Ukrainian forces attacked the rebel city of Luhansk today, with locals reporting heavy shelling across the city and the military making a point of raising their flag over a police station they took in the fighting.
Raising the flag may be a bit premature, as the rebels continue to control much of the city, and shot down a Ukrainian MiG-29 earlier today over Luhansk, one of their few important remaining strongholds.
As the easternmost provincial capital, and just a few miles from the Russian border, Luhansk is a particularly strategically important site, allowing rebels access to the border and giving civilians a corridor through which to escape.
Rebel leaders continue to insist that they are close to launching a counter-offensive. The indications right now are that the military has the advantage, however, and as the fighting nears the heavily populated cities, the crisis is only growing.
If you visit some of the other sites following this war, you'll see that raising the flag is nothing but a PR stunt, which is all that Ukraine pretty much has left. They'd lost literally thousands of troops and hundreds of armored vehicles so far. Ukraine has done THREE mobilizations to replace troops lost in the fight, and most of their regulars are now dead, replaced by even more ill-trained national guard troops and neo-Nazi thug forces.
Ukraine expected this fight to be over within days. Well, it's been over forty days and the militia has generally done very well. They don't have the manpower or materiel to defeat the Ukraine army, but the Ukraine army has not been able to defeat the militia either. Even if the Ukraine military take over Luhansk or Donetsk, there will continue to be guerrilla war against the neo-Nazi junta.
It's also still quite possible that Russia will intervene at some point. Right now, Putin is still waiting it out, expecting that the coming of winter with no gas is going to cause the fractious junta to implode.
Ditz hasn´t been anywhere near these places, he have never mentioned anyway and his sources is western/US MSM which is a very active part in the war, promoting the Nazi junta in Kiev. He do have some good ideas of what is going on, at least when he´s on RT, i give him that.
The Anti-Nazi resistance continue the successes in the southern cauldron (from which it gained so much´hardware ABM, APC, missile launchers and Tanks, that it dont have crew for all of it yet) and they are creating new surrounded pockets. The Nazi RS death squads in one such pocket tried to break out, less than half of them succeded (the other got killed) and could join another group of Nazis who had only one free way out: To Lugansk. They raised the flag yelled and killed a lot of civilians until they realized they where helplessly trapped, cornered. These animals can expect no mercy at and are probably all dead as we speak.
The junta still has the advantage in numbers and equipment, mercenaries and a whole staff of CIA in Kiev and their military advisors, but with the lowest moral possible among ordinary conscrips and soldiers, who´s objective is to be cannonfodder in such endevours. With the RS Nazi death squads threatening to kill anyone who even think of defecting or go home once they find out said objective and who the "terrorists" are. Everywhere the junta goes on the offensive, it points to a location on the map, a city mostly, and start to bombard it with grads and all kinds of missiles, even ballistic, then goes in for "mop op" only to find themselves trapped or separated and fired upon themselves by the Novorossiyans. Any "victory" under such conditions is extremely short lived and the attempt mostly futile.
For a more balanced view of events i suggest Colonel cassad: http://cassad-eng.livejournal.com/
Raise the flag, declare victory and run. Where have we seen that before?
Good news. The rebellion is slowly petering out. I suspect the rebel talk about an offensive is just an attempt to discourage the Ukrainians and, if posible drag an obviously unwilling Putin into the fight.