Ukraine

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1665428159825690626?t=Q-0O6zNz1NWxNyLcEGHVpw&s=19

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/AdamKinzinger/status/1665476924716580865?t=FW1cVfQEU8tYOInvI7-FBw&s=19

mickeyrat

whoa.....

https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1665863611913506817?t=f6NyyBthoR-0svGhD1naCg&s=19

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/deangloster/status/1665926777443864576?t=_duaqoFrLXlT13rTOo6pkQ&s=19

23scidoo

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230606-cia-knew-of-ukraine-plan-to-blow-up-nord-stream-pipeline-report

Pap

First western band to play war-torn Ukraine

mrussel1

23scidoo said:

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230606-cia-knew-of-ukraine-plan-to-blow-up-nord-stream-pipeline-report

Here's the full article from the WashPo.  It's a gift article, so no firewall.  It is much more in depth on the whole affair. 

https://wapo.st/3qz1eIH

mickeyrat

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-counteroffensive-donetsk-9b95dc8252e9b874d2169219ecbd52f2

 

Russia Ukraine Russia government

Ukraine recaptures village as Russian forces hold other lines, fire on fleeing civilians elsewhere

By Jamey Keaten

40 mins ago

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine's military on Sunday reported recapturing a southeastern village as Russian forces claimed to repel multiple attacks in the area, while a regional official said three people were killed when Moscow's troops opened fire at a boat evacuating people from Russian-occupied areas to Ukrainian-held territory along a flooded front line far to the south.

The battlefield showdown in the southeast and chaotic scenes from inundated southern Ukraine marked the latest upheaval and bloodshed in Russia's war in Ukraine, now in its 16th month.

Oleksandr Prokudin, governor of the Kherson region, said on his Telegram account that a 74-year-old man who tried to protect a woman was among those who died in the attack on evacuees, which wounded another 10. An Associated Press team on site saw three ambulances drop off injured evacuees at a hospital, one of whom was splattered with blood and whisked by stretcher into the emergency room.

The Kherson region straddles the Dnieper River and has suffered heavy flooding since last week's breach of a dam that Ukraine and Russia accuse each other of causing. Russian forces occupy parts of the region on the eastern side of the river.

Many civilians have said Russian authorities in occupied areas were forcing would-be evacuees to present Russian passports before taking them to safety. Since then, many small boats have shuttled from Ukrainian-held areas on the west bank across the river to rescue desperate civilians stuck on rooftops, in attics and other islands of dry amid the deluge.

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To the northeast, nearly half-way up the more than 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line, Ukrainian forces said they drove out Russian fighters from the village of Blahodatne, in the partially occupied Donetsk region. Ukraine's 68th Separate Hunting Brigade posted a video on Facebook that showed soldiers installing a Ukrainian flag on a damaged building in the village.

Myroslav Semeniuk, spokesman for the brigade, told The Associated Press that an assault team captured six Russian troops after entering several buildings where some 60 soldiers were holed up. “The enemy keeps shelling us but this won’t stop us,” Semeniuk said. “The next village we plan to reclaim is Urozhayne. After that, (we’ll proceed) further south.”

Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said Ukrainian troops in the area had advanced up to 1.5 kilometers (about a mile) and had taken control of another village, Makarivka.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday that Ukrainian counteroffensive actions were underway. But while the recapture of Blahodatne pointed to a small Ukrainian advance, Western and Ukrainian leaders have repeatedly cautioned that efforts to expel Russian troops more broadly are expected take time. Russia has made much of how its troops have held their ground elsewhere.

The Russian Defense Ministry on Sunday continued to insist that it was repelling Ukrainian attacks in the area. It said in a statement that Ukrainian attempts at offensive operations on the southern Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia axes of the frontline over the past 24 hours had been “unsuccessful.”

Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-installed official in the Zaporizhzhia region, insisted that Blahodatne and two other villages in the region were in a “gray area” in terms of who controls them. However, Rogov said in a Telegram post that Russian fighters had been forced to leave the village of Neskuchne in the Donetsk region. In a video, fighters identifying themselves as members of a Ukrainian volunteer force claimed to have taken the village.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has asserted that that Ukraine’s counteroffensive had started, and said Ukrainian forces were taking “significant losses.”

In other developments:

Ukrhydroenergo, Ukraine’s hydropower generator, said Sunday that water levels on a reservoir above the ruptured Kakhovka dam continued to decline — at 9.35 meters (30 feet, 6 inches) on Sunday morning, marking a drop of more than seven meters since the dam break on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, below the dam, Prokudin said water levels on the Ukrainian-held west bank were receding, even if more than 32 settlements remained flooded. He said conditions were worse on the Russian-occupied eastern bank, which sits at a lower elevation and where water levels were slower to drop back down.

Also Sunday, the Russian military accused Ukrainian forces of attacking — albeit unsuccessfully — one of its ships in the Black Sea.

According to Russia’s Defense Ministry, the attempted attack took place when six unmanned speedboats targeted Russia’s Priazovye reconnaissance vessel that was “monitoring the situation and ensuring security along the routes of the TurkStream and Blue Stream gas pipelines in the southeastern part of the Black Sea.”

All the speedboats were destroyed by the Russian military, and the ship didn’t sustain any damage, the ministry said. The claim could not be independently verified, and Ukrainian officials made no immediate comment.

Ukraine and Russia reported exchanging scores of prisoners of war on Sunday; Russia said 94 of its soldiers were freed and Yermak said 95 Ukrainians were released.

Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has signed a decree ordering all Russian volunteer formations to sign contracts with the ministry by July 1, according to his deputy Nikolai Pankov. The move would give the formations legal status and allow them to receive the same state benefits as contract soldiers.

Observers say the move likely targets the Wagner private military company. Wagner owner Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has a long-running feud with the Russian military, said Sunday that the group would not sign such contracts “precisely because Shoigu cannot manage military formations normally.”

mrussel1

I fear the war is stalemating into attrition, with Bakhmut becoming the new Flanders fields. 

mickeyrat

mrussel1 said:

I fear the war is stalemating into attrition, with Bakhmut becoming the new Flanders fields. 

bunch of weaponry is coming online for them. training and tactics for leadership will be implemented here soon too. tide is turning. I think thats evident from the russian use of water as a weapon. shot themselves in the foot on that one though. the areas they control got it worse as far as flooding. also that dam supplied crimea with water , I read?

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/sumlenny/status/1667838317788905472?t=cNv7S9K03ywLMkCh3_HYqg&s=19

mrussel1

mickeyrat said:

mrussel1 said:

I fear the war is stalemating into attrition, with Bakhmut becoming the new Flanders fields. 

bunch of weaponry is coming online for them. training and tactics for leadership will be implemented here soon too. tide is turning. I think thats evident from the russian use of water as a weapon. shot themselves in the foot on that one though. the areas they control got it worse as far as flooding. also that dam supplied crimea with water , I read?

I think the tide is turning inasmuch as Ukraine is ready to launch its offensive.  But I'm very skeptical that they will push Russia out of Crimea.  Maybe they reclaim some of the Eastern Oblasts. 

mickeyrat

mrussel1 said:

mickeyrat said:

mrussel1 said:

I fear the war is stalemating into attrition, with Bakhmut becoming the new Flanders fields. 

bunch of weaponry is coming online for them. training and tactics for leadership will be implemented here soon too. tide is turning. I think thats evident from the russian use of water as a weapon. shot themselves in the foot on that one though. the areas they control got it worse as far as flooding. also that dam supplied crimea with water , I read?

I think the tide is turning inasmuch as Ukraine is ready to launch its offensive.  But I'm very skeptical that they will push Russia out of Crimea.  Maybe they reclaim some of the Eastern Oblasts. 

how long do you think adequate training in F-16s take?

mrussel1

mickeyrat said:

mrussel1 said:

mickeyrat said:

mrussel1 said:

I fear the war is stalemating into attrition, with Bakhmut becoming the new Flanders fields. 

bunch of weaponry is coming online for them. training and tactics for leadership will be implemented here soon too. tide is turning. I think thats evident from the russian use of water as a weapon. shot themselves in the foot on that one though. the areas they control got it worse as far as flooding. also that dam supplied crimea with water , I read?

I think the tide is turning inasmuch as Ukraine is ready to launch its offensive.  But I'm very skeptical that they will push Russia out of Crimea.  Maybe they reclaim some of the Eastern Oblasts. 

how long do you think adequate training in F-16s take?

I have no clue.  But I also don't necessary think that gives Ukraine some clear advantage in the war.  Russians have jets too.  That's why I think it's going to stalemate and then there will need to be some peaceable solution.  But Ukraine is not going to publicly agree to cede one ounce of territory until a deal is actually made. Until then, my guess is their official position is they want all lost territory back.  

curmudgeoness

mickeyrat said:

mrussel1 said:

I fear the war is stalemating into attrition, with Bakhmut becoming the new Flanders fields. 

bunch of weaponry is coming online for them. training and tactics for leadership will be implemented here soon too. tide is turning. I think thats evident from the russian use of water as a weapon. shot themselves in the foot on that one though. the areas they control got it worse as far as flooding. also that dam supplied crimea with water , I read?

Yes, flooding, followed by desertification. They're going to have to drill wells in Crimea, people do not have adequate drinking water.

The Kyiv Independent and ISW already are reporting significant gains by Ukraine in its counteroffensive, a number of villages (or what's left of them) have been liberated.

I don't know much of anything about military strategy or weaponry. I know that the official stance is "Crimea is Ukraine," and that there is a very long cultural memory of the abuses suffered under the Russians (not just Chornobyl -- the Holodomor and persistent efforts to deny the existence of a separate Ukrainian culture). Given that the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine have been hit hardest by Russia's latest invasion, I am skeptical that the Ukrainians still living there would acquiesce and submit to permanent Russian rule. 

mickeyrat

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-counteroffensive-47188c6e619b52d449e673b7e9b2f263

 

Ukraine Russia-Ukraine war

Ukraine claims recapture of seven villages in early stages of counteroffensive

By Jamey Keaten

Today

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian troops have retaken seven villages spanning 90 square kilometers (35 square miles) from Russian forces in the past week, the deputy defense minister said Monday as the early stages of Kyiv's counteroffensive notched small successes.

Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar wrote on the Telegram app that the Ukrainian flag was again flying over the village of Storozhov, in the eastern Donetsk province, and that her troops had also retaken three other nearby small villages and three in neighboring Zaporizhzhia province.

“The battles are tough, but our movement is there, and that is very important,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address." He added that rainy weather is challenging his troops, and that he's discussed with his military commanders “which points of the front we need to strengthen and what actions we can take to break more Russian positions.”

On Sunday, Ukrainian officials said their troops took the Donestk villages of Blahodatne, Makarivka and Neskuchne — south of the town of Velyka Novosilka. Maliar reported Monday that the Zaporizhzhia province settlements of Lobkove, Levadne and Novodrivka were also now back under Ukrainian control.

Russian officials did not confirm Ukraine's gains, which were impossible to verify and could be reversed in the to-and-fro of war. The gains amounted to only small bits of territory and underscored the difficulty of the battle ahead for Ukrainian forces, who will have to fight meter by meter to regain the roughly one-fifth of their country under Russian occupation.

Recent fighting on the western edge of the 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line has been complicated by a dam breach that sent floodwaters into a part of the Dnieper River separating the two sides.

Western analysts and military officials have cautioned that an effort to rid Ukraine of entrenched and powerfully armed Russian troops could take years, and the success of the Ukrainian counteroffensive is far from certain. French President Emmanuel Macron said in Paris that the Ukrainian counteroffensive began several days ago and “is set to be deployed over several weeks, if not months.”

Vladimir Rogov, an official with the Moscow-appointed administration of the Zaporizhzhia region at the western end of the front line, said “heavy battles" were raging in the area Monday involving Russian artillery, mortars and air power.

The villages are part of an area where the Russian front lines jut out into territory held by Ukraine. While just a few kilometers (more than 1 mile) deep, the protrusion has recently become one of several epicenters of intense fighting along the front line that cuts across southern and eastern Ukraine.

Despite their small size, the capture of the villages involved an incursion into the first line of Russian defenses and could allow Ukrainian forces to try a deeper thrust into occupied areas.

Russian forces control far less Ukrainian land than they did before a blistering Ukrainian counteroffensive last year that retook the northern city of Kharkiv and southern city of Kherson, among other places.

On Saturday, Zelenskyy said “counteroffensive, defensive actions are taking place” without specifying whether it was the all-out counteroffensive that has long been expected after a vast infusion of Western firepower and air defense systems into Ukraine. A day earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin asserted that the counteroffensive had started and Ukrainian forces were taking “significant losses.”

Ukrainian forces have focused on the Zaporizhzhia region and an area near the devastated Donetsk city of Bakhmut, among other locations.

Russian authorities have said their troops are largely holding their ground.

But Semyon Pegov, a prominent Russian military blogger who goes by the nickname WarGonzo, acknowledged Russian troops had withdrawn from Blahodatne, Neskuchne and Makarivka, and said Ukrainian forces were trying to push forward along the banks of the Mokri Yaly River on Monday.

Alexandet Kots, military correspondent for Russian daily Komsomolskaya Pravda, said Ukrainian forces were attempting to advance, despite heavy losses, toward the town of Staromlinovka, which sits on a strategic highway leading to the port city of Mariupol. Russian forces captured the city over a year ago, after Ukrainian forces held out for several months in a grueling and desperate defense.

Separately Monday, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said least four civilians were killed and 16 others wounded by Russian shelling over the last 24 hours.

In Donetsk, Russian shelling hit nine towns and villages and left one civilian dead and two others wounded. Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko posted images of apartment buildings and a cultural center damaged by Russian strikes in the town of Avdiivka.

In Kharkiv, to the north, Russian forces pummeled several settlements with artillery, mortar and rocket fire, wounding at least three people, regional state administration chief Oleh Synehubov wrote on Telegram.

The reported Ukrainian advance came as authorities on both sides of the front line pressed on with rescue and relocation efforts for civilians in the Kherson region driven from their homes by flooding from the breach of the Kakhovka dam last week.

With many homes and shops submerged in polluted river water, the U.N. and other aid groups say access to fresh drinking water is crucial and that water-borne diseases pose a big risk. Thousands of people have been evacuated, though some remain.

Kherson Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin said Monday that water levels have been receding. They now average about 3 meters (nearly 10 feet) higher than normal — down from about 5 meters at the peak level last week. More than 32 towns and villages remain flooded, he said, and Russian forces have continued shelling inundated areas held by Ukraine on the river's western bank.

On Sunday, Prokudin said three people were killed when Moscow’s troops opened fire on a boat evacuating people from Russian-occupied areas toward Ukrainian-held ones.

___

Associated Press writers Illia Novikov in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Yuras Karmanau in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this report.

___

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

mrussel1

curmudgeoness said:

mickeyrat said:

mrussel1 said:

I fear the war is stalemating into attrition, with Bakhmut becoming the new Flanders fields. 

bunch of weaponry is coming online for them. training and tactics for leadership will be implemented here soon too. tide is turning. I think thats evident from the russian use of water as a weapon. shot themselves in the foot on that one though. the areas they control got it worse as far as flooding. also that dam supplied crimea with water , I read?

Yes, flooding, followed by desertification. They're going to have to drill wells in Crimea, people do not have adequate drinking water.

The Kyiv Independent and ISW already are reporting significant gains by Ukraine in its counteroffensive, a number of villages (or what's left of them) have been liberated.

I don't know much of anything about military strategy or weaponry. I know that the official stance is "Crimea is Ukraine," and that there is a very long cultural memory of the abuses suffered under the Russians (not just Chornobyl -- the Holodomor and persistent efforts to deny the existence of a separate Ukrainian culture). Given that the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine have been hit hardest by Russia's latest invasion, I am skeptical that the Ukrainians still living there would acquiesce and submit to permanent Russian rule. 

If you look at Sevastopol and other areas of Crimea, you're looking at about 40% ethnic Russian.  Donbass is going to have similar numbers.  It's even larger if you count Russian speakers, as many of them speak Russian primarily, but identify as Ukrainian.  And they supported Yanukovych.  So there is a strong pro-Russian sentiment. 

You probably would be hard pressed to find someone that's more pro-Uke than me, considering that is my heritage, but there's a realpolitik consideration here.  Can the Ukrainians really push Russia out of Crimea and the eastern Oblasts?  Which one is more important?  It's a good question.  Donbass has big coal reserves but Crimea provides the best access to the Black Sea and to the Sea of Azov.  If they kept the coal reserves, well then they have to transport all the way to the Dnipro River to get it out to sea.  

curmudgeoness

Those  all are good points. I'd argue that we really don't know enough right now to predict what might happen. My understanding is that a lot of that pro-Russian sentiment has vaporized over the past year -- but we really have no good way of determining the level of support. We have to assume that everything Russia says about local support is a lie. Beyond that -- ??

I think part of the dilemma Ukraine faces is that any territory they cede sends the message to Putin that he can just start wantonly burning stuff to the ground and eventually he'll get a little something for his efforts. The human cost doesn't matter to him, and he doesn't seem to want the territory for anything other than bragging rights, so scorched-earth and war crimes are fine by him.

Giving in also incentivizes Putin to go after the Baltic states, tiny Moldova, etc.

I tend to believe that crushing Putin is the only long-term solution, because otherwise, as long as he draws breath he is going to be a threat to neighboring countries that really, really don't want to see "the band" (USSR) get back together. I'm also not confident that his successor, whoever that might be, would be any better.

mrussel1

curmudgeoness said:

Those  all are good points. I'd argue that we really don't know enough right now to predict what might happen. My understanding is that a lot of that pro-Russian sentiment has vaporized over the past year -- but we really have no good way of determining the level of support. We have to assume that everything Russia says about local support is a lie. Beyond that -- ??

I think part of the dilemma Ukraine faces is that any territory they cede sends the message to Putin that he can just start wantonly burning stuff to the ground and eventually he'll get a little something for his efforts. The human cost doesn't matter to him, and he doesn't seem to want the territory for anything other than bragging rights, so scorched-earth and war crimes are fine by him.

Giving in also incentivizes Putin to go after the Baltic states, tiny Moldova, etc.

I tend to believe that crushing Putin is the only long-term solution, because otherwise, as long as he draws breath he is going to be a threat to neighboring countries that really, really don't want to see "the band" (USSR) get back together. I'm also not confident that his successor, whoever that might be, would be any better.

I think there is grave risk in trying to knock Putin out.  When he goes, it will be a coup or he dies.  I think sending his military back to Russia without anything to show for it increases the likelihood of some nuclear event.  That's where I'm very worried.  

Regarding Moldova, I was also very worried about that early on in the war.  It could create some domino effect.  Plus Russian intelligence was already trying to destabilize the gov't there.  But I'm less worried now considering how strong Ukraine's military is, plus its other border is Romania, who is a very strong US ally.  

curmudgeoness

I'm more worried about a nuclear accident than a nuclear attack, TBH. Never underestimate the Russian propensity for incompetence and corruption. I disagree with Tom Nichols about a number of things, but I think he's  on solid ground when it comes to nuclear matters. I'm much less worried about Putin going nuclear than I was a year ago (I'm not going to panic until Tom says it's time to panic).

I'm not suggesting that "we" should try to eliminate Putin; but he is a Russian man of a certain age, in a certain position, so there will be a successor, likely sooner than later. And I'm not hearing anything to suggest that there's anyone waiting in the wings who is not steeped in the old ways.