A Few thoughts On Ukraine

 Today, September 16, 2024, is day 936 of Rusia’s genocidal war against Ukraine. There may not be much on TV about it, other than Biden’s continued refusal to allow Ukraine to use U.S. made MGM-140 tactical ballistic missiles to strike targets deep into Russia, even though Starmer would approve it. Free world leaders, except of course Schroeder, are all calling for approval. The war is still going on, Ukrainians are still being killed and Ukraine destroyed.

However, Jake Sullivan, Russia’s greatest American asset besides Trump, is engaged in Escalation Management aka appeasement. From the beginning in February 2022, the White House has been terrified of crossing Putin’s red lines. Putin has successfully cowed America by threatening to use tactical nuclear weapons. It's bullshit.  If Russia used battlefield tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine, Russian forces would suffer an immediate overwhelming NATO conventional response that would wipe out the entire Russian military. Putin is not even sabre rattling; he is rattling the empty scabbard.

America has NOT been stingy in supplying Ukraine with intelligence, and highly accurate U.S. intelligence about Russian troop movements.

The war is fought two ways, on the ground along a 1200 km front, between soldiers of the AFU and the Orcs, and by terror attacks against civilian targets in Ukrainian cities using bombs, rockets, missiles, drones, and tube artillery.

The terror war targets schools, hospitals, apartment blocks and infrastructure. Ukrainian First Deputy Prosecutor General Oleksiy Khomenko stated that Russian forces launched over 1,000 strikes on 200 energy infrastructure facilities since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in February 2022. Ukraine faces a winter with power blackouts from 4 to 12 hours per day. Generators are needed to keep the hospitals going.

Putin’s military has rained down every kind of ballistic missile, drone, and cruise missile in their arsenal on targets in Ukraine including civilian targets in population centers such as Kyiv, Odessa, Kharkiv, Kherson, and Lviv, not to mention all the smaller towns and villages that haven wiped by the Russian military during this war.  Russia has fired so many missiles at Ukraine, they have had to import missiles from North Korea and Iran. 

The Korean missiles are dangerously highly maneuverable but seem to be a high percentage of duds. The ballistic missiles recently sent by Iran via the Caspian sea, are a different matter, and have led to the call of deep strikes into Russia. Iran has previously supplied smaller Fateh-110 and Zolfaghar short range missiles to Russia as well as large stocks of its Shahed Kamikaze drones. 

Ukraine has been supplied with Patriot missiles and shoots down a very high percentage of incoming drones and missile, protecting Kyiv and to an extent other major centres but the downed missiles and drones cause damage where they fall and always some get through. Russia has launched so many massed drone attacks that the supply of Patriot missiles is running low.

Ukraine has developed long range kamikaze drones of its own, striking military targets deep into Russia, oil refineries, tank factories, airports and lately civilian targets in Moscow itself. Russia cannot protect itself, as it is so large with so many good targets. With no sense of irony, Putin has declared these terrorist attacks and threatened all sorts of terrible things in response.

The ground war resembles WWI, well entrenched static lines, using artillery and massed attacks by the Russians who lose about 1200 men per day and large amounts of equipment. The difference is the extensive use of drones, both to target artillery fire and as artillery.

In early August the AFU in a surprise move crossed the border into Kursk Oblast and successfully captured and held a substantial amount of territory. This is hugely embarrassing to Putin who has tried to shrug it off and banned any news reporting other than approved by the Kremlin. Russia has committed about 60,000 troops, many of them conscripts, to drive them out so far unsuccessfully. Ukraine has since penetrated the border in a couple more locations surrounding some 1000 conscripts to be useful as trades for Ukrainian POWs.  

The hope was to draw Russian troops from the Donbas front where Ukraine is struggling against constant Russian attacks. To an extent this has worked, but Russian attacks on Pokrovsk, and Vuhledar continue to make slow progress at the cost of tens of thousands of Russians. Russia no longer tries to capture a community. They simply destroy it and the AFU retreat to the next defensive position. Bakhmut in 2023, Avdiivka by /February 2024, and now Pokrovsk.

Avdiivka

Avdiivka

Russia is on a war economy, oil exports are keeping it afloat, China and Kazakhstan are making end runs around sanctions supplying banned inputs such as chips and other electronic parts. There appears to be no end in sight.