the Russians are doing so poorly?
How come they are loosing ground every day?
How come they retreated from the their botched Kiev invasion. Their miles long tank convoy was massacred in a few days by a few unprepared Ukrainians? They fled for their lives.
Dear Kremlin deep-state people,
Its time to end your invasions and acts of piracy around the world.
Tell your troops to go back to your Neo-soviet country.
Stop invading others homes.
Stop killing hordes of young Russians on the killing fields of Ukraine.
Stop killing Ukrainian citizens living in their own country.
Respect borders.
Cease your old commie habits.
Abandon you alliance with the worlds most extreme Islamic entities : Chechnya and Iran.
Start respecting God
And finally... try conservatism for a change, and then grow up.
Shut yer gob, Frenchy.
Hate to be a spelling Nazi but isn’t the word ‘’axis’’?
Secondly, you'd stated "its economy has basically shrunk by about 15%." So you cover your assertion with prose from a six month old article, and then again do not support your assertion.
A graph in the article from MacroTrends:
Source: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/RUS/russia/gdp-gross-domestic-product
A different source: https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/monthly-gdp-yoy
Another different source" https://www.statista.com/statistics/263772/gross-domestic-product-gdp-in-russia/
As I am of the "not my circus, not my clowns" stance as regards the stupid Ukraine-Russia non-NATO war between two thugs, I have no ax to grind. If NATO wished to ACTUALLY declare war, I would reevaluate my view. Until then, nope. But you assert things which are not supportable.
Among them, "its [ Russia's ] economy has basically shrunk by about 15%."
A hard slog? What kind of terminology is that for the great newspaper to use?
The Russian force that began the rescue op in early 2022 was an expeditionary force, that's all.
Russian air superiority is so great that yesterday they lost three (3) $31million dollar KA-52s.
The KA52s have cost ukraine alotmore than they’ve costRussia...
I used numbers - you used assumptions.
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