Russia Invades Ukraine. Again
POSTED BY: captaincrunch
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 21:09
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A Hard-Won Victory That Ukraine Stands to Lose
By Anthony Borden, Mykhaylo Shtekel | January 4, 2024, 10:30 AM ET
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/01/ukraine-russ
ia-weapons-counteroffensive/677010/
The Ukrainian counteroffensive has consisted of grueling battles like this one. Its gains are now at risk.
In a trench war, depth matters, and on a hilltop outside Orikhiv, 35 miles southeast of Zaporizhzhia, the Russians were dug in more than six feet deep. They’d fashioned a sunken city, a maze of crossed trails extending nearly a mile and commanding an unobstructed view five miles in all directions.
From that hilltop, known to the Ukrainian military as Position X, the Russians controlled the vital road south. If the Russians were to push forward, to take Orikhiv and move toward Zaporizhzhia, they would advance from that position. If Ukraine’s counteroffensive were to progress in the southeast, with the goal of eventually retaking Melitopol and choking Russian land access to Crimea, it would have to start by gaining Position X.
Last June, Ukrainian forces overcame Russia’s established position on their fifth attempt, after several months and many casualties. Taking Position X was a high point in a tough counteroffensive campaign and a demonstration of Ukrainian capacity. With enough weaponry, Ukrainian persistence, ingenuity, and courage can prevail over numerically superior and better-equipped Russian forces—especially in close combat, where Ukrainians have an overpowering motivational advantage and Russians tend to flee.
But the cost and difficulty of the battle also illustrated just how monumental a task Ukraine set itself with its counteroffensive. The Russians dug in at Position X commanded the high ground and held every advantage in terms of weapons and manpower. The Ukrainians defeated them with clever and flexible tactics, as well as sacrifice, endurance, and luck. But the factors that made this victory so hard-won will make it as hard or harder to repeat.
Read: Ukraine is losing Eastern European allies
After taking Position X over the summer, Ukrainian troops were able to advance down the southern road and recapture the village of Robotyne. But now the flow of armaments from the West has slowed and Ukrainian lines are stretched. Russian troops have recently regained several hundred yards in bitter fighting there and threaten to retake Robotyne. We visited Position X with Ukrainian troops in November 2023 and spoke with commanders about their victory there and the battlefield beyond.
“I understand that our Western partners were expecting a different counteroffensive,” a deputy battalion commander with the 65th Mechanized Brigade, whose call sign is Poltava, told us. “They said it would be fast, and all the rest. But this is not that war.”
Russia’s forward outpost at Position X was built to last. Prepared with the assistance of Wagner forces, its earthworks included protected gunner posts, large munitions stores, and regular blindages—sections covered with beams, dirt, and sandbags for cover. More than a dozen mini-dormitories with tree-trunk roofs, boarded walls, and bunk beds could accommodate 100 Russian soldiers at a time and were wired for lighting with generators. The Russians had arranged the trenchworks in the shape of an X, which allowed them to meet any advance with a hail of fire from two angles, from covered machine-gun positions every 10 to 20 yards. The entire area was also heavily mined.
Ukraine’s 65th Mechanized Brigade therefore made its initial foray last March with hardened vehicles: Vietnam-era armored personnel carriers (APCs) from the Netherlands, which maneuver slowly, have poor communications, and need frequent repair. The APCs also belch and churn at an infernal volume, announcing their approach from more than five miles away. On one of the first Ukrainian attempts, in March, an APC took three direct hits from a bazooka to no effect. But a fourth pierced the hull.
“We had two 200s [deaths] in the car, a commander and a gunner. Three
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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
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Statement by Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield | January 4, 2023
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) recently provided Russia with ballistic missile launchers and several dozen ballistic missiles.
The DPRK and Russia are both blatantly violating the United Nations arms embargo on the DPRK, which prohibits all UN Member States from procuring arms or related materiel from the DPRK and prohibits the DPRK from exporting arms or related materiel.
The Russian Federation’s pattern of behavior – flouting its responsibilities as a member of the UN Security Council and Member State, propping up regimes engaged in proliferation of arms, ballistic missiles, and related materiel – is unacceptable.
The United States will continue to work with allies and partners to identify, expose, and counter the Russian government’s attempts to acquire military equipment from the DPRK or any state that is prepared to support the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine. We will raise this issue in the January 10 Security Council briefing on Ukraine. And we will keep strengthening cooperation to address the DPRK’s weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs.
https://usun.usmission.gov/statement-by-ambassador-linda-thomas-greenf
ield-on-russias-pursuit-and-use-of-weapons-from-the-dprk-in-violation-of-un-security-council-resolutions/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
That's odd, bc Dima has shown videos of HIMARS getting destroyed. Not many, but more than none.
SIGNYM
T
Russian man: "Evil happens because good people are silent"
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Europe’s Artillery Future: Cluster Munitions
By Craig Hooper | Jan 3, 2024, 04:00pm EST
https://www.forbes.com/sites/craighooper/2024/01/03/europes-artillery-
future-bigger-new-energetics-more-barrels-and-cluster-munitions/?sh=21c879cf573b
With Russia already seeding Ukraine with mines, it is time for Europe to put aside the demonstrative, “feel-good’ niceties of a cluster bomb weapons ban to discuss how these weapons are doing in the brutal and ugly business of killing Russian soldiers.
Put bluntly, the ban itself may now be unsustainable. Though much of Europe—35 countries so far—ban cluster munitions, cluster munitions have remained important tactical tools for most European armies, and, with each 155mm cluster munition offering the equivalent destructive power of 10 normal 155mm high explosive shells, the grim calculus in favor of cluster munitions is obvious.
With Russia’s continued defiance of international norms of peaceful behavior and European battle strategies baldly calling for a body count, the Convention on Cluster Munitions is looking like more of a hinderance than a help. At a minimum, the document prevents countries maintaining old stockpiles of European-built cluster munitions from transferring those munitions to Kyiv, and, if Russia continues fighting, the ban will make the manufacture of modern cluster munitions in Europe impossible.
With Russia—and every major Russian ally—refusing to join the cluster munitions ban, continued adherence to the cluster munitions ban seems somewhat self-defeating. If these widely-despised and feared weapons are working in Ukraine, it might be time to suggest setting the ban aside, as something Europe might do if Russia continues fighting into the next year.
With cluster munitions, the West is running on borrowed time. Hounded by activists, few modern cluster munition manufacturers still exist. Even though the U.S. is not a signatory to the agreement, the last American cluster munitions manufacturer halted production in 2016. Small-scale cluster munition prototype studies are underway in the U.S., but there’s no real enthusiasm about replacing America’s lost cluster munitions production capability.
The U.S., of course, has plenty of old cluster munitions still in storage. In 2011, the U.S. government reported that it maintained more than 6 million cluster munitions of various types. These aging weapons should, where possible, be readied for transfer to Kyiv, and replacement efforts stepped up.
Europe has the capability to resist—and even defeat—Vladimir Putin. With their clear strategy, Estonia, one of the smallest, least populous European counties to sketch out the way forward (Estonia, by population, is in league with Cyprus, Luxembourg, Montenegro and Malta), is punching far above its weight. But it seems strange that, in a provocative call to kill or wound 50,000 of Estonia’s Russian neighbors every six months, Estonia didn’t dare risk irking the European signatories to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.
It is time to put diplomatic niceties aside. If Europe agrees that it wants Ukraine to kill 100,000 Russians a year, cluster munitions will do a lot to help Ukraine meet those grim goals.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Ukraine is using cluster munitions on civilian centers in Russia. They can't be trusted not to commit obvious war crimes.
Meanwhile, how about catching up on some real news?
Hmmm....
Russia launched the largest drone and missile strike ever. Targets included munitions and drone factories, weapons stockpiles, command centers, foreign "volunteers" in hotels etc in Kharkiv, Odessa, Lviv, and especially Kiev. Not only did this obliterate western and Ukraine made weapons and factories, it made life in Kiev less "normal", and weakened support for Zelenskiy and the war.
Their air defenses appear almost nonexistent.
Ukraine is still thrashing around how to conscript 500,000 soldiers. The Rada has been talking about it for about a month. Zaluzhny and Zelenskiy are tossing the conscription between each other like a hot potato. Considering the political situation in Kiev, neither one wants to be on the losing side of the equation.
Meanwhile, I've seen at least a dozen videos of "recruiters" literally kidnapping men off the street.
Russia is slowly moving the front forward. Since they're now the attackers they're vulnerable to weapons strikes, but since Ukraine is almost out of 155 mm shells, drones are working overtime. Russian soldiers complain most about drones, for which defenses seem incomplete at best.
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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Quote:Ukraine is still thrashing around about how to demolish the Crimean Strait Bridge.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Ukraine is still thrashing around how to conscript 500,000 soldiers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_Bridge#Attacks_during_the_Russia
n_invasion_of_Ukraine
The battle of Ukraine v Russia is best described as the battle of Dumb v Dumber. When two meatheads, Russian and Ukrainian, slug it out in a street fight, the larger usually wins, unless an observer who is also a competent marksman with a gun decides the winner.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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More real news...
Having been warned agianst it by the IMF, Central Banks, economists, and scholars of international law, Biden* looks determined to steal Russia's frozen assets and give them to Ukraine, with the EU's blessing.
The downside?
IMF and some central banks fear that stealing national assets from western banks will make every other cash-rich nation and oligarch in the world (Gulf states, China, oil rich African states) pull their money from western banks where it, too, could be stolen. We saw that effect when Russia was kicked out of SWIFT which accelerated non-SWIFT bank exchanges. This theft is not a big problem for the USA since our banks hold little Rusian assets, but definitely a problem for Brussels, which holds most of the estimated $300 billion Russian foreign reserves.
And clearly, we don't mind throwing our allies under the bus, having blown up their source of cheap natural gas causing inflation and deindustrialization, and urging them to demilitarize themselves. The EU and European national elites, being the flaccid puppets that they are, may quibble and cavil temporarily but will eventually fold.
I predict a further decrease in USD and EUR in international trade.
Another downside? Stealing national assets is an act of war. Should Russia decide to retaliate, it will be Europe on the front line. Good for us, not so much for them.
Yet another downside: it won't affect Russia's military or economy. Russia has written those reserves off, and is doing fine without them.
And it won't help Ukraine's military. They might be awash with money, but the cupboard is bare of relevant current weapons like 155mm shells, Patriot missile installations, APCs and tanks. The latest strikes across Ukraine demonstrate what happens when you try to manufacture weapons inside Ukraine. And how many drones can you use without drone operators?
It won't go to reconstruction either, since you have to be able to protect reconstruction. I think what will happen with some of that money is that it will pay salaries for another few months and keep the Kiev government afloat, preventing outright abandonment. The parts that are designated to "increasing weapons manufacturing in Ukraine" will go straight into contracts with western weapons manufacturers, who wont be able to do anything of the sort. And part of it will, go to ......
*****
The other thing Biden* is considering is long range missiles like the American Tomahawk and the German Taurus, which will be used to strike the Crimean Bridge and targets inside Russia. I noticed that Czech Viper launchers were used to send cluster munitions into civilian Belgorod with nary a demur from the west, so I expect more of the same k war crimes) from from the west.
(By contrast, Russia doesn't target civilian centers, and I doubt that it will even after provocation by the collective west. Just saying.)
F16s are also heading Ukraine's way, but the consensus is that it's too few. Also, since they need pristine runways for takeoff, they will probably taking off from NATO airstrips.
And finally, the USA has a three-star general to oversee Ukraine's war effort.
Ukraine's proxy status is getting thinner and thinner, and NATO's war on Russia is becoming more and more naked.
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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Quote:Signym, you are a lying sack of shit. Russia caused hundreds of billions of dollars in damage to Ukraine. Russia will never voluntarily pay for damages, regardless of what any international court rules. Forcefully taking the money against Russia's strong objections is the only way to get Russia to pay. Other countries won't lose their money because they are NOT destroying another country. That is either too subtle for Signym to understand or Signym is a lying sack of shit who completely understands who she is and what she is doing but doesn't take care to stop. Kind of like Russians.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
More real news...
Having been warned agianst it by the IMF, Central Banks, economists, and scholars of international law, Biden* looks determined to steal Russia's frozen assets and give them to Ukraine, with the EU's blessing.
The downside?
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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