Ukrainian forces have made some gains in the southern Kherson region, Russian officials acknowledged on Monday.
Vladimir Saldo, the Russian-installed head of Ukraine’s Kherson region, said Ukraine made “breakthroughs” in areas on the west bank of the Dnieper river.
“Where the Kakhovka (reservoir) is, there is a settlement called Dudchany … it is in this area that there is a breakthrough and there are settlements taken by Ukrainian troops,” Saldo said, referring to an area on the Dnieper.
Kirill Stremousov, the deputy head of the Russian-installed Kherson administration, also confirmed that Ukraine made gains but said Russian forces would continue defending the area.
“On the Kherson direction, strangely enough, everything is under control, regardless of what is happening. Yes, the Nazis (Ukraine’s armed forces) have broken through a little deeper,” Stremousov said. “But our defense system is working. So no panic, no matter who says what, we are on the territory of the Kherson Region.”
Ukraine has taken heavy casualties in its southern counteroffensive, and Monday’s advances appear to be their most significant gains since launching the operation in late August. Ukraine also made some more gains in its eastern counteroffensive following its capture of the city of Lyman in Donetsk, an area Russia said it withdrew from to avoid encirclement.
While Ukrainian forces are advancing, it is at a high cost, and the gains come as Russia is sending reinforcements into Ukraine after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the mobilization of 300,000 additional troops. Russia is expected to launch a major effort to capture more of Donetsk as it is formalizing the annexation of the Ukrainian territories that are under its control.
And in related news “Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will provide a full list of possible targets while allowing the White House to veto any of the potential sites”….rewatching Breaking Bad: Jessie Pinkman says: Mr. White, he’s the devil. Yes, Zelensky is offering a devilish deal to those in the US who are so eager to get more involved, more down in the dirt.
Biden will get us into war yet. What a disaster of the administration, If US is deciding on Russian targets, does it mean Russia should be deciding on US targets? Slippery slope.
The US is in a very weird position of needing former president Trump to calm things down from war mongering liberal progressive democrats..
Weird and utter bullshit.
Not the part about the dems. We DON’T need Trump for anything.
At least We can agree with something.
https://libertarianinstitute.org/news/kiev-offers-white-house-targeting-control-seeks-longer-range-weapons/
At that point, does it matter who is pulling the trigger? The US supplies the weapons, the intelligence and sets the targets. It can’t be much more direct than that.
Essentially, at that point, the USA is at war with Russia. That’s what Zelensky and the neo-cons want.
In the same article, 30 simulations were set up with this same criteria by experts. 28 led to a nuclear exchange between the US and Russia.
US and NATO have got to stop this madness of continued escalation. Else we are all well and truly f%#ed.
Does all this look to you like some kind of plan, like WEF plan?
Because it is actually!
Russia could retreat to its 2010 borders It is so crazy it just might work.
Fried.
Fried, Fucked, not really much difference.
There have been many broken hearts in this blog lately. Those of you wishing Ukraine to be crushed in the name of peace?
Russia better go invade Georgia and Finland to get those 300K deserter troops back. That mobilization is a complete failure. Sucks for the conscripts as they been told if they surrender, they’ll go to jail upon repatriation. That is sickening.
I don’t remember a country that has ever done that besides Russia.
Well so far with zero US troops involved our war with Russia is going pretty well. I can’t imagine how much worse this would get for the Russians if a few F-35’s got involved.
That would be an abuse.
After seeing Russia perform in the battlefield against an exponentially smaller, poorer, and less equipped Army I am convinced that Spain alone would annihilate Russia in a purely conventional face off.
“After seeing Russia perform in the battlefield against an exponentially smaller, poorer, and less equipped Army”
Other than the billion$ provided so far that are equal or exceeding Russia’s entire military budget.
We did during the Vietnam War, and there are no 300K deserter troops. Some males have been leaving Russia to avoid the draft, but the first time I’ve seen anyone indicate 300K is here.
There are plenty of troops available to be moved to Ukraine. Then what? Restore the draft in the US to send to Ukraine and watch our hundreds of thousands draft eligible, move out of the US? Of course, we can’t even make recruiting goals now with our overweight, under IQ’d draft eligible populations.
Continual escalation will eventually result in use of WMD.
The US did a lot of bad things during the Vietnam war. But jailing POW’s for surrendering was not one of them.
I’m pretty sure he was talking about people that avoided the draft.
But Putin’s decree makes surrendering “without authorization” punishable by up to 10 years in prison. The antiwar movement that will end the war and likely end Putin’s regime is reflected in thehundreds of thousands of Russians leaving to escape the draft and the thousands of Russians and national minorities risking years of imprisonment to protest Putin’s war. It should be obvious by now that Putin never cared about Nazis inthe Ukraine. Otherwise he would have purged the Wagner group and refused to free the leader of the Azov Batallion. Every war has a phony justification. Putin’s war is about a madman wanting to resurrect the lost glories of the Czarist empire. It is Putin’s war. It is not Russia’s war. In the coming months we will see the growing Russian antiwar movement prove that.
I’m still pretty sure he was talking about people that avoided our draft. Jesus.
Check the news. It was up to 10 years for surrendering without authorization. If we had that in the US we probably wouldn’t have had to worry about Bush junior. Don’t be the Putin groupies on this site who refuse to believe their lying eyes if it disagrees with Darth Vlad’s propaganda. Some of the folks posting here are as delusional as their racist megalomaniac hero.
This had nothing to do with Putin. Not a thing. Go back and read my original reply. I was ONLY talking about the US draft. I’ve said it over and over that Putin is a thug. Don’t call me a fucking Putin groupie. Assad is a thug too but he’s right about the US. Am I an Assad groupie too?
1. “We did during the Vietnam War”
–The US Jailed soldiers who surrendered (POWs)?
2. “and there are no 300K deserter troops. Some males have been leaving Russia to avoid the draft, but the first time I’ve seen anyone indicate 300K is here.”
–Some males? Are you watching Kremlin news? Have you seen the miles long lines of cars and pedestrian males crossing? Those are hundreds of thousand. Not even an exaggeration.
3. “There are plenty of troops available to be moved to Ukraine”
–Oh yes, they are retreating.
4. “Then what? Restore the draft in the US to send to Ukraine and watch our hundreds of thousands draft eligible, move out of the US? Of course, we can’t even make recruiting goals now with our overweight, under IQ’d draft eligible populations.”
–You are all over the place here.
5. “Continual escalation will eventually result in use of WMD.”
— The fall back response as if Russia hasn’t been escalating anything. That’s right, only US is escalating.
That’s find, we’ll let Russia invade away neighboring countries because we don’t want to escalate.
Only Russia has been asking for negotiations to end the war. Could have happened in April. Then came Boris (an appropriate name, don’t you think?)
Russia goes full hitler on Ukraine under BS pretexts then asked for negotiations under their conditions? Thats not negotiation in good faith.
Stop blaming the world. Russia invaded, now they are paying the price.
I agree except while Putin has adopted Hitler’s rationale for revanchist war, and committed war crimes against civilians, most of us associate “full-Hitler” with the Nazi Holocaust. Putin has not gone that far yet. But he has threatened a nuclear first strike. A nuclear war would make the Nazi Holocaust seem like a schoolyard fight.
Well, that’s the thing.
For years, the US precondition on negotiations vis a vis missile placement, NATO admission, etc. was “sure, as long as we get everything we want and give nothing up.”
Now, the Russian precondition on negotiations vis a vis Ukraine are “yes, we want very much to negotiate, but please understand in advance that we must get everything we want and give nothing up.”
Negotiations will happen when one or both sides have something they are willing to give up, and one or both sides are willing to stop fighting for everything they want. Until then, there’s no basis for negotiations.
Since I still believe that Vladimir Putin is neither stupid nor batshit insane, I assume he knows that he’s not going to get to keep the Kherson and Zaporizhia oblasts. Which means that his likely plan is to grudgingly give ground there while feeding his new conscripts into Donetsk and Luhansk, then “trade” the former for a line of control which leaves the latter under Russian control. That way both sides can claim some semblance of “victory” and stumble off to lick their wounds, while missile placement negotiations take place quietly and one of the European NATO powers announces that it will veto any proposal to admit Ukraine.
Of course, I could be wrong. Putin or his oligarch masters could conceivably be stupid and/or batshit insane enough to be unwilling to pull the Russian arm out of the NATO woodchipper.
“Putin or his oligarch masters could conceivably be stupid and/or batshit insane”
Putin has no “oligarch masters.” In Darth Vlad’s authoritarian dictatorship it works the other way around.The oligarchs live in fear of Darth Vlad’s wrath.
“Vladimir Putin is neither stupid nor batshit insane,”
That statement is half right. Darth Vlad is a brilliant megalomaniac. But his intellect is limited by his prejudice and his ego. Darth Vlad has always been a Russian chauvinist who wanted to restore the power of the Soviet Union and the glory of Czarist Russia. In the tradition of Czarist Russian chauvinists Putin truly believes that Ukrainians are “Little Russians”, backward hicks, inferior to the “Great Russians” of Moscow and St. Petersburg. He doesn’t understand what he is fighting because he doesn’t believe Ukrainians are a separate nation.
The reality is that Russia has no chance of holding any territory in Ukraine except possibly Crimea. Even if the Russians defeat the Ukrainian army, the Russian army will never be able to defeat the resistance which will only get stronger the harder the Russians fight to suppress it.
The Russian mobilization is like Nixon’s escalation in Vietnam or Obama’s futile surges in Afghanistan. Force of arms can gain territory in the short run. But in a national resistance movement it is force of will, not force of arms that determines the victor. It was evident from the beginning that Putin’s invasion was a mistake.
LOL – quit it.
1. No – arrested those who fled when they escaped the draft, when they returned, until Carter gave blanket amnesty.
2. When you’re not yet in the military, you aren’t “retreating”
3. They are repositioning – You see they don’t stay in a place where they are outgunned and outmanned in a particular area.
4. That was one place – not all over the place.
5. Of course Russia is escalating, just like NATO has. Stop reading things into statements that aren’t there.
6. You might want to stay current as this video is shown on another article here on antiwar.com.
“No – arrested those who fled when they escaped the draft, when they returned, until Carter gave blanket amnesty.”
–This was an irrelevant point. You sound desperate like the Kremlin.
Repositioning? GTFOH. Russians are in full retreat but keep on cheering your depleted army. What will you say when Ukraine takes, Kherson? I’m sure you have the excuses prepared. But please don’t use the standard “oh, the territory had no strategic value,” cause that is “Russian” land now.
Ukraine just invaded Russia and Russia is on the run.
You’d expire from thirst before you drank the Truth.
I watched/listened to this guy. He is incredibly biased towards Russia while pretending to be objective. Not sure if he has any military background. He doesn’t sound like it. He said many things that not only do I disagree with, but that are also completely erroneous.
But he tells you what you want to hear so you like him.
Al Jazeera says it’s at least 194,000. https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2022/9/28/photos-russians-flee-to-neighbouring-countries-amid-mobilisation
Some estimates are as high as 400,000.
The governor of one Turkish province says they are getting up to 19,000 Russian men arriving a day. https://www.npr.org/2022/10/03/1126627005/russian-men-continue-to-escape-conscription-in-large-numbers-to-turkey
50,000 men have arrived in Serbia, and that was almost two weeks ago. https://apnews.com/article/dbe01d0c9be45a8c479565501a2a8f32
Al Jazeera says it’s at least 194,000. https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2022/9/28/photos-russians-flee-to-neighbouring-countries-amid-mobilisation
Some estimates are as high as 400,000.
The governor of one Turkish province says they are getting up to 19,000 Russian men arriving a day. https://www.npr.org/2022/10/03/1126627005/russian-men-continue-to-escape-conscription-in-large-numbers-to-turkey
50,000 men have arrived in Serbia, and that was almost two weeks ago. https://apnews.com/article/dbe01d0c9be45a8c479565501a2a8f32
THIS from antiwar.com: https://libertarianinstitute.org/news/kiev-offers-white-house-targeting-control-seeks-longer-range-weapons/
So, who is at war with whom?
Once again, to use Andrei Martyanov’s term, this is “tactical minutia” which is irrelevant to the overall progress of the war, which is entirely in Russia’s favor.
Alexandr Rogers penned an article (in Russian) on the significance of Lyman including the following:
In shorter, less sarcastic words – Lyman means NOTHING! Zero. Nada. Zip. The handful (500) of Donbass militia and Cuba Cossacks bothering to be there retreated after holding off the Ukrainians for a couple weeks with massive losses to the Ukrainians. Some people estimate as high as 20,000, although that may be an exaggeration.
Get a clue.
Germany made gains in Ukraine in 1942 (ending with Stalingrad), and around Mortain and then Bastogne twice in 1944 (Breakout from Normandy and then Battle of the Bulge). Germany did the same under its Schlieffen Plan in 1914, as did France at the same time with its 1914 offensive into Alsace-Lorraine.
Ill advised offensive by a force without the power to sustain it becomes over-extension, vulnerability, losses that can’t be replaced, and then crushing defeat.
So which is it? The promise of Ukraine strength is really an over-promise and trust in the vast re-supply from NATO which has already exhausted the spare stocks NATO is willing to offer, with new production still years from delivery.
They are pretending. Amateurs ignore the pretense and believe it all. A tragedy always resolves its drama in this way, since ancient Greece invented the form.
You may very well be right about that.
And it’s not just what one side is up to, it’s both. Six months of evidence to the contrary has not convinced me that the Russian commanders are idiots. I still think there’s at least a 50/50 chance they’re giving up ground intentionally in some places precisely to encourage the over-extension you cite.
I can’t see the loss of Lyman as an smart tactical move by the Russians – it is a key transportation hub.
If the Russian military is deliberately giving up ground, then the military is at odds with Putin’s political position which is to annex the four oblasts in toto. The Russian army is supposed to be on the offensive to “liberate” the four new territories from the Kyiv regime. Since the retreat from Kyiv there has been no significant gains made by the Russians.
More significantly, there is no way Russia can pacify an occupied territory outside of Crimea and they may wind up losing that if Putin continues.
I could conceive of the Russians eventually defeating the Ukrainian army. But the guerrilla resistance that would follow would break the Russian military and build the already growing antiwar movement in Russia.
The first rule of war is to know your adversary. Putin didn’t believe Ukraine is a real nation. He never knew what he was fighting.t Russia can never conquer Ukraine unless Russia resorts to weapons of mass destruction of the terror tactics used by the allies in WWII.I believe that Putin may go there. He is a megalomaniac who can’t accept that he has been defeated. But the resistance to the draft and to the war shows that Putin’s war is not Russia’s war. In the end, Russia will prevail over Putin.
Even if Russia could destroy the Ukrainian army, the underground guerrilla resistance that would follow would require the Russian army to continue occupying Ukraine until the Russian antiwar movement ends the war or Putin’s regime.
As a tactical matter, you may be correct.
As for Putin’s political position, he can’t very well negotiate away two of those four oblasts UNLESS he’s claiming to control, or be able to control, them.
While it’s been obvious for some time to anyone not chugging Putin’s Purple Drank [TM] by the gallon that no, the Russians aren’t going to “demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine,” and are having a great deal of trouble even securing the supposedly supportive Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, it should be equally obvious that the Russians have the military capacity to drag the war out indefinitely and that the domestic political pressures on Putin won’t allow him to end it without some kind of “victory” fig leaf.
This is exactly what happened in Vietnam , Afghanistan, Algeria and Ethiopia to the US, the Soviets, the French and the Italians. The Russian political movement that will end the war and/or Putin’s regime is a snowball inevitably rolling down the hill. The Russian people are not going to support this war in the long term. This is Putin’s war. It is not Russia’s war. Putin’s war effort was doomed from the start because he is a Russian chauvinist who did not understand that he was starting an asymmetric war of national resistance that Russia can’t win. . As long as the Ukrainians continue to resist, the Russian military cannot withdraw, The Russian people will not accept that. The movement that will end the war and possibly end Putin’s regime is reflected in the hundreds of thousands of Russians fleeing the country to escape the draft and the thousands of courageous Russians risking years in prison to protest against an unjust war.
Putin apologists on this list are correct that US/NATO instigated the war and want to dismember Russia. But they fail to understand that invading Ukraine was exactly what US/NATO wanted Putin to do. If this goes on it will ruin Russia as a world power.
More significantly, Putin’s fans don’t understand that this is not a proxy war between US/NATO and Russia. There are three sides in this conflict. Russia, US/NATO and the Ukrainian national resistance movement. US/NATO’s relationship with the Ukrainian resistance is a lot like the US’s relationship with the Mujahideen who defeated the Soviets in Afghanistan. The Mujahideen accepted the US aid, but theywere never agents of the US. They were an independent ingigenous Afghan national resistance movement that eventually defeated the US as the Taliban.
US/NATO aid is valuable to the Ukrainian resistance movement which Zelenskyy has been effectively leading. But the Ukrainian resistance is not US/NATO and Zelenskyy does not define it. If Zelenskyy sold out or became a quisling, or if US?NATO cut off its aid the Ukrainians would turn to new leadership as the Palestinians turned to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, or the Irish turned to the Provisional wing of the IRA after the official leadership of those national liberation movements sought accommodation with the enemy. Ho Chi Minh, Mullah Omar and Abbas al-Musari all died leading national liberation struggles and all were succeeded by effective leaders who continued the struggle.
For me the biggest surprise of the war has been the effectiveness of the Ukrainian military and the ineffectiveness of the Russian military. It is conceivable that the Russians could drive the Ukrainian resistance underground. But Putin’s army can never defeat the Ukrainian resistance which, like the Irish resistance to the British, is rooted in centuries of resentment of a dominating imperial power.
You are correct that the Ukrainian military cannot drive the Russians out of Ukraine. That can only be done by the Russian people, just like the North Vietnamese could not win until the US antiwar movement spread on the campuses spread to the military, the unions and the streets. In the exodus of hundreds of thousands of antiwar Russians and the courageous antiwar protests spreading throughout Russia we see the movement that will end the war and possibly end Putin’s repressive regime.
It is frustrating to see Putin going down like the other imperial strong men who could not understand how their superpower militaries could be defeated by irregular national resistance movements. Butin the end, the Russian army will have to leave Ukraine and return the occupied territory except possibly Crimea.
Want to talk waving nukes? This is waving nukes. From Andrei Martyanov today: