Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
It's that Russian major offensive that the *Western experts" were expecting BEFORE the 9th of May, but didn't happen.
With Ukrainian troops under a threat of being surrounded ( and thus asking Kiev's permission to withdraw,)- they never received this permission, so at this point they have no choice but to fight or to be evaporated/surrender, once they are completely surrounded.
Kiev is sending about 5,000 men more to the front lines ( mostly from the "territorial defense" units, that are not well-prepared for battles,) so I don't know how much it will change.
Russians are definitely NOT out of their reserves, so I am not sure what the game is near Kharkov's regions.
They are not deployable or they would be there
Quote:
If there’s anything left in Russia, it’s likely shattered remnants and troops refusing to deploy or redeploy
.
If Ukraine takes out those Russian supply lines...the less likely they will be encircled....it's that simple. This will take a few days to play out...but it looks like Ukraine is emboldened and going for the jugular.
Ukrainian peasants were the first to farm the region, about 400 years ago. Ukrainian cossacks in the Zaporozhian sich extended into a part of the Donbas. The first Russian settlers did not appear until the time of Catherine the Great ... more during the 19th coal boom and subsequent industrialization. Most, however, are much more recent in time arriving to replace dead Ukrainians during the Holomodor and to help rebuild industry destroyed during ww2. Even so, ethnic Ukrainians remained the largest group in Donbas (the last census, 2001). A portion of the Donbas voted to succeed during the 2014 referendum to join the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, wanting no part of separatism.
Mkay and there were Huron natives near the Great Lakes too. What is your point? The cities and the country side of Ukraine were always alienated from each other. Poles, Russians , Jews in the cities and Ukrainians in the country. States are not made from peasant and poets, and intellectual in a coffee shop late in the game. You are also quite bad on Ukrainian history, not to mention human nature. Do you think young girls in US cities crave American things? No, they like trendy imports. The elites in this county hate people in trailer parks . Do you think they want to read poems from a meth addict in an Ohio trailer park? That is what Ukrainian nobility thought of their Ukrainian peasants. they eschewed their own culture. Ethnic Ukrainians were the most enthusiastic to embrace Polish and Russian culture in their upper classes. So the ethnicity argument that you make pretty much shows you know nothing about the history of Ukraine.
Quote:
To 'claim' the Donbas as a whole is "culturally alienated" is nonsensical. Or even to focus on "culture," for slicing the Donbas from the rest of Ukraine economically devastated the Donbas and impacted the larger Ukrainian economy.
You are nonsensical. Of course it aliened because Ukrainian nationalists in the West hate everything Russian, Young goons always think killing people is a great way to solve a problem. The industrialized East is heavily Russian because the entire Soviet apparatus was from the proletariat. Ukraine is peasant. After Stalin starved the Kulacs he didn't even let any Ukrainians in the factories because all revolutionaries know to close the door they came in on. He is not going to let them bark their ideology on a soap box. so again Donbas is Russian . if you do not want to not fight a war with Russians then its not a good idea to start killing them and attack their culture. So yes its now very polarized. Have you noticed the US is also polarizing for the same reason? Start terrozing suburbanites and suprise they are themselves and start hating Antifa. Shocking I know. Do you see any parallels in red state blue state? I doubt it because I see no evidence you bother to do the R&D.
Quote:
More look at those who live today within Donetsk and Luhansk: many are pensioners, many left jobless who now 'work' within separatist armies ... shutdown coal mines an ecological disaster in the making. Ethnic Ukrainians fled some number into Eastern Ukraine ... others largely Russian but no doubt also some ethnic Ukrainians to Russian cities for economic opportunities.
Well all I saw was Ukraine drawing first blood;. Again I just don't know what reality you live in if you think sending in an army and killing civilians is going to convince them that employment is the priority. I think that had they let Ukraine in that they would they been ethnically cleansed of anything Russian, which would include just being shot if yo didn't like it.Not in mass but just enough to terrorize them into compliance.
Quote:
(Of course, separatists sought annexation to Russia, but Putin hoping to use Donetsk and Luhansk to 'balkanize' Ukraine wanted no part of it. Unfortunately for Putin, having to 'support' the Donbas was costly, an increasing drain on the already weak Russian economy.)
Yep complete BS. Again you people just don't listen and you basically think like children. Can Putin do what he has done in Donbas in Kiev? So why doesn't Putin just put insurgents in Kiev and Lviv and just take over? It was easy in Donbass because uh well they are Russian! All he , the US , Britain etc can do is take advantage of the situation. Ukraine is the one that created it because , well ,when you work with Nazi groups aka idealistic young men they make progress killing 1 person while making 10 new enemies.People just don't seem to have a clue that even just a 1000 goons with no resistance from the government can terrorize a whole city, which they did. Ukraine did nothing about them.
I am sure you a re a good student of Roman history as well .
Such formidable servants are always necessary, but often fatal to the throne of despotism. By thus introducing the Prætorian guards as it were into the palace and the senate, the emperors taught them to perceive their own strength, and the weakness of the civil government; to view the vices of their masters with familiar contempt, and to lay aside that reverential awe, which distance only, and mystery, can preserve towards an imaginary power. In the luxurious idleness of an opulent city, their pride was nourished by the sense of their irresistible weight; nor was it possible to conceal from them, that the person of the sovereign, the authority of the senate, the public treasure, and the seat of empire, were all in their hands.
Edward Gibbon
it only takes a few well organized militant because they are picked from the populace leaving the rest:
But where was the Roman people to be found? Not surely among the mixed multitude of slaves and strangers that filled the streets of Rome; a servile populace, as devoid of spirit as destitute of property. The defenders of the state, selected from the flower of the Italian youth, 8 and trained in the exercise of arms and virtue, were the genuine representatives of the people, and the best entitled to elect the military chief of the republic. These assertions, however defective in reason, became unanswerable when the fierce Prætorians increased their weight, by throwing, like the barbarian conqueror of Rome, their swords into the scale. 9
Only takes a few if they are well organized. That is pretty much what happened to Ukraine. They became too dependent on their most ideological and militant factions that also formed based on a hatred of Russia. You cannot have a country that has an ideology that is hostile to a huge minority in you country and expect it to function.
Quote:
The "culture" of separatist Donbas now appears largely to be a mess, a militarized police state both oppressive and impoverished. No wonder many Ukrainians having had 8 years to observe this want nothing to do Russia, with that having little to do with NATO. The people do have eyes and ears.
yeah a war is a mess. When people kill you you can die, become a slave, run , fight , but creature comforts are hard to come by.
Some posters here conveniently ignore WHY Russia attacked Ukraine. Ukrainian forces have been shelling Donbas since 2014, killing innocent civilians. Russia finally decided to do something about it. It wasn't that Russia just decided to attack without any reasons. And Ukraine was being maneuvered into NATO's orbit, with manufactured hostilities to Russia, whom the West wanted to weaken even before Russia's invasion.
Both sides have fired at each other. Civilians on both sides have been killed. But there has been a steady downward trend in the violence as I posted a few pages back, which also pointed out casualties from shelling in government held areas as well as Russian held. Casualties on both sides were pretty small in 2021 and were mostly combatants.
Looks like that new armament coming into Ukraine is altering the battle field. Need further verifications in the next few days but pay attention to that Izyum salient. Sounds like the beginning of what happened in Kyiv and Kharkiv.
Sounds pretty optimistic by the Ukrainians.
Another official said they wouldn't have mass numbers of better weapons and troops trained on them until June.
... [text on the Huron and Romans and US trailer parks snipped] ...
The cities and the country side of Ukraine were always alienated from each other. Poles, Russians , Jews in the cities and Ukrainians in the country. States are not made from peasant and poets, and intellectual in a coffee shop late in the game. You are also quite bad on Ukrainian history, not to mention human nature. ... That is what Ukrainian nobility thought of their Ukrainian peasants. they eschewed their own culture. Ethnic Ukrainians were the most enthusiastic to embrace Polish and Russian culture in their upper classes. So the ethnicity argument that you make pretty much shows you know nothing about the history of Ukraine.
You are nonsensical. Of course it aliened because Ukrainian nationalists in the West hate everything Russian, Young goons always think killing people is a great way to solve a problem. The industrialized East is heavily Russian because the entire Soviet apparatus was from the proletariat. Ukraine is peasant. After Stalin starved the Kulacs he didn't even let any Ukrainians in the factories because all revolutionaries know to close the door they came in on. He is not going to let them bark their ideology on a soap box. so again Donbas is Russian .
if you do not want to not fight a war with Russians then its not a good idea to start killing them and attack their culture. So yes its now very polarized. Have you noticed the US is also polarizing for the same reason?
Well all I saw was Ukraine drawing first blood;. Again I just don't know what reality you live in if you think sending in an army and killing civilians is going to convince them that employment is the priority. I think that had they let Ukraine in that they would they been ethnically cleansed of anything Russian, which would include just being shot if yo didn't like it.Not in mass but just enough to terrorize them into compliance.
Yep complete BS. Again you people just don't listen and you basically think like children. Can Putin do what he has done in Donbas in Kiev? So why doesn't Putin just put insurgents in Kiev and Lviv and just take over? It was easy in Donbass because uh wellthey are Russian!
Ukraine is the one that created it because , well ,when you work with Nazi groups aka idealistic young men they make progress killing 1 person while making 10 new enemies.People just don't seem to have a clue that even just a 1000 goons with no resistance from the government can terrorize a whole city, which they did. Ukraine did nothing about them.
it only takes a few well organized militant because they are picked from the populace leaving the rest:
Only takes a few if they are well organized. That is pretty much what happened to Ukraine. They became too dependent on their most ideological and militant factions that also formed based on a hatred of Russia. You cannot have a country that has an ideology that is hostile to a huge minority in you country and expect it to function.
yeah a war is a mess. When people kill you you can die, become a slave, run , fight , but creature comforts are hard to come by.
Your text that I underlined: Factually incorrect either absolutely or within contemporary time periods. Dates and details along with cites provided earlier in the thread.
Your text that I bolded: Not any more, in 2022 ... nothing like an invasion to bring about both cultural and political unity. This statement worth pulling out: "if you do not want to not fight a war with Russians then its not a good idea to start killing them and attack their culture. So yes its now very polarized. "
You appear to be saying a country can invade another because 'it's feeling get hurt about what's being said about it' which is preposterous. No one was killing Russians - either civilians or ethnic Russians - in the Donbas, other than a very small number who were killed by apparently non-civilian targeted shelling the continuing legacy of the Russian proxy occupation.
More ... multiple parties, with differing goals: (1) Rabid anti-Russian rhetoric (pre-2014, the small Patriots of Ukraine ... Right Sector) ... (2) central government initiatives to unify western and Eastern Ukraine that arguably did have somewhat different experiences ... (3) post 2014 political movements, where extremism still did not have popular support. The country now is under a 'big tent' with the invasion in 2022.
As for the "goon argument" see the comments on Mariupol. The controlling factor (and here I don't dispute your larger point) was not Azov but Akhmetov, or money over guns.
Grand arguments are themselves a 'reality' - they can help start invasions - and yours does reflect a Russian point of view. For the latter I give you credit. The problem comes as some number of Ukrainians appear to disagree. Putin for all his immersion in Russian history apparently counseled by Russian imperialists did not expect it. Words on paper do not always correlate to facts on the ground.
You did not answer, but to return to your earlier statement (post #13171) ... "there ain't no going back to Russian and Ukrainians living together in a single state." I pointed out many ethnic-Russians live outside the Donbas region, including the southeast land bridge that Russia wants to the Crimea.
Again asking: "What then to happen to the ethnic Ukrainians living in those areas? Russia gave up on 'balkanization' now outright seizing territory." Any ideas?
As the Russian-Ukraine war has entered day 68, the Russianisation of Melitopol is underway. The Red Soviet Victory flag has been hoisted at many places, this exercise has been carried out in all captured territory
Looks like Russia is thinking that static lines will let them build up forces while attrition weakens Ukrainian forces.
Its idiotic. Ukraine has longer ranged artillery then Russia that is distributed and has the tech to coordinate their fire. They're going to eat the Russian artillery alive, and then pound Russian forces non stop. The only other option is...Russian cant figure out how to handle the battlefield developments. They cannot survive a static line. The technology used on the Ukraine side will just destroy them.
Mariupol did not have a pro-Maidan instead many thousands hit the street opposed to separatism to in essence keep their jobs: in the end, language is not everything. Rinat Akhmetov controlled the strings. Azov and others were hired guns to push remaining armed separatists out, although Azov was not paid directly by Akhmetov (to my knowledge) but instead by Kolomoisky and others who were not 'good friends' with Akhmetov, so there must be some stories there. Still some number of Azov were literally from the Donbas, forced from homes by separatism so certainly they were 'motivated' by far more than a paycheck.
Akmetov's larger interest was in maintaining the peace and in not being hit by Western sanctions negatively impacting the incoming cash flow. What's to object to that really? The vast majority of Mariupol did not, even though they spoke Russian. Once the separatists departed, life went back to a seemingly happy normal. Until February 2022.
The referendums, the specific language used on them, the people's understanding, how they were conducted, who able to participate, a whole separate story ... to say they represented the will of the people is more than debatable. Methinks best to conduct another pre-invasion so-called referendum complete with photos and the death count.
Your: "War is peace, freedom is slavery." Some who pay the price may think differently.
With other words, they were not against the "separatism,' ( since they never were part of "Maidan,") but the possible war that was about to follow.
Had Russia STEP IN right there, back then, and assured jobs and support overall, the picture would have been much clearer - that the South-East didn't want anything to do with the new Nationalist puppet government in Kiev.
Quote:
An interesting aside:
Russia says it wants to reopen industry in Mariupol. That coke plant Russia shelled the other day in government-controlled Donetsk - killing 12 civilians at a bus stop - was owned and operated by Akhmetov. Wonder if that's a coincidence? Doubt coke is a war material, not in the same category as oil depots.
I have no idea.
There were too many dirty games behind the closed doors between the Russian and Ukrainian oligarchy, ( even between Poroshenko and Putin himself, as those released tapes revealed.)
As I've said before - Putin and Co are not "Russian nationalists" first and utmost, but the corporatists.
There was reason you see, why they were hoping to "make deal" with Ukrainian wheelers and dealers in Kiev and other big cities, without going into real war.
Too bad their Ukrainian "business partners" switched side, because the West offered them bigger incentives.
Wonder if these non-peasant cultural Russified Ukrainians from outside the Donbas are flocking to fight with the Russians for this grand imperial Russia? Heard something about how Russia might try to recruit prisoners. Possible attempts to "conscript" Ukrainians from occupied territory who then become the cannon-fodder, caught between Ukrainian lines and Russians at their back. This follows the Nazi ww2 playbook, of course.
Still, no sign though of a Russian-supporting Ukrainian legion comparable to the Ukrainians and the Don Cossacks who fought with the Nazis against Russia during ww2. For sure, there may be some draft evaders like what's been happening in Russia and the separatist zones, for war is brutal. Different issue, though.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
