“One of the most senior Russian-appointed officials in occupied Ukraine said the Ukrainian army was poised to begin an attempt to retake the southern city of Kherson and urged residents to evacuate for their safety.
Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of the local Russia-backed administration, made a video appeal after Russian forces in the area were driven back by 20-30 km (13-20 miles) in the last few weeks. They risk being pinned against the western bank of the 2,200-km-long Dnipro river that bisects Ukraine.
Eight months after being invaded, Ukraine is prosecuting major counter-offensives in the east and south to try to take as much territory as it can before winter.
Kherson is the biggest population center seized by Moscow in what it calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine since it began on Feb. 24. The city is on territory which President Vladimir Putin says is now formally incorporated into Russia, a move Ukraine and the West do not recognize.
The conflict has killed thousands, displaced millions, pulverized Ukrainian cities, shaken the global economy and revived Cold War-era geopolitical fissures.
Stremousov said Kherson and especially its right bank could be shelled by Ukrainian forces, adding that residents who left would be given accommodation inside Russia.
“I ask you to take my words seriously and to interpret them as a call to evacuate as fast as you possibly can,” he said.””
Comment: It sounds like the program is moving along well, in spite of all the Russian IO BS about the “darkened sky.” pl
Russia Appeals for Evacuation Ahead of Battle for Ukraine’s Kherson | Newsmax.com
I cannot speak to the military operations, but I am interested in the Information War underway. This clip shows an exchange on Russian TV that shows how the Russian media and its handlers are pressing for further aggression, regardless of the actual situation on the ground. The war is not going to be negotiated away. That was never the plan. But, I don’t see anything much different in the way this game is being played, either by Russian State run or Corporate run TV. The same spectacle, being played the same way. It will work until the reality defeats it, on the ground and for real.
https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1582509984360804352?s=20&t=M_omTRqAXKwQye90ijh0Sw
If you can’t speak t the military operation … What, you think IO is going to win this war like VN?
IO did win Vietnam. That isn’t a point I was trying to make. I’ve stated before that I think this war is the fulfillment of planning. I don’t think the Vietnam War was under the same global political situation in which Ukraine is situated. It may have been so, but the globalist cabal wasn’t then as forward in its orchestrations, cultural institutions in the western countries were not as degraded, then. There is more to this war than Ukraine/NATO /Russia/China/Etc… At least as far as the interests of future global governance may be concerned, IMHO.
To complete the thought, it’s the reality on the ground that is the wild-card.
IO did not win the war in Viet Nam. And I say that as someone fully aware of the scale of VC/NVA defeats. I had a ringside seat to watch the collapse of the communist organization in the delta in 1970. And that was just one of their many military failures.
Soon after arriving in country I was told: “We can completely destroy the VC in a province. We’ve done it many times. But then the ARVNs will rush in and start doing their thing. In six months they will have pissed off enough people bad enough to have recruited a whole new province VC.”
The VC and NVA were defeated many times. But after such defeats the South Vietnamese government never had the capability to convert military victory into political victory. (The US of course never had any possibility of providing a political alternative.) We didn’t lose because the guys in Hanoi told a good story. And they didn’t win because they fought a superb war. As with us, reviews are mixed. They didn’t win because the ARVN was no good, although the ARVN did make some serious efforts in that direction. They won because the South Vietnamese elite was not capable of creating or sustaining a robust political system. There was almost nothing we could do about that.
I agree with the colonel that I did not and do not love the Vietnamese. But they were the ones who had to do the really heavy work. And “their” Vietnamese seemed more suited to it than “our” Vietnamese.
We lost the war to IO in the States. We had achieved a state of balance through CORDS and our earlier defeats of the NVA/VC main forces, but successful IO in the US made it possible for the Congress to cut off ALL further assistance to the RVN/ARVN. That caused the collapse.
Colonel
What is your assessment of the odds of us witnessing a spectacular defeat for Russia in Kherson in the near future?
I distrust the Russian appeals for safe evacuation. More likely more evil from Putin, like driving the people out along with their tanks, as shields.
Pat –
Great map by the way. A bit off topic, but I wonder what has happened to the Przewalski’s Horses at the Askaniia-Nova Reserve shown on that map SW of Kakhovka.
Brings to mind the Philip Kerr novel ‘The Winter Horses’. It’s a great read about the Przewalskis survival during WW2: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18404397-the-winter-horses
I hope those horses survive this latest disaster.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Przewalski%27s_horse
Kerr is more widely known for his historical novels of mid-20th century Berlin detective, Bernie Gunther. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Kerr