Russian forces have begun withdrawing from Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv Oblast, according to the local governor.
Earlier this week, Russia said it would “drastically” reduce military operations in Chernihiv and near the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. Ukrainian media has reported that Russian troops have continued to “partially withdraw” from areas around Kyiv.
Chernihiv Governor Viacheslav Chaus said that while Russian troops were leaving the area, strikes were still possible. “Air and missile strikes are possible in the region, nobody is ruling this out,” he said.
Russia said it would withdraw from the areas on Tuesday after a session of in-person peace talks between Russian and Ukrainian officials that were held in Istanbul. On Friday, the warring parties resumed virtual talks.
Ukraine and its Western backers have portrayed Russia’s withdrawal from the northern regions as Moscow retreating and narrowing its military goals. But the Russian military has said that its main goals of the “first stage” of its invasion are completed and that it is now focusing on “liberating” the eastern Donbas region.
Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said the goal of the “first stage” was to limit the capabilities of Ukraine’s armed forces so Russia could focus on the Donbas. “Ukraine’s armed forces have sustained substantial losses. Air supremacy has been achieved. The air force and the air defense system have been practically eliminated,” he said.
Although not all of its helicopters, from recent reports…
Russia’s moving its excess forces to the Donbass “cauldron” in preparation for the final destruction of Ukrainian forces there, which constitute a third to a half, depending on whose estimates you read, of the Ukrainian army.
This will likely take several weeks, assuming the Ukrainians don’t surrender, which they will be advised to do, simply because of the size of the job, described as the largest Russian military operation since WWII.
The plan seems to be to break them up into smaller pockets, then destroy them with heavy artillery and air power. They’re very heavily dug in and supplied over the last eight years, but they’re cut off from resupply and with their surface facilities destroyed over time, they’ll be reduced to hiding in their concrete tunnels. Which is what the TOS-1 thermobaric systems are for, as well as the heavy missiles such as the one that allegedly penetrated almost 30 feet of concrete in an earlier strike in the west.
That’s correct. Re-grouping for the big battle. There should be something between 40 to 60.000 Nazi’s and some poor souls who will recieve a bullet in their head should they consider surrender, trapped there.
What Russia is fighting now is not the same Nazi’s and regular conscripts Donbass fought in 2014. Those surrendered when trapped in a futile position. These are brainwashed Nato trained zombies fighting to the last ukranian. As expected.
Those forces already asjed for the permission to surrender. It was denied.
What is with the Ukranian leadership’s common sense?
They shot a member of their negotiation team — exeecutiin style.
Then two days ago, Zelenski fired two generals. OK, if things are not doing well, firing is expected. But why did he call them “traitors”?
And if Ukraine is doing so well as CNN claimx, the Ukrainian military holding Russia back — why fire generals and call them traitors?
So, now the only generals left are the right wing ideologues— good at running death
squads — but with no proper military
experience.
40,000? Not at all. The Azov Battalion is much smaller than that, as is the other battalion in Odessa I forget the name of.
And they are more anti-Russian than anything else. And totally okay with Israel. Just using the wolfsangle and other symbols. In 2014 the nationalists taking part in the coup were condemned by almost every nationalist party and organization in Europe, whether mainstream or radical. Azov were soccer fans turned into a battalion – it’s like, Washington-financed corruption of extreme nationalism, like they have corrupted nationalism and every other ideology or religion they come across. Just use money.
They have already killed more than 50,000 civilians, raped maybe 100,000 women and made countless number of children orphans?
You want more?
Are you off your meds?
Yet, it’s a mistake by Russia. They need to take a major city like Donbass or Kiev to show success. Because people are idiohts, and will only recognize taking a city as success. If that doesn’t happen, the media succeeds in declaring “Russia failed in Ukraine!” No matter how many they defeat in the east. I expect most of them will be taken prisoner too, so there won’t be casualty figures to hold up.
People don’t care about cities being encircled, or about Donbass being protected, since they refuse to believe Donbass was under threat of invasion.
And Russia should have pounded in over and over that they were protecting Donbass from invasion, protecting civilians who were being bombed, showing the pictures of bombed buildings and dead bodies. “De-nazification” was ludicrous as people didn’t believe it, and “demilitarization” was absurd since people think Ukraine has the right to a military, obviously. You need to talk about victims to appeal to the sheep. Over and over again.
Russia is a bit tone-deaf. OTOH they don’t really care about winning the hearts and minds of the West. They prefer to be precise about what they’re doing. With Putin’s approval rating up to 83%, I think they’re winning the propaganda war where it counts – with their own people. It’s entirely the moronic western MSM that is responsible for the mis-perceptions in the west.
What can you do when your leaders are incompetent, your military equipment falling apart and many of your soldiers are running back to their families in Russia?
Putin lost, and he lost badly.
Sorry, I mean the Russian people list, 20,000+ dead.
When it comes to the best interest of everyone involved the sides can agree, Chernoble for instance. Now if we can only get The US and NATO and others to back off and let the sides work things out on their own without fueling the fire, maybe we can put this catastrophe behind us. For instance Australia, going to send weapons to Ukraine , what in the hell did Russia ever do to Australia to make them want to keep this war going. Russia has a far better track record keeping agreements then the US ever had, why are so many countries backing the US who cannot be trusted? Putin is still keeping Europe warm even when Russia is being constantly demonized.