So your initial story is that Russians had the Ukrainian military right where they wanted them, attacking little weak pockets where they would be surrounded and destroyed. Now your pathetic story is that the Russians are doing what? Bullfighting behind a red cape? It's called a retreat, which often happens when a military is getting dominated and decimated. The Russian army is too weak to fight. They do have enough strength to steal furniture and cars on their way out, but that's about it. Russia's crack troops are no better than inner city looters on a Saturday night (and certainly no tougher). There is no amount of spin that can take the stink off this humiliating defeat for you. Your military has been destroyed as a fighting force and reduced to looting to salvage what little self-respect they can from the situation. You claim that Ukraine's military is savage versus air. What does that say about the so-called military who is terrified of "air" and running for their lives from it. Near Luhansk, occupiers use hundreds of civilian cars to take their loot along General Staff
Russia had been drawing down its contingent in Isyum for weeks. At the time of the counter-offensive less than 2,000 troops were garrisoned there. When it learned that NATO was prepared to advance with as many as 15,000 troops, it withdrew across the Ostil River. When NATO swept in, as far as it could go, without resistance ... it then proceeded to die in large numbers. Takeaway: Russians aren’t keen to die for PR objectives.
I like the subtle shift in narratives. It follows the new line from Moscow neatly. Instead of “Don’t believe your eyes. Ukraine isn’t winning. Russia is just fighting in a different direction, causing terrible attrition of Ukrainian troops and setting up Ukraine for a massive counteroffensive at a time and place of our choosing,” we now have “Well, Russia might be losing, but they are losing to NATO, not Ukraine. Ukraine could never pull this off with Western weapons and supply alone. Actual NATO troops are secretly fighting this war.” And I don’t know, maybe that feels face-saving to you. Bottom line is, at least for whatever reason you do accept that you’re losing now. And I would call that progress. The warning bears repeating, though. If you don’t want to find yourself entirely and actually at war with “the most dangerous alliance on the planet,” then accept your loss with as good grace as you can muster and don’t dream of using your nuclear option to reverse the situation on the battlefield. President Biden seems willing to a fault to do almost anything to avoid a shooting war with Russia, but he won’t be able to stop the momentum for war if you use nukes.
Ground rules: repositioning is what Ukraine does it’s being repositioned by precision military and missile strikes, whereas retreating is what Russia does when it’s re-positioning.
We call that rationalization of a defeat. Does repositioning involve abandoning functional military equipment on a massive scale? Just asking. Russian troops "failed to organize coherent retreat," abandoned tanks: ISW Russians leave behind huge arsenals of ammunition while retreating—Photo Spoils Of War: Ukrainian Fighters Show Off Captured Russian Hardware As an example this operational self-propelled howitzer.
Someone in the Kremlin didn’t think it was worth holding off three NATO brigades with a garrison ... even if it did give NATO a PR victory. Now, I don’t agree with analysts that it was a trap by Russia. But that was the eventual effect.
From the decidedly anti-Russian Reuters ... "There's an ongoing debate about the nature of the Russian drawdown, however it's likely that in strict military terms, this was a withdrawal, ordered and sanctioned by the general staff, rather than an outright collapse." ... "Obviously, it looks really dramatic. It's a vast area of land. But we have to factor in the Russians have made some good decisions in terms of shortening their lines and making them more defensible, and sacrificing territory in order to do so," the official said, adding he did not expect Russia to immediately seek to regain lost territory.” Add: I predict that Russia will eventually retake the territory. And the some. But I don’t expect that will detract from the central focus which is bring the remainder of the Donbas under control.
Little understood, but needs to be assimilated ... Russia has deployed as few as 60,000 to 80,000 troops to Ukraine or as little as 5% of its available forces. Will they introduce more at any point ? That may be up to NATO ...
“NATO brigades.” Blah, blah, blah. I say it here and it comes out there. You are losing to Ukraine. To Ukraine.
(shrugs) Introduce as many as you like. Mobilize for war and call it one. Empty out the prisons, middle schools, and nursing homes. Cause the loss of an entire generation of young men. Touch off a second civil war. Let the Chinese smell blood in the water and look north instead of east. None of that has been, is, or will be up to NATO.
Not a credible analogy at all. It was our Afghani allies that lost the equipment not American troops. Most of the equipment that we couldn't take when we withdrew we intentionally destroyed. We didn't flee leaving massive amounts of serviceable equipment for the Taliban.
