Russia Ukraine: War soon?

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and yet the crowd has grown

[Dan_AKA_ROY23]

and yet the crowd has grown

Photo from FEB 24....

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Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment
March 19, 2022
Frederick W. Kagan, George Barros, and Kateryna Stepanenko

�March 19, 3:00 pm ET
Ukrainian forces have defeated the initial Russian campaign of this war. That campaign aimed to conduct airborne and mechanized operations to seize Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, and other major Ukrainian cities to force a change of government in Ukraine. That campaign has culminated. Russian forces continue to make limited advances in some parts of the theater but are very unlikely to be able to seize their objectives in this way. The doctrinally sound Russian response to this situation would be to end this campaign, accept a possibly lengthy operational pause, develop the plan for a new campaign, build up resources for that new campaign, and launch it when the resources and other conditions are ready. The Russian military has not yet adopted this approach. It is instead continuing to feed small collections of reinforcements into an ongoing effort to keep the current campaign alive. We assess that that effort will fail.

The culmination of the initial Russian campaign is creating conditions of stalemate throughout most of Ukraine. Russian forces are digging in around the periphery of Kyiv and elsewhere, attempting to consolidate political control over areas they currently occupy, resupplying and attempting to reinforce units in static positions, and generally beginning to set conditions to hold in approximately their current forward positions for an indefinite time. Maxar imagery of Russian forces digging trenches and revetments in Kyiv Oblast over the past several days supports this assessment. Comments by Duma members about forcing Ukraine to surrender by exhaustion in May could reflect a revised Russian approach to ending this conflict on terms favorable to Moscow.
 
Stalemate will likely be very violent and bloody, especially if it protracts. Stalemate is not armistice or ceasefire. It is a condition in war in which each side conducts offensive operations that do not fundamentally alter the situation. Those operations can be very damaging and cause enormous casualties. The World War I battles of the Somme, Verdun, and Passchendaele were all fought in conditions of stalemate and did not break the stalemate. If the war in Ukraine settles into a stalemate condition Russian forces will continue to bomb and bombard Ukrainian cities, devastating them and killing civilians, even as Ukrainian forces impose losses on Russian attackers and conduct counter-attacks of their own. The Russians could hope to break Ukrainians' will to continue fighting under such circumstances by demonstrating Kyiv's inability to expel Russian forces or stop their attacks even if the Russians are demonstrably unable to take Ukraine's cities. Ukraine's defeat of the initial Russian campaign may therefore set conditions for a devastating protraction of the conflict and a dangerous new period testing the resolve of Ukraine and the West. Continued and expanded Western support to Ukraine will be vital to seeing Ukraine through that new period.
 
Key Takeaways:
 
We now assess that the initial Russian campaign to seize Ukraine's capital and major cities and force regime change has failed;
Russian forces continue efforts to restore momentum to this culminated campaign, but those efforts will likely also fail;
Russian troops will continue trying to advance to within effective artillery range of the center of Kyiv, but prospects for their success are unclear;
The war will likely descend into a phase of bloody stalemate that could last for weeks or months;
Russia will expand efforts to bombard Ukrainian civilians in order to break Ukrainians' will to continue fighting (at which the Russians will likely fail);
The most dangerous current Russian advance is from Kherson north toward Kryvyi Rih in an effort to isolate Zaporizhiya and Dnipro from the west. Russian forces are unlikely to be able to surround or take Kryvyi Rih in the coming days, and may not be able to do so at all without massing much larger forces for the effort than they now have available on that axis;
The Russians appear to have abandoned plans to attack Odesa at least in the near term.

ISW

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Key Takeaways

Russian forces did not conduct any offensive operations northwest of Kyiv and further reinforced their defensive positions.
Russian forces did not conduct offensive operations in northeastern Ukraine and have been unable to solve logistics issues.
Russian forces continued to make slow but steady progress and shell civilian infrastructure in Mariupol.
Russian and proxy forces conducted several unsuccessful assaults in Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts in the past 24 hours.
Russia continues to deploy low-quality reserves, including combat-support elements and low-readiness units from the Eastern Military District, to replace losses in frontline units.
The Ukranian General Staff warned that Russia seeks to conduct a provocation to bring Belarus into the war, but a Belarusian offensive into western Ukraine remains unlikely to occur or succeed if it did.
The Ukrainian General Staff continued to warn on March 20-21 that Russia seeks to bring Belarus into the war. The Ukrainian General Staff reported at midnight local time on March 20 that "there is a high probability" of Russian provocations against Belarus to bring Belarus into the war in Ukraine and create a new axis of advance into western Ukraine.[1] Belarus evacuated its embassy in Kyiv to Moldova on March 19 in response to what it claimed were "unbearable working conditions."[2] The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) also reported on March 21 that it detained a Belarusian spy who was examining Ukrainian deployments and equipment in Volyn Oblast.[3] Belarusian social media users additionally observed Belarusian military equipment in Rechista (in the Brest region), 7km from the Ukrainian border, on March 21.[4] The Kremlin likely seeks to bring Belarus into the war in Ukraine to reinforce Russian forces, but Belarusian President Lukashenko likely continues to resist Russian pressure. A new Russian or Belarusian axis of advance into Western Ukraine would be unlikely to succeed. Russian and Belarusian forces would face staunch Ukrainian resistance and similar, if not greater, morale and logistics issues to Russian forces elsewhere.

The Ukrainian General Staff stated for the first time on March 21 that Russia is deploying unspecified support units to "direct combat operations" and said that Russia continues to deploy reserves from the Central and Eastern Military Districts (CMD and EMD).[5] The Ukrainian Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) provided further details on conscription measures in the DNR and LNR on March 21. They reported that Russian authorities are increasing the conscription age from 55 to 65 and aggressively recruiting 18-year-old students. The GUR reported conscripts in DNR/LNR forces are supplied with military equipment from the 1970s.[6] Local social media imagery depicted new conscripts equipped with the Mosin-Nagant bolt action rifle—which has not been produced since 1973 and was first produced in 1891.[7]

ISW

[Jim at Gentex]

Russian disinformation....or truth that the Ukraine Nazi divisions have been killing their own Ukrainians?
https://twitter.com/Youblacksoul/status/1504596675746271233

We heard that same story from Lara Logan who says it is true.
She is one of the VERY FEW journalists who has maintained her integrity IMO, so I tend to listen to what she has to say when she reports a story.

[rdshear]

https://twitter.com/Youblacksoul/status/1504596675746271233

"This Tweet is from a suspended account."

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I have no doubt here are Nazi is Ukraine
We've goy Nazi's here is the US too
I do not believe there are enough Nazi's in Ukraine to justify
Putin's invasion

[RobertELee]

"This Tweet is from a suspended account."

Sounds like they're in good company with the likes of Babylon Bee and DT.

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who's DT?
Donald Trump dumbass!!!!

[Dan_AKA_ROY23]

I have no doubt here are Nazi is Ukraine
We've goy Nazi's here is the US too
I do not believe there are enough Nazi's in Ukraine to justify
Putin's invasion

Nazis in Russia, too.

And don't forget those Canadian Nazis! 

[beej]

In wartime, the old adage, "don't believe none of what you hear and only about half of what you see." Is probably the best thing you can remember when keeping up with current events.

[thad]

who's DT?

The most entertaining president evah.

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The best most entertaining president evah.

fissed...

of course a box of rocks would make a better president than the one we have now, so it's not a high bar

[RobertELee]

[Dan_AKA_ROY23]

^^^^^ can't argue with that though.
1-800-RegimeChange

Then move to Russia.