Ukraine Set to Surrender 25% of it's Territory to Russia
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Russia wanted to take over all of Ukraine. There's no doubt about that.
They tried to take the capital, invading through Belarus. They failed. Russian realizes they can't achieve that anymore. They would love to seal the borders as they are right now because they can't achieve their full aims and this war is very costly. They are getting supplied by North Korea and Iran.
As for what ethnic Russians want, I think it would be interesting to see what their opinions are after two years of Russians invasion.
you may want to stop watching the legacy MSM.
False.
I notice you like to use a lot of mainstream sourcing, which is a problem given that they are no better than the neocons. But since you like them..
Stoltenberg himself admitted to why this all started here. Russia actually has not broken any actual law, and no one is trying to press that issue because then it would call into question the legalities of NATO actions such as in Libya, and shine some light on US actions in the past. But they have to build that narrative, despite no one trying to step in directly.
Russia has been walking a tightrope in accomplishing its stated goals with the special military operation, and not going so far as to invite direct involvement of NATO or the US, yet. Russia has been fighting the war mainly with Reservists and Wagner.
This is not because Russia is weak. It's what the US has done throughout the war on terror. Small special forces groups, PMCs, and Reservists. You're also forgetting or dismissing that for the vast majority of Russians, Ukrainians are brothers, and they're not looking to wipe out the Ukrainians like Western media wants you to believe. They've been holding back. Of this I am sure.
You're under the impression that Russia is buying artillery munitions from NKorea as a sign of weakness. It has already been producing its own artillery shells at a record pace, double what Western allies can produce. They have the capacity to boost production to over 2 million rounds, and have signaled that it's doing just that for 2024. But as Reuters would have you believe, this is still "short" of Russia's needs. But, how does Reuters know that? They don't. they're just talking out fo their asses. Because they have always needed to help sell people on this war. Russia can expand capacity to more than 2 million annually, after they took a page from our book with the Defence Production Act.
I believe Russia buying artillery shells from NKorea and Iran is a move to bolster BRICS relations. It's quite possible the "I" in BRICS was always Iran, after all. Showing their willingness to trade, and also showing that Western sanctions don't work when business isn't conducted in dollars.
Russia achieved its stated SMO goals with the Donbass, along with the demilitarization of Ukraine, and has now pivoted into a war of attrition, which is what NATO was hoping to achieve against Russia, but now find themselves on the receiving end. Russia has no need to rush. This was proven when NATO allowed them time to bolster their lines, and the Ukrainian counter-offensive failed. it failed so miserably that contrary to what your mainstream sources needed to report to maintain positive public opinion for the war, the counter-offensive never even made it to Russia's main defensive lines.
If you go and read the transcripts from the NATO summit in Vilnius earlier in the year, reading between the lines it's plain to see that most European leaders are losing their stomach for this war, facing protests at home over rising energy and food costs. They changed the conditions for Ukraine to join, stating that it now must defeat Russia first. A clear signal that they're looking for the offramp, and the events in Israel may give them just that as the US pivots to supporting its main ally in the ME. Russia sees this and is no no hurry now, while Ukraine is looking to be all but abandoned in favor of Israel, Europe is unable to really commit to fighting wars as it deindustrializes (as well as losing capital and facing an energy crisis), and U.S., European officials broach topic of peace negotiations with Ukraine
I don't see peace negotiations even being suggested, or the terms of Ukraine's admittance into NATO being changed if Russia is losing, or even close to losing.
I'll begin with this first.
Russia is not close to losing, but there are very far from winning as well. That's my point. The idea that they have turned the tide is not borne out by the past few months.
Um, this puts it 100% on Putin. That's basically extortion. Why would you think that would be accepted?
What would you consider invading Crimea in 2014 and the rest of Ukraine in 2022? I consider that sketchy.
This sounds like rationalization after the fact. I believe Putin's goal has been to take of Ukraine. His dream goal is to undo what he has called the the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th Century the breakup of the Soviet Union. Putin realized in 2022 he could not take Ukraine and pivoted to a secondary goal.
Also you seem to be forgetting what American units fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. We went in pretty heavy.
The airport battle I mentioned involved
41st Combined Arms Army 31st Guards Air Assault Brigade 141st Motorized Regiment
The 6 week battle of Kiev in 2022 involved
37th Guards Motor Rifle Brigade Russian Airborne Forces 104th Guards Air Assault Regiment
These guys also fought in Feb 2022 2nd Guards Motor Rifle Division 4th Guards Tank Division 47th Guards Tank Division 27th Guards Motor Rifle Brigade
So I don't think this is all reservists.
I found the Reuters article you mentioned
I found the Reuters article you mentioned. This is how they get to that conclusion. it seems pretty logical.
That's how attrition works. I believe their goal now it to stretch Europe and the US thin on available support. If Israel gets drawn into a regional conflict with some of its neighbors, along with Iran, I expect most US support to go there. Europe on the other hand is fighting over giving Ukraine $25 billion in aid.
Of course Stoltenberg would leave out that NATO has been trying to entice Ukraine into joining for years before that. This is well documented. Crimea is where the Black sea fleet is based. Would you be surprised if America reacted in kind if one of its fleets were in potential danger? Of course not. But we also have on record NATO promising, albeit verbally, that NATO would not expand east. NATO expansion is the source of all of this. How did we react when the Soviet Union placed missiles in Cuba? No differently.
Call it what you want, but how many conflicts has the US jand EU justified for humanitarian reasons?
First of all, if you're going to quote the man, at least get the context correct. The context of that comment is that the breakup of the Soviet Union happened and over night many Soviet Union citizens found themselves displaced in countries not formally part of the Soviet Union anymore. Try to imagine your papers/ your driver's license that say you live in whatever state or country, suddenly not mattering. Having no record anymore that you work someplace, that you can't pay your bills. That is what he was referencing if you read the context before and after that snippet. You fell for the clickbait.
Notice I mentioned special forces groups as well. Most brigades have multiple battalions, and those battalions have multiple companies. And it can be a mix match of any number of companies representing a Regiment or Brigade.
Its speculation at best. Any assessment relies on knowing how many shells Russia had to start with, and the rate at which shells are being expended. And we have seen a wide range of figures thrown around for both.
In January, CNN quoted U.S. officials saying the average rate of fire had dropped from a high of 20,000 rounds per day to an average of 5,000. They contrasted this with Ukrainian estimates of a fall from 60,000 per day to 20,000.
In March, Spanish newspaper El Pais quoted EU insider sources as saying that Russia was firing 40-50,000 rounds per day, and alongside an estimate of 20-60,000 rounds per day from the Latvian government which has been a major supplier of ammunition to Ukraine.
Also in March, in a letter to the EU asking for ammunition, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said that Russian forces were firing on average about 15,000 rounds per day.
In March, Konrad Muzyka, a defense analyst at Rochan Consulting returned from the front line in Ukraine with the estimate that Russia is expending around 10,000 shells per day.
But how many have they had stockpiled? We may never know. So doubling their output could be all they need, and keeps within that age old Russia logic of "good enough". Russian tanks in ww2 were technologically inferior to German tanks being built, but eventually that technology mattered less and less as Germany couldn't produce enough to keep up with the demands of the war.
This is why Russia has been hosting meetings with Hamas over the past couple of years.
The Soviet Union was a corrupt communist dictatorship that was literally ruled from Moscow by the successors to the Bolsheviks, a totalitarian Marxist-Leninist state famous for its gulags, command economy and lack of liberty, a dictatorship, Putin happily served as a KGB officer. It's not surprise many of citizens wanted to be free of it. Half the population was outside Russia.
**Displaced? **
If you lived and worked in Latvia or Uzbekistan, you still lived and worked in Latavia or Uzbekistan.
The USSR remember? The R stood for Republics, it was supposed to be a federation of individual republics. Millions of Soviet Citizens were in different countries before the Soviets took them over. Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia were invaded and taken over in WWII. Eastern Poland was taken over when the Soviets and the Nazis divvied up Poland
It wasn't like someone shook an etch-a-sketch and everything was just erased. People who lived in Minsk and Vilnius and Baku and Odessa still used their old papers. The papers weren't magic, they didn't make people forget the USSR just broke up.
Notice that Putin called it a "geopolitical" catastrophe, an not a humanitarian one. He was upset by Russia's loss of power. And I mentioned he wanted to undo this catastrophe by all his others actions specifically celebrating and rehabilitating Stalin and the czars.
And it didn't happen overnight. It was the culmination of years of reforms and calls for liberation. There was a law passed on that allowed Republics to secede from the Soviet Union. Where people could vote to leave.
https://soviethistory.msu.edu/1991-2/shevarnadze-resigns/shevarnadze-resigns-texts/law-on-secession-from-the-ussr/
The KGB that Putin served that tried a coup against Gorbachev to prevent his reforms.
Artillery Shells
Yeah, it's speculation. But the logic is sound and like you I found various counts of shells used. I have seen higher figures than 10 Million in 2022, so it didn't seem off base.
It's also based on analysis, of changes in how many Russia is firing. The Wagner mutiny came after weeks of begging for more ammo.