7 The Counteroffensive

Storm Shelter
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Luhansk was captured, slow and steady. It was an organized withdrawal on Ukraine’s part and there were no mass surrenders or captures of UAF forces or materiel. It is a Russian political victory either way and Putin has told his troops to rest and recover so it seems like a good time to start a new thread with some updates.

Russian Armed Forces

There is still fighting along multiple fronts and it is not clear if RAF are exhausted or not. Speculation is that the main Russian forces will rest for a bit. Meanwhile, they are still attempting to recapture lost ground around Kharkiv and Kherson, though don’t look very successful so far.

HIMARS

Despite propaganda about “only 4 systems” and “no big deal,” the presence of upgraded MLRS on the battlefield has been felt by Russia. Ukraine already has 8 US systems, with 4 more on the way, and several equivalent UK/ German/ French systems. According to Girkin/Strelkov:

“Over the past 5-7 days, more than 10 large warehouses of artillery and other ammunition, several oil depots, about a dozen command posts, and about the same number of personnel locations in our near and deep rear were hit.”

Daily videos of hours-long ammo cookoffs are being posted deep behind Russian lines. They tapped Belarus for additional ammo last week. It’s safe to say Russian logistics are hurting right now.

Snake Island

A week of bombardment has gotten Russia to retreat from and concede Snake Island. Russia announced their withdrawal was a sign of goodwill, but they abandoned a position with AA and EW capabilities. Snake Island gave them greater control of the northwest Black Sea and coast of Odesa. A large Ukraine flag now flies over the island.

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Kherson

About a month ago, the first Ukrainian counteroffensive started. A small recon tactical group made quick gains in the north oblast, but their beachhead was quickly stifled. It has been slow going since, BUT

For the last week or two, operations in the oblast have been under a strict media blackout, with much more ground taken by Ukraine. Reports are that they’re closing on the city. Yesterday the Deputy Minister announced:

“Ukraine is asking citizens to leave the Russian-controlled territories in the south of the country because of plans to launch a counteroffensive.”

They elaborated that even if your only option to exit the city is to temporarily go to Russia and accept a Russian passport, do it. Staying in the city will be lethal.

While it is still early to say anything definitively, current OSINT strongly points to the Kherson counteroffensive culminating in a battle for the city very soon. Russian forces in this area are reportedly undermanned.

Oleksandrivka

Just a rumor at this point, but word is that Ukraine has recaptured a small town in Donetsk that has been occupied since 2014. If true this would be the first case of Russia losing territory it had before their February invasion!!!

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More and more, it’s looking like the Kherson oblast will be the site of the next big standoff in the Russia-Ukraine War.

Ukraine has continued to retake cities in the north oblast as they position closer to Kherson city, and they’ve made numerous warnings to civilians in the area. Ukraine has hammered Russia’s forward logistics and the main eastern bridge leaving town, disabling it from heavy equipment. Other bridges remain, and once again we hear talks of logistical encirclement (if not full encirclement) - only this time it is the Ukrainian Armed Forces who are on the offensive.

Russia has had weakened positions in the south, but they’re supposedly amassing forces toward the Kherson front. Continuing their strategy of “fighting to the last separatist” there are mostly DPR troops and mercenaries.

I think it’s obvious Ukraine doesn’t want to utilize the Russian strategy of razing the town with artillery until there’s nothing left worth saving. Rather, it appears they are giving the Russian occupiers every opportunity to voluntarily withdraw by straining their logistics. This would be closer to a siege than an attack.

Of course, it takes two to tango, so everything depends on Russia’s response, and the transfer of units indicates heavy fighting may be in the city’s future. We should know more in a week or two.

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Kherson will wind up reduced to rubble as the Russians will grind away shelling the city with tens of thousands of artillery shells as well as a bevy of missiles and other forms of aerial bombing. Ukraine cannot win. Letting the Ukrainians commit suicide is morally reprehensible. Thee would be no war were it not for European elites and the idiot Biden protracting the conflict. The average European has as little interest in Ukraine’s sovereignty as the average American.

The Ukrainian conflict can only last until cold weather rolls into Western Europe. The European people will become restive and demand closure of hostilities in favor of warm hands and feet. Watch how fast the new Russian pipeline will be approved during this coming winter. Watch NATO solidarity break apart as European people suffer and their nation’s economies contract.

Prediction: Putin knows he holds all the cards, and he will be resistant to any concessions. Already, the Russian government is putting off our State Department overtures for conferencing. The map of Europe will again change as it has repeatedly done over the centuries… Ukraine will be stripped of military power and Nazism deweaponized.

And, the counter offensive will be slowly and methodically crushed.

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Are you saying the Russians will shell a city they occupy?

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Kherson is an oblast (state) as well as a city.

What is left of the Ukrainian army cannot engage the Russians in the open. They’re left with but a single strategy, hiding within civilian population centers, effectively using civilians as human shields. Out in the open, they are quickly exposed by spy satellites. With each passing day, the Russian kill between 300 and 1,000 Ukrainians which hardly affects us as immorally we pay them to die fighting Russians.

The sane strategy for the West would be to sue for peace, especially in light of the fact that in two months a pronounced weather change takes place in Europe increasing fuel demand. This war never should have happened, and it wouldn’t have happened had Trump not been swindled out of an election victory. Trump was especially skilled in foreign affairs and had a much better dialogue with Putin.

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Bikki, that bunch of hot air was a weak dodge.

You made a statement and I made a follow-up question.

You said Russia will shell Kherson CITY with thousands of artillery shells.

As they are the current occupiers of Kherson CITY, I asked you if you were saying that Russia would shell a city that they occupy?

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Your point is actually quite correct 305. I was dealing in generalities rather than specifics with regard to the venue in and around Kherson city itself. The Russian strategy has been to empty cities of civilians before subjecting them to artillery barrages. They’ve also tried to preserve infrastructure, especially bridges and rail road lines, which they interrupt at specific points to preclude weapons transport.

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The Russian strategy has been to shell cities they don’t occupy whether or not civilians are present.

Your statement about the Russians shelling Kherson CITY displays either:

  1. A severe lack of awareness as to the state of the conflict
    or
  2. A belief that the Russian Armed Forces will lose the city to the non-existent Ukrainian Army

Either way you have put your foot in your mouth.

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Lmfao

Fucking delusional

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With EVERY post he makes

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Somehow Biden has to figure a way to extricate America from Ukraine, a misadventure and stewardship worse than his calamitous withdrawal from Afghanistan. Sanctions have blown up in the face of NATO, and the future may well see the fracturing of the NATO alliance.

The war was won in Ukraine months ago. Though the Ukrainian army was the second strongest in Europe, it could not hold up against the vastly superior Russian Army whose technological weapons and aerial superiority spelled doom to Ukraine from the very beginning.

Naturally neither our State Department nor our fool of a president had the instincts to interpret the certainty of failure, and we, the most indebted nation in world history, spent more than all NATO nations combined foisting the incredible belief that Ukraine could slay the Russian dragon. We got to view government incompetence of the highest magnitude. Now, get to see how the White House moron can put ketchup back in the bottle. What a terrible debacle.

There is no counteroffensive. Reports of same are wishful thinking, propaganda that is no longer working. The Russians are taking care of business securing the lower Dnieper River preparing for onslaught westward to Nicolaev and Odessa as well as northward toward Zaporozhye and Dnepropetrovsk. Troops are accumulating too for the taking of Kharkov, Ukraine’s second largest city. Russia’s SMO is now on cruise control, and Putin, in contrast to NATO, is no hurry to rush to settlement. Putin holds all the cards.

Meanwhile, things are heating up in the Far East as Inside Stock Trader Pelosi has created a situation which has risen tension with China to critical levels. Someone with brains needs to cool down this budding conflict before it matures into warfare. Once the U.S. had the hedgemonic ability to back down despotism around the globe and established military bases in numerous global venues. Times have changed. The power of China has grown substantially, and China, not Russia, is both our political and economic adversary. Diplomacy needs to rule the day in this matter. Otherwise, the future for America under this wholly incompetent administration will truly go from bad to worse. Indeed swindling the competent and great President Trump out of re-election has engendered consequences. Get ready for depression times.

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America can gladly keep up support for another 10 years. This war is so much more meaningful and worthy than Afghanistan.

Russia’s pain is increasing every week and EU countries have to merely tighten their belts. The sanctions are slow-acting but intractable, and they are disproportionately affecting Russia.

NATO meanwhile is growing stronger than ever before, and Russia has grossly miscalculated by forcing the alliance onto their borders.

Yet Russia is still fighting for some reason.

In direct contrast to your bluster, the US predicted a fairly fast fall of Kyiv and offered to airlift Zelensky out of the country.

I hate to sound like Warden, but literally every sentence out of your mouth is a lie.

Ukraine has already liberated 53 villages in the south. Granted, these small villages aren’t very consequential, and the UAF’s ability to liberate Kherson is an open question.

China, much like bikki228, is all fearmongering bluster. I predict absolutely nothing will happen with this trip.

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For anyone casually observing various poster’s opinions on this war, it’s easy to see how partisan bikki is compared to others. For example, he’s the only one speaking in absolutes:

“X is the greatest political leader alive.”
“X has already won. Y has no army.”
“X holds all the cards.”
Etc.

This is the language of propaganda.

You’ll notice that, while I’m more rosy on Ukraine’s chances than our resident senior citizen, I don’t make proclamations like “Ukraine has or will win” or “Russia has no chance.”

Rather, I try to see things in the gray area in between. For example, it’s possible this war ends somewhat favorably for both parties (considering), and it’s possible it ends with both parties in a very poor position. This isn’t football, it’s not about cheering a champion, it’s real life geopolitics.

I also attempt to rely on credible sources over political bluster. Open Intel that is well researched wins out over “Putin holds all the cards.”

For anyone who wants a window into the types of sources I look at, or just wants to dig deeper into an unpublicized Ukraine-Russia battle, check out this well-informed analysis of Russians getting their asses kicked.

Keep in mind, this is one battle with over 2 months of data, and Ukraine has gotten their ass handed to them plenty already. This isn’t false cheerleading and it isn’t propaganda, it’s an attempt to decipher the situation on the ground.

And it clearly shows that bikki’s assertion that Ukraine no longer has an army is laughable, as are the rest of his opinions on this conflict.

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That is everything he types tho. He’s all full of shit all the time.

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Yes, I take Putin side in this conflict. Destroying Nazism is a noble cause. The Donbas is Russian not Ukrainian. Putin is liberating the Donbus and will allow the people to choose between independence or annexation into Russia. Crimea has always been Russian. Today, it is the independent Republic of Crimea.

At the present time, there is considerable stress in Kiev as well as in Dnepropetrovsk as oligarchs who own Ukraine lock stock and barrell vie for supremacy. Zelensky may well be supplanted by rivals trying to preserve their massive holdings which have been decimated as the Russians control Donbas. Zelensky has ordered Ukrainians out of Donbas. Soon, most likely, they’ll be converted to independent states. Their people won’t be forced to relinquish their native language. They’ll be free to self-govern.

I am the only one in this room who has visited the conflicted areas having traveled from Odessa around the entire Black Sea to Sochi. I have been in the Donbas several times in Donetsk, never in Luhansk. I’ve spent considerable time in Kiev and spent a few days in Kharkov at the Karazin Univrsity. In all my travels, I encountered no one, not one, speaking Ukrainian so pervasive is the Russian language as the vernacular. Even the Ukrainians conversed in Russian.

Most of you have been conditioned to regard Russia as an enemy. Times change. Indeed, there was a Cold War which mellowed out as communism failed time and again and discontent could no longer be suppressed. In WW2, most of the fighting was done in Russia which suffered more fatalities than all other nations, even more than Germany. Our foreign policy today should be devoted to improving relations with Russia as part of the European community not engendering proxy wars in Chechnya, Georgia, or in Ukraine. What we are now doing is forcing Russia into the Chinese orbit of influence.

Macroeconomically, our policy is rank stupidity. The coalition of BRIC nations threaten to destroy the status of the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency. Dollars will be less desirable as trade will be conducted in other currencies. Bonds issued for printing of dollars by necessity bear higher yield in order to attract buyers. The full weight of trillions of dollars of debt will be visited on America and debt service will become unfeasible forcing elimination of many parts of our governments and services to citizens. Add to this, the inexorable rise in personal taxation as promised by Biden. America may well go bankrupt.

Trump was too smart to have allowed this calamity. His foreign policy was the best in generations. Biden, according to Democrats, has never in his forty years in government been right on foreign policy. The withdrawal from Afghanistan was a disaster, and Ukraine is even worse.

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Axis Salley with his trash

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Conditioned by their invasion of a sovereign country? Sure. That’s nobody’s fault but Putin’s.

Biden was too smart to appease Putin, and now Russia is locked in a war they wish they weren’t in.

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Why don’t you put a period or colon after the numbers in these posts?

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Lost little commie cunt says nothing to refute any of it though…Shocker.

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Sovereignty is a poor argument. What violation of sovereignty is greater than our invasion of Iraq. Same goes for Libya. The world owes Vlad a thanks for getting rid of Nazis.