“… lately, the Ukrainians have been very successful in fighting back and counter attacking and part of that is because of the arrival of advanced weapons from the United States and NATO so that they are outclassing the Russians in terms of their ability to fight.”
Meanwhile, there is the “possibility of a mass surrender” of thousands of Russian troops as the result of fighting in the Kherson region, where Ukraine said Saturday it has killed numerous Russian soldiers, said Morris.
Rail traffic has been cut over the Dnipro River to Kherson, according to reports, potentially isolating Russian forces west of the river from obtaining supplies from Crimea and the east.
“That might have a tremendous impact on Russian public opinion and make it impossible to ignore their battlefield reverses,” said Morris. “The basic thrust of it is that Ukraine is winning. It’s doing very well and the motivation of its troops and its equipment is better.””
Comment: The potential is there for a debacle for RU so long as the UKA does not run out of ammunition and the target intelligence keeps flowing from American liaison. The scratch battalions that RU is raising regionally will just be meat for the grinder. pl
Dick Morris to Newsmax: Ukraine ‘Potentially Winning Decisively’ Over Russia | Newsmax.com
Hmm, I thought Dick Morris was politically dead? But then even a dead cat bounce can be right about something these days in this war.
I will have what Dick Morris is smoking. It’s been a long and hard Monday here in the Eastern European oversea staging areas and I could use a trip to Dreamlandia.
Uhhhh. I dunno. I think a lot of things are still in play and from what I can tell, the politics are getting even stranger.
Might work out the way that you say, but from what I can tell, the odds are not in your favor.
Thanks for keeping this on the front burner, I’m not certain that I necessarily agree with you al the time, but I always read and think about what you write.
How’s the hip?
John
Degringolade
Still weak.
So the Russians are losing decisively and, according to the Ukranians, funnelling massive amounts of troops into the pocket which they can’t supply. I’m glad Dick Morris says the same thing the Ukrainians said the other day. If that is the case then
why is Zelensky ording all Ukrainians out of the areas of Donetsk the Russian occupy?
“Zelensky issued a mandatory evacuation order for civilians still living in the war-torn eastern region of Donetsk, saying many were refusing to leave. “There are hundreds of thousands of people, tens of thousands of children … many people refuse to leave … but it really needs to be done,” he said in his nightly address. ”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/31/russia-ukraine-war-latest-updates/
“If that is the case then why is Zelensky ording all Ukrainians out of the areas of Donetsk the Russian occupy?”
It might be that Ukraine is planning to expand the conflict into those areas and is obligated to remove civilians from harm under international law.
Fred,
Russians continue to target civilians and civilian infrastructure in the Donetsk area.Moving the civilians out will protect them from further shelling. Further damage to civil infrastructure will reduce availability of electricity, heating and water will making it difficult and dangerous for civilians to remain in the area, especially as winter approaches. That’s why Zelensky ordered the evacuation.
TTG,
So the Russians are shelling the areas they already control? The Russians have also had control of that facility for months but did not cut power to the people they are fighting, but maybe it will get damaged when the Ukrainians attack? Neither of those things make sense to me.
Fred,
It’s the parts of Donetsk that are still under Ukrainian control.
TTG,
Might you be able to provide a link to someone interviewing civilians who have been shelled by Russian forces? I would really like to see that. Cheers.
JameT,
Surely the Russian shelling of Ukrainian civilians is not news to you. It’s been going on since the beginning. Just do a search. Here’s a couple to get you started.
https://www.rferl.org/a/avdiyivka-ukraine-russia-war-shelling/31891070.html
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/7/16/civilians-killed-as-russia-intensifies-attacks-across-ukraine
https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/putin-russia-missile-attacks-civilian-targets-20220802.html
There are no parts of Donetsk under Ukrainian control.
whoknows,
Your cartographical ignorance astounds me. Have you not heard of Sloviansk, Kramatorsk or Bakhmut? There are still sections of the pre-invasion line of contact that have barely moved.
I would bet Who-Knows was confusing the city with the province.
Moving the civilians out will protect them from further shelling.
Compared to forceful resettlement if Russia does the same in areas it controls? Isn’t it great after all these years we are back to the good versus evil argument, this time without the least trace of doubts and/or regret? What a pity Russia had to remain on the back burner the decades post 9/11. Up to now.
Seizing the moment once again?
Recognition of Russia as terrorist state needed not as political gesture, but as effective defense of free world – address of President of Ukraine
LeaNder, a “sovereign power” has more rights in this situation that does an “occupying power”.
That is axiomatic, since a sovereign has, well, “sovereignty” over that population, while an occupier only has “authority” over them.
So a sovereign power (e.g. Ukraine) can order the population to be evacuated. Doing so is not a war crime.
But an occupying power (e.g. Russia) is committing a war crime if it does the same.
(Note: it can temporarily transfer the civvies for their own safety, but it MUST be for “imperative” reasons and must be undone as soon as the danger passes.)
Excerpt from New York Times:
Russians using captured Ukraine Nuke plant as cover for their artillery.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/01/world/europe/ukraine-south-counteroffensive-nuclear.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20220801&instance_id=68142&nl=the-morning®i_id=87967048&segment_id=100125&te=1&user_id=4ae95cece46074f892c425dc4f28903a
NIKOPOL, Ukraine — Along most of the front line in Russia’s war in Ukraine, when one side lets loose with an artillery attack, the other shoots back.
But not in Nikopol, a city deep in southern farm country where the Ukrainian military faces a new and vexing obstacle as it prepares for a major counteroffensive: a nuclear power station that the Russian Army has turned into a fortress.
Nikopol, controlled by the Ukrainians, lies on the west bank of the Dnipro River. On the opposite bank sits a gigantic nuclear power plant — Europe’s largest — that the Russian Army captured in March. The Russians have been firing from the cover of the Zaporizhzhia station since mid-July, Ukrainian military and civilian officials said, sending rockets over the river at Nikopol and other targets.
It is, in effect, a free shot. Ukraine cannot unleash volleys of shells in return using American-provided advanced rocket systems, which have silenced Russian guns elsewhere on the front line. Doing so would risk striking one of the six pressurized water reactors or highly radioactive waste in storage. And Russia knows it.
The attacks from the nuclear plant are complicating Ukraine’s plans in the south, which has become the focal point of the war as Russian advances in the east have slowed.
The Ukrainian Army has for more than two months been telegraphing an intention to counterattack on the west bank of the Dnipro River, with the goal being to liberate the city of Kherson. Using a long-range American rocket-launching system known as HIMARS, Ukraine has been softening up Russian positions and cutting supply lines. This month rocket strikes destroyed a road and railroad bridges pivotal for Russian resupply of forces on the west bank, to the south of Nikopol, closer to Kherson.
As the counterattack picks up, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant poses a quandary. Russian forces have occupied the nuclear site since March 4 but began using it for artillery strikes only three weeks ago, Ukrainian officials say, about when HIMARS appeared on the battlefield. Shielded from return fire, the Russians are menacing Ukrainian troops advancing toward the Nova Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro River, one of the last remaining crossing points for Russian resupply.
It is a problem Ukraine will have to solve as it moves troops and equipment into the area for the counteroffensive.
The Ukrainian Army’s retaliatory options at Nikopol are limited. One tactic it has tried is to execute precision strikes that avoid, as much as possible, the risk of damaging the reactors. On July 22, for instance, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency reported a strike with a kamikaze drone that blew up an antiaircraft installation and a Grad rocket launcher and that killed soldiers in a tent camp about 150 yards from a reactor.
The fighting near the power plant has renewed worries that the war will set off a release of radiation in a country chockablock with delicate and dangerous nuclear sites, including Chernobyl, which Russia occupied in March but then abandoned. Last
Friday, a huge, roiling plume of black smoke rose a few miles south of the reactors at Zaporizhzhia, and the Ukrainian military said it had hit a Russian ammunition depot.
When the Russian Army seized the Zaporizhzhia plant in March, combat ignited a fire — and a good deal of worry about nuclear safety. In that fighting, shrapnel hit but did not breach the containment structure of Reactor No. 1. Three of the six reactors are active now, and the others are idled or undergoing repairs.
The site is in a nuclear regulatory limbo. The Russian military controls the plant, but Ukrainian engineers operate it. The Russians allow Ukrainian truck convoys across the front line with spare parts and chemicals needed to process cooling water. Ukrainian nuclear regulators also cross the front to visit the plant. Rosatom, the Russian state nuclear company, has dispatched about a dozen engineers to monitor its operation.
Col. Serhiy Shatalov, who has been leading a Ukrainian infantry battalion on a creeping, village-by-village advance toward the Nova Kakhovka dam, said Russian artillery had mostly gone quiet after a few weeks of HIMARS strikes — except from the Russian units at the nuclear power plant.
“How can we respond?” he said. “This is a nuclear site.”
Of the Russians’ use of the reactors for cover, he said, “don’t search for fairness in war, especially if you fight the Russians.”
Uh-uh. Russians hiding behind the skirts of the nuclear plant, Zaporizhzhia station, and threatening “nuclear doomsday” at every turn. Putin and the UN raising fears of nuclear annihalation like they have never – except for those of us who have grown up with this PSYOP, been raised before… Get ready to fight nuclear armed nations, and let them decide if they should place their hoary fingers near “the” button. The tiger is in the game, and he lives.
This Ukrainian ‘thing’ sounds like a merger of the ‘Tet Offensive’ and ‘Baghdad Bob’, depending on who you listen to. By which I mean that this major Ukrainian offensive has been hyped in broad daylight, ‘Baghdad Bob’-style, while the ‘Tet Offensive’ was a rather ugly surprise. But like the ‘Tet Offensive’, if I understand it correctly, it is mainly meant to create a Russian Anti-War movement, damn the casualties on the Ukrainian side, rather than win decisively on the battlefield. In fact that sounds like a back-up version of the ‘Gladio-thing’, using ‘Stay Behind’ military, which I still think NATO was aiming for originally. Russia taking all of Ukraine, installing a puppet in Kiev, and call it a victory, like NATO would. Only to find itself bogged down in a hostile and unstable environment which would have cost the Russians dearly. With the sanctions pushing them over the edge. But that didn’t happen. NATO never expecting Russia to take its time, and turn it into an artillery shoot-out, while progressing slowly, but deliberately, and only the (originally) pro-Russian areas.
Announcing this Ukrainian offensive a month ahead, and bragging about the strength of your ‘million-men-army’, would not have occurred to general Gap as the way to go. But then again, Ukraine isn’t Vietnam. Still, from what Pat and others say about the Ukrainians, they appear to hold them as determined as ‘Charlie’ was back then. Although there have been numerous reports already about disheveled front-line battle groups in the Donbas who had enough already two months ago. Moreover, from what I read and heard, military equipment and ammunition sent by the west has slowed down, and not picked up. And with a warehouse in Bulgaria of a ‘merchant of death’ on our side which went up in flames overnight, and now six Himars gone (according to the Russians, who just blew up two more, apparently), while everybody is watching Nancy Pelosi inbound to Taiwan, pushing up the ante, and Zelensky doing the ‘Celebrity Tour’ as if war was really very glamorous, I must admit that this world is now simply far too crazy for someone like me to comprehend.
No doubt NATO (the US) will continu to provide target intelligence, and what not. They are throwing the kitchen sink at this war. Great Apps are being hailed as the best thing since gun-powder. Sabotage groups are sent in by boat to throw self-made drones at the facade of Naval Buildings in Sevastopol. And while some of these groups have been intercepted, and killed, others probably got through. So there is a fair chance that there will be mayhem in the Kherson area, while ‘Kiev’ apparently gave up on the Donbas and is ordering everybody to leave. At the same time multiple (usually intelligent, well informed sources with a credentialed military background), tell us Ukraine has lost already, and is bound to face the next offensive herself, which will see the war torn country lose Nikolaev and Odessa too, after which it will be left with that part of the country which generated twenty percent of GDP through winning consecutive Song-Festivals. I’m no expert like Dick Morris, or the guys and gals over at ‘Kos’, and if Pat and TTG are promoting them as the ‘go to’-people telling us where to look for placing a successful bet on the outcome, then who am I to say it ain’t so? So I bought myself plenty of pop-corn to watch the show, but I won’t be placing any bets myself.
Sounds like
a) those switchblades don’t work except for when they did.
b) they’ve already run out
c) we waited until now to report this because reasons
There’s more:
“The Russians allow Ukrainian truck convoys across the front line with spare parts and chemicals needed to process cooling water. Ukrainian nuclear regulators also cross the front to visit the plant.”
Do they let the Ukranain operators and staff across too? Isn’t that collaboration worthy of getting shot, like the two police reported in the story TTG linked to the other day? Where’s all that electricity going, the Russian controlled areas or the Ukrainian areas?
Morris: … “possibility of” … “according to reports” … “potentially”…
Then on to the entire point of his article:
Morris: “That might have a tremendous impact on Russian public opinion and make it impossible to ignore their battlefield reverses,”
Get it? He is convinced that Ukraine can win the war by means of a PR campaign.
If you don’t believe me then read the next quote:
Morris: “The basic thrust of it is that Ukraine is winning.”
War by wish-fulfillment. If western media can only squeeze their eyes really, really tight and repeat the mantra, repeat the mantra, repeat the mantra that the Ukrainians are winning then the Russians will be convinced that the Ukrainians are winning.
At which point, of course, the Russians will give up.
This is self-delusion on an epic scale. Alice in Wonderland stuff.
Allow me to expand on my previous contribution to this topic, in which I mentioned the ‘Tet offensive’. The entire strategy of Vietnam at the time was to win the ‘Public Relations’-war, which they obviously did. Soldiers returning from Vietnam were greeted by angry crowds calling them ‘Baby Killers’. My thoughts, offered in my previous contribution, is that NATO is aiming for a similar outcome, destabilizing Russia along similar lines, as well as China. We are seeing this pattern again and again. The unprepared observer is quick to draw the conclusion that NATO is no longer able to win any wars. But they themselves do not look at it like that. On the contrary!
So, what gives?
Some very vocal supporters of the China/Russia (SCO) alliance are labeling the NATO-alliance the ‘Empire of Chaos’. Blundering along, unable to get it right, and always lying about their true objectives. But what if this is intentional? Create chaos, and let Larry Fink’s ‘Black Rock’ rule the world? This is in fact the concept of ‘Financial Capitalism’, with plenty of supporters, and not just in ‘Davos’. The irony is, that more than a few very vocal opponents of ‘Davos’ are actually its best ‘assets’, without them knowing it. Advocating, and promoting a world where nobody cares anymore, and certainly not about sovereignty of any nation-states, or elections. And call it bliss.
The original ‘American Way’ was based on ‘Industrial Capitalism’, and it supported de-colonization, which rubbed the Brits the wrong way, since in London everything is about Empire, and feudal traditions. The ‘Special Relationship’ between the US and the UK, which meant control over NATO, saw the US lose its bearings, and fall in love with ‘Financial Capitalism’ head over heels. Expanding like there was no tomorrow on borrowed and freshly printed money after the Soviet-Union collapsed. And there was no tomorrow, only today, since history had ended. Francis Fukuyama said so. And here we are.
Our ‘Unipolar’ world clashes with a ‘born-again’ ideal of a ‘Multipolar’ world, which goes a very long way to explain why politicians, and others in control within our western society, really don’t give a hoot about destroying the economy, or anything, while being careful not to destroy their public image in the process, if their ability to spend, or grab public money depends on it. But they may promote one point of view today, and a diametrically opposed point of view tomorrow, without blinking an eye. They are not opposed to war, destruction, stealing or lying, as long as it will be to their benefit.
While I concluded my previous contribution stating that I bought a large quantity of pop-corn to watch the show, that doesn’t imply I’m indifferent about the outcome. But like I stated in that same contribution, you can’t control madness. This is Gotham City territory. Neofeudalism. Adam Smith’s worst nightmare. Did NATO bungle those wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, and now in Ukraine? No, from their perspective they won, and are winning decisively. No viable nation left. Borderless bliss.
Is this not enough to keep the Russian artillery fed? Also harder to hit than a bridge if you keep moving them around every couple of hours.
https://twitter.com/Militarylandnet/status/1554772460427411456