Posted on 08/20/2024 3:26:49 PM PDT by Mariner
(Reuters) -President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian forces captured more than 1,250 square km (480 square miles) in a "defensive operation" in Russia's Kursk region and urged allies to allow Western weapons strikes deep inside the country.
Two weeks after Ukrainian forces launched a shock incursion into Russia's western region, Zelenskiy said the operation "no one knew about" proved there were no red lines of the Kremlin to be wary of.
"The naive, illusory concept of so-called red lines regarding Russia, which dominated the assessment of the war by some partners, has crumbled apart in these days somewhere near Sudzha," he said, referring to the border town currently under Kyiv's control.
Ukrainian troops have taken a total of 92 settlements, he added in an address to ambassadors published on the Telegram messaging platform.
"If our partners lifted current restrictions on the use of weapons on Russian territory, we wouldn’t need to physically enter the Kursk region," Zelenskiy said, citing the need to protect Ukrainian border communities.
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
Nay the objective was not a buffer zone. It was some strategically valuable target which they failed, so far, to capture. And it would be a good bet they will not after 2 weeks and only 12-14 thousand men...not even a full army division.
Now they need a way out.
How will they get out? Walking or riding?
And if a dog didn’t need to take a zhit he could catch the rabbit.
I’m surprised the Russians haven’t taken this little rat faced dictator off the board.
Because Putin is such the democrat, right?
However, a democracy has to use a clever combination of carrots and sticks so as to keep its client states underfoot while not appearing hypocritical.
The governments of those client states will have to at least pretend to be democratic which prevents the democratic empire from guaranteeing that those states will remain vassals.
We haven't even succeeded with Haiti which is just off the coast. Puerto Rico made us give up our bombing range. The Philippines made us give up Subic Bay. Cuba continues to be an adversary.
We can pretend that the US isn't an empire and never hopes to be one. We just have "trading partners" and "allies". If they are our partners, then why is there a petrodollar? Why did we blow up an important source of cheap energy to our German "ally"? Why did we continue with NATO after the dissolution of the Soviet Union? We dissolved SEATO when it was no longer necessary, after all.
The US is the worst kind of empire: one that refuses to acknowledge as such and ends up engaging in all manner of CIA trickery and subterfuge to keep our "allies" and "trading partners" in line. This while violating every pretext of democracy by interfering at every level in the democratic processes of other countries even to the point of assassination of candidates of whom we disapprove.
So, they have a 22 x 22-mile square of territory.
They should be able to walk out in 6 to 7 hours. If they have to crawl out it will be longer, shorter if they run.
” It was some strategically valuable target which they failed”
A Ukrainian nationalist here, I can’t remember the handle, claimed the Sudzha railroad was the big strategic gain. Wow!
I have pinwheels-for-eyes zeepers pretending to me that there have been zero Ukrainian casualties and zero equipment losses over the course of the development of the salient.
Dittoes for "Cookies" Nuland and her family.
If Ukraine could retreat they would. The Russian response was to secure NPP and set up special operations forces. Russia has essentially destroyed all the heavy equipment Ukraine brought with them the first 72 hours. Wagner/Chechen forces are operating in the real areas preventing use of the roads Ukraine has hoped to use to withdraw... With 12,000 soldiers in Russia, and probably 7k KIA, over the conservative estimates of 3800 are likely.
Russia will now take out the electic transfer stations distributing the elec from the two NPPs Ukraine operates, which will end most railway transport for AFU, and put the Ukrainian people on life support this winter; further going after the remaining fuel storage and distrubiton in Ukraine will create a humanitarian crisis for the West. Russia had held back, but in the next few weeks look for Russia to finally turn out the lights. Brics has held Russia in check. Now Brics has come to the conclusion that Ukraine since 1991 has never once operated in good faith with Moscow.
Russia was gifted new leverage by her partners and allies, India, Pakistan, China, and others who had demanded Ukraine not be destroyed for the benefit of the civilians. Now those gloves come off.
zeepers don't understand logistics and supply.
They only understand cheerleading, and the gaslighting instructions from their Gaslight Media.
Trois Ponts gains its name from three highway bridges, two over the Salm and one across the Amblève. The road from Stavelot passes under railroad tracks as it nears Trois Ponts, then veers sharply to the south, crosses the Amblève, continues through the narrow valley for a few hundred yards, and finally turns west at right angles to cross the Salm and enter the main section of the small village. A number of roads find their way through the deep recesses of the Salm and Amblève valleys to reach Trois Ponts, hidden among the cliffs and hills. Most, however, wind for some distance through the gorges and along the tortuous valley floors.
One road, a continuation of the paved highway from Stavelot, leads immediately from Trois Ponts and the valley to the west. This road, via Werbomont, was Peiper's objective.
Company C, 51st Engineer Combat Battalion, occupied Trois Ponts, so important in the itinerary of the kampfgruppe. Quite unaware of the importance of its mission, the company had been ordered out of the sawmills it had been operating as part of the First Army's Winterization and Bridge Timber Cutting Program, and dispatched to Trois Ponts where it detrucked about midnight on 17 December. Numbering around 140 men, the company was armed with eight bazookas and ten machine guns.
Maj. Robert B. Yates, commanding the force, knew only that the 1111th Engineer Group was preparing a barrier line along the Salm River from Trois Ponts south to Bovigny and that he was to construct roadblocks at the approaches to Trois Ponts according to the group plans. During the night Yates deployed the company at roadblocks covering the bridge across the Amblève and at the vulnerable highway underpass at the railroad tracks north of the river.
On the morning of 18 December a part of the artillery column of the 7th Armored Division passed through Trois Ponts, after a detour to avoid the German armor south of Malmédy; then appeared one 57-mm. antitank gun and crew which had become lost during the move of the 526th Armored Infantry Battalion. Yates commandeered the crew and placed the gun on the Stavelot road to the east of the first underpass where a daisy chain of mines had been laid.
A quarter of an hour before noon the advance guard of Peiper's main column, nineteen or twenty tanks, came rolling along the road. A shot from the lone antitank gun crippled or in somewise stopped the foremost German tank, but after a brief skirmish the enemy knocked out the gun, killed four of the crew, and drove back the engineers. The hit on the lead tank checked the German column just long enough to give warning to the bridge guards, only a few score yards farther on. They blew the Amblève bridge, then the Salm bridge, and fell back to the houses in the main part of town. In the meantime one of the engineer platoons had discouraged the German tank company from further advance along the side road and it had turned back to Stavelot.
Frustrated by a battalion antitank gun and a handful of engineers, Kampfgruppe Peiper now had no quick exit from the valley of the Amblève. With but one avenue remaining the column turned northward toward La Gleize, moving through the canyons of the Amblève on the east side of the river. At La Gleize there was a western exit from the valley, although by a mediocre, twisting road. Nearby, at the hamlet of Cheneux, the Germans found a bridge intact over the Amblève.
This stroke of good luck was countered by bad when the weather cleared and American fighter-bombers knocked out two or three tanks and seven half-tracks, blocking the narrow road for a considerable period. When night came the armored point was within some three miles of Werbomont, an important road center on the main highway linking Liège and Bastogne.
Then, as the Germans neared a creek (the Lienne) a squad of Company A, 291st Engineer Combat Battalion, blew up the only bridge. Reconnaissance north and south discovered other bridges, but all were too fragile to support the Tiger tanks which had come forward with the advance guard. During the evening one detachment with half-tracks and assault guns did cross on a bridge to the north and swung southwest toward Werbomont. Near Chevron this force ran into an ambush, set by a battalion of the 30th Division which had been sent to head off Peiper, and was cut to pieces. Few of the Germans escaped. Since there was nothing left but to double back on his tracks, Peiper left a guard on the bridge at Cheneux and moved his advance guard through the dark toward the town of Stoumont, situated on the Amblève River road from which the abortive detour had been made during the afternoon. Scouts brought in word that Stoumont was strongly held and that more American troops were moving in from Spa. There was nothing left but to fight for the town.
92 settlements liberated.
Athens and Rome were both, in their timeperiods, democracies. And both their empires were strong and lasted quite a bit of time.
“92 settlements liberated.”
Meanwhile Russia levels entire cities and kills at least a hundred Ukrainian soldiers per day.
Just 150 miles to the south.
Ukraine cannot hold their meager gains.
Russia will hold all of theirs.
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