Editor's Note: The Kyiv Independent is not disclosing soldiers' full names since they disclosed information without authorization from their command. DONETSK OBLAST—As public attention shifted to Moscow's renewed offensive in...
"With all eyes on Kharkiv, Russian troops take one Donbas village after another"
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"DONETSK OBLAST—As public attention shifted to Moscow's renewed offensive in Kharkiv Oblast, Russian forces steadily advance in the country's easternmost Donbas region, which remains Moscow's primary target. Moving west from the ruins of the two occupied Donetsk Oblast cities – Bakhmut and Avdiivka – Russian troops have been able to overrun a dozen small villages and come close to Chasiv Yar and a strategic highway south of the town. Ivanivske, located on a highway between Bakhmut and Chasiv Yar, is among the latest villages facing a seemingly imminent capture. With the attack on Ivanivske, Russia is trying to reach an operational encirclement of Chasiv Yar, a heavily contested town located on strategic high ground. According to soldiers and commanders on the ground, Russian forces entered Ivanivske in February and took control of the main roads by April. To this day, fierce house-to-house fighting rages on for the last few blocks of Ivanivske, the soldiers told the Kyiv Independent. Ukrainian soldiers are methodically pushed out of the village, one destroyed house after the other. Despite the Russian progress, the Ukrainian military claims that Russia "doesn't have any success" despite intensified efforts in the area."
Russian President Vladimir Putin didn’t invade Ukraine in 2022 because he feared NATO. He invaded because he believed that NATO was weak, that his efforts to regain control of Ukraine by other means had failed, and that insta...
Line of reason leads to conclusion that NATO needs to play to win rather than maintaining extended stalemate.
Pretty good analysis, although I think there are alternatives to the conclusion that the only way out is a defeat of Russian forces. Putin is looking for a way out of this conflict as indicated by his peace proposal, even though it was an outrageous proposal that gave Russia more territory as a reward for a failed military campaign.
Peter Zeihan has some good analysis too on the historical underpinnings of the current situation. Putin come from a group of KGB insiders who took over the government after the death of Brezhnev. Andropov, Chernenko and then Gorbachev were all from the same pool of the inner circle of Soviet Central Committee members who were aligned with the KGB insiders. Putin was just a lower level insider at the KGB, but was part of this power structure and used his position to rise up into power following Chernomyrdin's premiership in the post-Soviet period. Chernomyrdin and Yeltsin formed a partnership between the old KGB/Central Committee insiders, including Putin, and the oligarchs who were given government loans to buy up privatized Soviet industries in exchange for a pledge of loyalty to the government.
The early post-Soviet period was catastrophic for Russia. Putin and his inner circle knew only Soviet era foreign relations and saw the loss of the Soviet satellites as a disaster for Russia's security. Russia's border with the West is largely flat and difficult to defend. Putin has long believed that it would be necessary to regain control over the former Soviet satellites in order to regain the geographical advantages (mountains, rivers, access to the Baltic and Black sea) of the former Soviet-satellites. Russia was successful in doing this politically in Belarus and Kazakhstan where Putin's support for autocrats yielded strong loyalty to Putin. In Georgia and Chechnya, Putin had to go to war to keep these former satellites in line. And this was the beginning of the chicken and the egg issue of NATO. Georgia, seeing Putin's brutal demolition of Grozny in the second Chechen War, feared that they were next and sought out NATO membership. Putin has been able to maneuver politically in Georgia and has kept a Putin friendly government in place.
In Ukraine, Putin understood that most of the central and western portion of the country wanted nothing to do with Russia and would not allow Putin to maintain control over the country by installing a loyal autocrat. The main reason Putin made his move in 2021 was that Russia following the catastrophic collapse of the Soviet Union has been on a demographic decline with its birth rate declining to about 1.5 after a brief recovery from the post-Soviet collapse. Long story short, everyone in Russia is old and the number of military aged men has been declining for years. 2021 was the point when Russia had to invade because in 5-10 years it simply would not have enough military aged men to fight a war while still being able to defend the rest of the country. Of course, Putin's gambit was that Ukraine would collapse quickly and NATO would splinter. But Putin pivoted into a long term conflict because this is going to be the last time when Russia has enough military aged men to fight this kind of war.
The government-funded research project’s mysterious removal of Azov’s profile was followed by a State Department decision to allow the controversial right-wing unit to receive U.S. military aid. Editor’s note: the following a...
