Posted on 08/12/2025 4:28:32 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
Russian forces made a sudden thrust in eastern Ukraine in recent days, as Russian leader Vladimir Putin seeks a battlefield advantage ahead of talks with President Trump on Friday.
The infantry penetration, which officials and soldiers said stretched several miles deep near the Ukrainian city of Dobropillya, is a rare move in a war where defenses have gained the upper hand and Russia has struggled to add to the around 20% of Ukraine that it has occupied for much of its 3½-year invasion.
Ukraine’s military said it was counterattacking in the area against what it said were small groups of Russian soldiers that had pierced the first line of Ukrainian defenses and skirted a belt of fortifications Ukraine had been building for months. It said another such penetration in another part of the front had been defeated last week.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky described the situation in the area as the most difficult across the front, but said his forces had located and killed or taken prisoner some of the Russian troops, who he said advanced with no more equipment than the weapons in their hands.
“The rest will also be found and destroyed soon,” he told reporters.
He said the goal of the Russian move appeared to be “showing that Russia is moving forward and Ukraine is losing.”
The question now is whether Russia can build on its advance by widening the breach and moving farther into territory with less-prepared defenses. If the Russian forces are successful, they will be able to bring more pressure to bear on cities still controlled by Kyiv in the eastern Donetsk region, a key target for the Kremlin.
The Russian offensive might strengthen Putin’s hand as he prepares for the talks in Alaska this week.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Expected. Getting all the bargaining chips they can.
Who, exactly, is surprised?
Individual soldiers out in the open? That sort of strategy is not going to work against drones. Even if you’re in a foxhole, the drone will get you.
“Nobody ever defended anything successfully, there is only attack and attack and attack some more”
- George S. Patton
“L’audace ! L’audace ! Toujours l’audace !”
Z will predictably refuse any deals that threatens his dictator status.
Yeah, a real surprise. Give us a break. Z, the EU (especially Germany & France), and the UK have all been working overtime to kill any talks of a ceasefire or peace. Russia ain’t stupid, don’t ya know.
“Russia has struggled to add to the around 20% of Ukraine that it has occupied for much of its 3½-year invasion.”
Russia is going broke fighting Putin’s two-week war.
SURPRISE!
Thanks General Patton, we were wondering what you opinion on this maneuver is.
...... Putin is making a statement to Trump before the Talks ....
Surprise?
Where is all that vaunted European support, sworn as: whatever it takes for as long as it takes?
I am suspicious of all this hyping of the evil Russian military ahead of the Trump/Putin meeting. There are others talking of Zelensky trying to sabotage the meeting and is importing journalists to be on hand because Ukraine is going to carry out a false flag operation.The false flag attack might be on a hospital.
https://www.rt.com/russia/622812-ukraine-plot-provocations-sabotage-alaska-meeting/
The question is of what though.
“drone”
WIKI
Shrapnel’s innovation was to combine the multi-projectile shotgun effect of canister shot, with a time fuze to open the canister and disperse the shot it contained at some distance along the canister’s trajectory from the gun. His shell was a hollow cast-iron sphere filled with a mixture of balls (“shot”) and powder, with a crude time fuze. If the fuze was set correctly then the shell would break open, either in front of or above the intended human objective, releasing its contents (of musket balls). The shrapnel balls would carry on with the “remaining velocity” of the shell. In addition to a denser pattern of musket balls, the retained velocity could be higher as well, since the shrapnel shell as a whole would likely have a higher ballistic coefficient than the individual musket balls (see external ballistics).
The explosive charge in the shell was to be just enough to break the casing rather than scatter the shot in all directions. As such his invention increased the effective range of canister shot from 300 metres (980 ft) to about 1,100 metres (3,600 ft).
Although not strictly shrapnel, a 1960s weapons project produced splintex[clarification needed] shells for 90 and 106 mm recoilless rifles and 105 mm howitzers, where it was called a “beehive” round. Unlike the shrapnel shells’ balls, the splintex shells contained flechettes. The result was the 105 mm M546 APERS-T (anti-personnel-tracer) round, first used in the Vietnam War in 1966. The shell consisted of approximately 8,000 one-half-gram flechettes arranged in five tiers, a time fuse, body-shearing detonators, a central flash tube, a smokeless propellant charge with a dye marker contained in the base and a tracer element. The shell functioned as follows: the time fuse fired, the flash traveled down the flash tube, the shearing detonators fired, and the forward body split into four pieces. The body and first four tiers were dispersed by the projectile’s spin, the last tier and visual marker by the powder charge itself. The flechettes spread, mainly due to spin, from the point of burst in an ever-widening cone along the projectile’s previous trajectory prior to bursting. The round was complex to make, but is a highly effective anti-personnel weapon – soldiers reported that after beehive rounds were fired during an overrun attack, many enemy dead had their hands nailed to the wooden stocks of their rifles, and these dead could be dragged to mass graves by the rifle. It is said that the name beehive was given to the munition type due to the noise of the flechettes moving through the air resembling that of a swarm of bees.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrapnel_shell
“Who, exactly, is surprised?”
No one. The Rooskie hammer will keep dropping until Putin gets what he wants or Putin is deposed.
Even Pres. Trump has finally realized that Putin has no reason to stop and has no interest in peace talks. I can’t wait for this meeting in Alaska. What can Pres. Trump say to dissuade Putin?
The pressure of everywhere at once is paying huge dividends. Russia focused on destruction of the AFU. They are offering a Master Class in small unit action and pinpoint destruction of the NATO sourced Ukraine.
The first victim of American/NATO propoganda is that Russia lacked the capabilities to hit with percisison targets from a distance. The lack of civilian casualities proves how wrong this one assumption was by NATO. This one miscalculation by the NATO officers thinking Russia could not hit has brought victory to Russia.
Ukraine is going to see 10-15,000 men in just one sector cut off with no chance of excape. Russia has made a habit of always allowing the AFU an excape route, but that all changed this week. Russia cutting off the AFU in a half-dozen locations all at once and destroying those forces. Many of the dead are from NATO and S.American countries.
Trump will get an actual briefing from Putin. Trump will at first be pissed no one told him the truth as his disbelief becomes realization that he has no real cards to play at the negotiation table.
Trump is going to actually learn what the Russian Terms of 14 June 2024 are and that these terms were initially offered before Boris Johnson blew up Istabul negotiations... However, Russia augments those terms as the battlefield dictates, meaning those terms are the bedrock positon augmented by reality of Russian gains.
The best thing that can happen is that both Russia and the US decide to deal with the City of London, and reset the world into a multi-polar great powers period, and without England at the table for the first time in 400 years.
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