“A Ukrainian counteroffensive appears to be progressing in the north, but less so in the southern Kherson region that has attracted greater attention and Russian reinforcements.
Ukrainian officials and Russian military bloggers alike on Thursday described a counteroffensive in the north that has surprised in its speed, the first time since the war began that Ukrainian forces have been able to push past Russian defenses on a more than tactical level.
The limited breakthrough comes as Russia’s President Vladimir Putin ratchets up pressure on European energy markets. That has officials in Kyiv racing to show allies the war can be won.
In the few days since the offensive began with an assault on the town of Balakliya, about 90 km (56 miles) southeast of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, units have advanced 50 km into Russian-held territory, taking 20 settlements, according to Oleksiy Hromov, a spokesman for the Ukrainian armed forces.
“The enemy is partially demoralized but continues to put up resistance,” Hromov said in a briefing on Thursday.
In his Thursday evening video address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said soldiers had liberated a total of 1000 km2 (386 square miles) of occupied territory since the beginning of September. Some Ukrainian units have moved so fast they’re beyond the range of artillery support, according to pro-Kremlin Russian military blogger Alexander Kots. “
Comment: IMO the Kherson area effort is a diversion and a magnet for Russian troops. pl
Ukraine Military Breakthrough in North Threatens Russian Grip – Bloomberg
But, but — what did Scott Ritter have to say?!
it’s a trap!
Russia knew about it all along.
Trust the Plan!
there is nothing Nato can do!
or whatever his coke addled brain can come up with.
The Russian commentariat is certainly in a panic. If the Ukrainians hold onto this, it will certainly push any resolution out through the winter and seriously harden the political polarities. Which will likely spread the conflict across the Middle East and make the European winter that much more intractable.
Interesting times.
I fail to notice the panic at the Russian channels, but I see the dissatisfaction and the resolve. Of course far more important is the moral of the soldiers than of some armchair commentators.
It also0 seems like the Russians are taking their gloves off.
This will be a very bloody war.
I fall lower and higher Chanels than you rock eaters and fire swallowers, I’m almost suntan, and I recently saw ape oats of sirprising paw dashity. Although my weakling form is a direct toffspring of my membership in the silly party, my meaning is from the quite serious party petquarters. Some folks are quite pissed in calamitea jaynes villas hillas, magilla gorillas. I was in fact surprised. I can’t tell moronically, I don’t want schlepherders in these nice sauces and meatballs on the popcorn popper. Not sure if it’s blob dillypants time for the whines they are a arrangin, probably not, just a sentimental measure off why guess.
Fourth and Long,
Well…ReJoyce!
Well put, look to June 16 as when F&L found his voyce.
I never liked him. Say what you mean and mean what you say, today.
Oh, oh. The Russians are taking the gloves off … like one kid said to the other “Oh yeah, I’m really mad now!”.
Russia needs troops. Buy some N. Koreans? meh …
Ask China for troops? Not happening. Ask Bashad. Syria owes Russia but it doesn’t have the bodies. Will Iran send troops? For how much. Not only how much but what. Command Lushenko to send troops. They wont fight Ukrainians.
We are back to Univ Russian Mobilization and the basic question, asked months ago; are young Russian men willing to die to deny Ukraine independence? We know young Ukrainian men are willing to die for independence. Who wants “IT” more.
It looks like the Ukrainians bagged a Rooskie Loutenit General:
https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1568035564452024321
I remember exchanging with Colonel Lang back in February about the Rooskies not having enough troops to occupy Ukraine. It looks like they don’t have enough to occupy and attack from the areas they control now.
Kudos Colonel. You predicted back in March that the Russians were approaching or had gone past the culmination point and here we see a sudden reversal – and what a spectacular one. Ukraine’s audacious dash to Kupyansk appears all the more so next to the unimaginative tactics that have characterized the Russian army’s crawling advances over the last 6 months.
“The situation [on the Kharkiv front] is extremely difficult for the Russian side. The transfer of troops from the Kherson region through the Crimea has reportedly begun. This confirms the strategic failure of the Russian forces” – SouthFront
If SouthFront is calling it a strategic failure it must be bad.
https://southfront.org/ukrainian-forces-develop-decisive-offensive-in-eastern-ukraine/
Barbara Ann,
It’s too early to tell. Wait for a couple weeks and we will be able to tell whether it is a “culmination point” or it is a trap.
I’ve re-bookmarked Moon of Alabama. Nothing has yet been decided, but they are a fun bunch to watch.
Yes, entertaining. B is implacably anti-American, something about German defeat in WW2.
Colonel, when I was stationed in Germany (77-79) we were aware of a very different perspective of German nationals. Living off-post, this was very evident. Germans who had served on the Russian Front were very amenable to us. Germans who had served on the western front, not so much. I had not made that connection with B.
Moon of Alabama is a song in a Berthold Brecht play. Brecht is considered an East German socialist who was here during WW2 but went back. Though I don’t know, I would think US OSS types would have tried to turn him during the war. Heros Shimmer and Screama probably made that impossible, and or the hair combings Dressed Down, again I don’t know. And the Stovey Pets clonquered Yeast WormHoney, not the Wankees. So why eight the Amores of Cannes or Americans or Dunkirk Doughnuts? You maybe right though. People make very little sense. But my sense is he’s from the other side of the ideological tracks. Impossible to tell – he might have had relatives who were destroyed or incinerated in British and American bombings which were very wayward in accuracy. That’s never going to be forgotten unfortunately. The krauts I stayed with over there in ’73 were very very hospitable, attractive and highly resourceful survivors on poppy seed rations in bomb shelters. They were young adults. Their elders were architects and the master stonecarver guild director of the cemetery of that German city. The lovely women who showed me around had to whiskey bar me rapidly out of a beer cellar when I whispered something unwise they thought the burly former SS types might have overheard. I never crossed the curtain but the number of cripples was still staggering. Drinking levels sky high. Wifi B Earp gun is also a scrupulous critic of the wastefulness here in America, and environmental damage. Lotte Lenya, Brecht’s once wife and star singer actress stayed in the states mostly. There were some very remarkable intellectuals who went back to E Germany postwar after studying and writing here. I apologize for speaking to you about things you know more about by far. I don’t think B’s outlook is so simple though. There’s still huge resentment against the Jews that he doesn’t promote but is fostered collaterally in his lair. And ManureIch Oilympic 1972. Much of the America hatred is simply due to our psychotic neocon foreign policy. My evil papa considered it a humongous tragedy that Marshall didn’t prevail over Truman. Mark Twain, maybe our greatest writer, humorously but with great precision, prophecied what would happen. He seems to have had medium-like powers. Maybe he knew Brooks Adams who understood everything, I don’t know. In Twain’s next to last work or so published posthumously – “The Mysterious Stranger: Number 44” he sets in 17th century Austria (!) an uprising which pogroms the Jews and other calamities. It doesn’t seem based on historical events though those things were common. It seems to many critics a forecast of the 20th Century which Twain lived in too. The book may have been a US intelligence hoax of the Elites previous the elite Oh So Social type, in service of overall spookiness “we see all and know all, even the far future and can contact your dear departed” Count Cagliostro style mystifying influence and entree varietee. Mental case that I am, I even thought Twain “foresaw” Obama – #44, and mysterious being from far overseas and African paternal roots. I get confused and thought 44 was one of those neo Nazi number codes but forgot by now. It’s fishy because it was released and rereleased later and was obviously modified. A fishing expedition. Maybe one of US Army prewar counterintelligence SF operations of the sort you told me I confused with commandos and rangers. More likely the literary hummingbirds circling Hemingway , Pound, Eliot crew and watchers of the Clambake five etc. E A Poe was West Point and had a standing bet which he “never lost” that he could brake any code put to him. Given his emotional troubles it may have been authentic or an obvious entrapment operation.
A person wishes these nonsenses will end but they perpetuate. There was a serious effort during the war and after to do things so that Nazi ideology never resurrected. Genius shrinks at Harvard and in UK worked up psychological profiles unseen to one another, then compared, then rewrote after consultation. Imo obviously it failed. It had to by the mere nature of forbidden fruit foolhardiness and more. Huge efforts in that direction did take place over decades but in parallel our rabidly carnivorous business world hitmen of the CIA immediately recruited Canaris’ & co networks and went into YourCranium on foot and in thought wave reality. The bomb caused huge hysterias. The soviets had saucer sightings too according to a visiting exchange student I knew. Just putting this in here for hysterical purposes. I’m not a big fan, but she’s ok by me. My dad was dead set against unifying Germany. He knew an enormous amount about the place from the war and his veteran buddies, and working with all the German physicists postwar (mostly German Jews, not all). My ultra Zionist coffee klatch friend in Greenwich Pillage said, with a lisp, Oh if you don’t forgive people eventually how will they ever change? He was an ignoramus who thought if you flew from NY to Rome you passed over Nebraska. And had a college degree and had been a calculating prodigy in his childhood.
Yesterday Charlotte today plain vanilla Lotte. Sorry I pay too much attention coincidences which seem to come out of the blue. I simply searched on YouTube for a Moon from Alabama video. One of the “UFO” phenomenon in reality is in fact spooks on several sides playing with Artificial Intelligence Software and Special devices we commonly don’t know about. What they can do is so extremely bizarrely weird it might shock you but I’m certain it’s real and ongoing. Post as you prefer or not. I babble. Matters not to me.
Moon of Alabama – Lotte Lenya.
https://youtu.be/x-5ata4jDyk
Fourth and Long
I’ve been re-re-re-reading this. I think I get you, now. Thank you for this creative reply. I would like to explore with you many of the points you’ve made. It’s like peeling an onion, always one more layer. There is only one thing that I know that’s solid, everything else is illusion, but it’s a wild ride.
I’d love to too cobo. (Cowboy? Hiding the wy of awway of and the h of why gray. Sorry it’s an illness. It’s such a sad illness that). But on the topic of tootles, probably I’ll never see you till the Wabash Cannonball makes her rounds though.
For that girl from Tennessee, she’s long and she’s tall, and she came down from Birmingham on the Wabash Cannonball:
Porter Wagoner & George Jones
https://youtu.be/Nk0gdVsz9pk
Dolly Parton – Wabash Cannonball
https://youtu.be/02Mvh0pFeB0
Roy Acuff too. Carter Family’s Johnny Cash.
I watched King Charles , I saw no large Snarls, a bird brain born was me, and then on the trail, heard that old clinking pail, and my childeyhood came back to me. It is sung to the tune, it’s not Clair de Lune, nor is it Air of Don de don Derry, Was I on the Queen Mary or Turning off Harry, a hint: Mine Tiss of Thee.
God Save our Talking Horse,
He’s Mister Ed of Course, Now more Oats Please,
When flies get near his tail, he drops his filled up pail, but not to wheeze:
Flies here’s insecticide, die and be off my sides,
And then he’ll sneeze:
When I was yet a Colt, Mares said hey Golden Coat, get off your knees,
Your dad a Sultans Mount, grandad was under Count,
——-
What famous cartoon character stuttered?
Who was Mister Hyde In’s Medic, Robert Louis Stevenson? Did her ..
Who founded Las Vegas? Why did they give him such a funny name?
A couple of observations:
1. The UAF troops all have fresh uniforms, boots, and rifles.
2. What happened to all the Chechen gang bangers? They have seemed to unassed Ukraine, maybe they are a lot smarter than they appear to be in their videos.
MJ,
The Chechen forces of Ramzan Kadyrov went through Rest and Refitting at home and are now back at the front. They are working with the Cossack Brigade of the Luhansk People’s Republic militia apparently in close-quarter fighting in the very heart of Soledar and perhaps in tunnels underneath it. Kadyrov says, as is his wont, that he has already won. He sounds to me like he would have enjoyed Verdun.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11198017/CIA-says-Putins-invasion-failure-showing-weakness-Russias-military.html
While we should take anything the CIA says with a grain of salt, in this case there seems to be corroboration from other sources that Ukraine has a counter-offensive going. The question is where the warring parties will be when the first snow arrives?
Sam,
It’s growing from thousands to hundreds of thousands in Europe. Just this week: Paris, Leipzig, Berlin, Trieste, Cologne–I’ve seen large demonstrations (on Twitter) in all of these cities.
What is happening? The people of Europe, whether nationalist, conservative, reformers, leftist, moderate Bonapartists ;), POUM syndicalists, Kreuzberg Alternativs–they all seem to be setting aside rivalries, antagonistic ideologies, party, class, and national identities and are joining forces and beginning to march in mass demonstrations. These demonstrations are obviously the preliminary threat of soon to arrive paralyzing and ultimately overwhelming mass social protest that no current European government can stand up to unless with martial law. Velvet Smelvit it will not be. (Dammit, you DID it, 4th and L.! It’s back to Silver Hill.)
It looks to me like it all could turn into some sort of anti-American European revolution if it really begins to roll.
What do I think it looks like these demonstrations are saying?
1. The European people are rejecting the interventionist policies of the EU and NATO. This rejection is absolute. The foreign policy of European nations with regard to Russia/Ukraine must be neutral. No arms should go to Ukraine. There should be good diplomatic relations with Russia. Etc.
2. The European people demand a sovereign stance from the government.
3. The German people demand a reaffirmation of the sovereign rights enshrined in the German constitution, which is called the Grundgesetz. This is the Basic Law. It must be honored and obeyed. It has been corrupted by globalist powers.
4. The German people demand the protective rights against human experimentation that are enshrined in long-settled law written into the Nuremberg Codex, a body of laws that came out of WWII Nazi eugenics atrocities. This code would apply to the ‘ Covid passport’ (the enforced jab) and make such EU interference in basic human rights illegal.
5. The German people will leave NATO.
6. The German people want Nord Stream 2 to be opened up as soon as possible.
7. In France, a law put forward by Macron against the reporting of Palestinian grievance news–I am a little unclear about this– was responded to by large hostile demonstrations.
8. There have been calls for criminal prosecution of Sholtz and other German leaders.
I think Burns could end up as one of the men who lost Europe.
So you think the Germans are saying fluck Ukraine? Have Germans ever demonstrated a commitment to any thing but themselves? Germany leave NATO? I missed when they arrived.
The Germans DEMAND reaffirmation of their sovereign rights. You mean the German people demand to leave the EU? Not as long as the EU gains them one pfennig. The German people want Russian gas now and always. The Russians will give them their gas, you wait and see.
Sam,
I’m sure that the CIA thinks that the Russian economy collapsed weeks ago, and all that noise about European energy problems and skyrocketing prices are just Russian trolling. Meanwhile this 5,000 man offensive is either going to continue to punch through the LDPR lines and roll up the Russian positions or its a 50 km deep bulge that will get shot up and pushed back once the ruskies get off their asses and fight like their bloggers claim they can. (We’ve seen plenty of price data but maybe the CIA thinks Biden’s just going to bailout the EU by executive order)
It is long ball warfare. Trying to assess it by one offensive when people that defeated the US lived in dirt houses using brown lampwire and fertilizer. How do I know this? Maybe because I am an actual combat officer unlike anyone else I have seen so for on here…meh.
Both regimes are despots. If you are rooting for Ukraine guess what; Despot. Russia same situation. There is no righteous side. Two heads on a coin. The US is now a fascist regime wanting to be the CCP. No good guys in any of this mess. NONE.
What is best in life is if they keep fighting for a long long time unfortunately. That is the only way. Everyone suffers. Hopefully they suffer enough where they start voting for non despots but they likely won’t. For that to happen society has to crash and burn. People are this stupid. They will vote for things they did not earn as long as they can vote for it.
Btp I cant comment on despotic rule in Ukraine, or Russia; I have never set foot there. Have you? I agree though, sometimes things have to get worse b/f they get better (let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out)? I also agree the US gov’t is well on its way to fascism. I revolution may be in order here, but give the Ukrainians a chance. They have been serfs to their Russian masters for three hundred years and since ’91 have had one Russian after another looking over their necks. I am not so jaded as to deny them hope. Ironically a Ukrainian win (their independence) would also free the average Russian. Imagine what 140MM Russians could do w/o the burden of civilization hanging round their neck. Free Russia, Free Ukraine, free Willy.
Interesting article, Why the Russian military brutalizes Ukraine
and “having a solid and reliable noncommissioned-officer corps works wonders in the field”
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/09/why-the-russian-military-brutalizes-ukraine/671396/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=atlantic-daily-newsletter&utm_content=20220909&utm_term=The%20Atlantic%20Daily
Does one dare bring in the transcontinental Democrat vote buying grift using Biden’s Billions of “aid to Ukraine” and the cozy relationship between Zelenksyy and the US military industrial complex?
https://thelibertydaily.com/globalist-grifter-volodymyr-zelensky-lands-unearned-epic-gig-headlining-a-u-s-defense-contractor-conference/
An outstanding share! I have just forwarded this onto a coworker who was doing a little research on this. And he in fact ordered me breakfast because I stumbled upon it for him… lol. So allow me to reword this…. Thanks for the meal!! But yeah, thanks for spending the time to discuss this matter here on your web site.