19378

It sure does look like the Russians are planning to cut and run:

If so, perhaps the UA can take advantage of the withdrawal and punish them? And how are they going to get all of their heavy equipment across? Wouldn’t be the first time an army waited to late to withdraw across a river (Rhine, 1945) and paid the price.

19379

Why the sudden decision to withdraw now? It seems like the lines have been holding stable for the past five or six days.

19380

As I understand it–and admittedly, it’s been a while since I was doing an research in this area–the strikes convinced the Iraqis that WMDs were necessary, when before the raid they had been sort of lukewarm about the idea. It also convinced them and the Iranians of the need to bury sites involved in WMD work far more deeply and protect them better.

19381

There’s a blackout on the Ukrainian side so information is a little more limited, at least that’s what I read elsewhere. Russian milbloggers wouldn’t be beholden to that, but then they were just threatened with imprisonment if they continued to be insufficiently “patriotic”, so maybe they’re not to keen on sharing much of anything that looks bad for Russia.

It already might by that the general isn’t an idiot and knows it’s an untenable position and doesn’t want to waste even more troops. I don’t think they can supply their forces very well.

19382

They almost certainly can’t, not with one mostly wrecked highway bridge and the couple of pontoon bridges they seem to be able to keep up. But, if this is a sign of trying to withdraw on their own terms / timetable, then they might be able to prioritize the most valuable equipment for evacuation. And apparently, all the artillery is already on the Eastern bank.

On the other hand, Ukraine are getting real-time intel from the US / NATO. A pontoon bridge full of juicy targets is not going to go unnoticed.

19383

They’ve tried to build a pontoon bridge in Kherson a few times and it hasn’t worked out. Doubt that would change this time. I don’t know how they get across.

19384

The lines are holding until they don’t. It’s possible that the Russians see the writing on the wall, and don’t want to wait until their positions collapse. We’ll just have the wait and see.

19385

I have no memory of that scene, it sounds intense. Perhaps the virus crashed my memory.
Maybe I should reread it.

19386

I’m a little grumpy about the fair share. But, primarily I have an emotional and monetary investment in Ukraine. If Trump and the Republicans cut off Ukrainian, I truly don’t know if the country will be able to survive. The New Yorker has some sobering statistics.

Each launcher costs roughly seven million dollars. According to some calculations, Ukraine could fire more than five thousand gmlrs missiles per month, whereas their manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, was only producing nine thousand a year. “We said straightaway, ‘You’re not going to get very many of these systems,’ ” the Defense Department official said. “ ‘Not because we don’t trust you but because there simply isn’t an unlimited quantity of these on planet Earth.’ ”

Even though other countries, manufacture launchers, I think Lockheed Martin is the only producer of the missiles. Could other European manufacturers ramp up production in time to save Ukraine? I don’t know.,

19387

I would assume their supply situation is FUBAR.

19388

Lithuanian foreign minister has a way with words:

19389

Over the weekend a few Ukrainian accounts on social media were cautiously reporting that there was a definite push going on near Kherson.

And cryptic predictions about the coming week. So it feels like something has been brewing in that theater for a bit.

19390

So I guess they just wanna kick this shit off.

19391

This is a completely routine occurence.

19392
19393

It blows my mind that Israel is still trying to play neutral when the other side literally includes Iran.

19394

You know, you finally lost me on US and UK being dysfunctional governments.

19395

Lol, “let’s sanction Iran”, like nobody ever tried that before.

19396

My reading of the “evacuating civilians from Kherson” thing is that they’re taking human shields to help them evacuate as much heavy equipment as possible.

The comments about blowing the dam and proscribed weapons are pretty concerning though so I certainly wouldn’t rule out a planned atrocity.

19397

Well the UK is looking at their 4th prime minister in as many years. That’s a level of instability generally seen in Greece, Italy or Israel, or some new democracy in Africa, especially on the heels of Brexit.

As for the US, roughly 1/3 of the country has given up on democracy and Trump’s role model for the most admired leader was Putin. The riot/take-over at the capital on Jan 6th, 2021 has literally never happened in the history of the country.

I supposed by Russian standards,or some of the former Soviet Republics, both countries’ governments are actually pretty functional, but by my American standards, it is really screwed up.