Absolutely incredible. I scored metal sheet takes advantage of the self-destruct feature at 900 yards or meters. And this then showers front line trench units with sprays of metal shrapnel. Absolutely a vicious weapon that is making its rounds on the Ukrainian battlefield.
Imagine losing your mind over an improvised weapon. Absolute State of Nazi Shilling, meanwhile the lol is expanding as the world learns the F16s ain't a wunderwaffe and that the Purge Continues, something I've still to hear your nazi bootlick talk about as the replacement of the General in charge of Special Forces is now 4 days old news:
Zelensky Rebuke of Top General Signals Rift in Ukrainian Leadership
The presidential office said Gen. Valery Zaluzhny’s declaration that the war is at a stalemate was helpful to the Russians.
Although Russia was forced into a series of humiliating retreats last year, it has repelled Ukraine’s counteroffensive and built vast minefields that have slowed its advances. Twenty months on since the start of the war, Russia still occupies about one fifth of Ukraine’s territory.
Putin’s army is also launching waves of attacks to try to capture Avdiivka in the Donetsk region. On Saturday, about 20 Ukrainian soldiers were said to have been killed when a Russian Iskander ballistic missile hit an award ceremony near the front line in the Zaporizhzhia region.
“We are running out of people and the quality of our reinforcements is lower every time,” said Berlym, a former police officer who rose rapidly through the ranks after joining the military at the start of the invasion. “The average age of a soldier in my battalion is 45.” He paused to give orders on a field communications device.
Western weapons secured after months of pleading came too late to make a difference in the war, Berlym said. “If we had received American and German tanks last autumn, then the breakthrough to Crimea would have been successful. But by the time we got them they had laid mines everywhere and the tanks couldn’t play the role they were supposed to.”
Mykhailo Lysenko, a chief of staff in the battalion, nodded. “A tank breakthrough on our part is now something from the realm of science fiction,” he said.
Both men said that they had attended Nato training sessions before the counteroffensive but that almost none of the tactics they learnt were effective against massed Russian forces.
Last week General Zaluzhny, the head of the Ukrainian army, said that the war had reached a stalemate that could only be broken by unspecified technological advances akin to the invention of gunpowder.
Zaluzhny admitted that American F-16 fighter jets that are due next spring would not be the game-changer as hoped because Russia had improved its air defences. “These systems were most relevant to us last year, but they only arrived this year,” he told The Economist.
His comments appeared to cause a rift with President Zelensky. Ihor Zhovkva, in the presidential office, issued a rare rebuke of Zaluzhny, telling national television that the military should refrain from commenting on the war. He also said that western officials had called him “in a panic” to ask if Ukraine had abandoned hope of driving back Putin’s forces. “Is this the effect we wanted to achieve?” he asked.
Zelensky denied that the war was at an unsurmountable deadlock. “Time has passed, and people are tired. But this is not a stalemate,” he said during a meeting with Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, in Kyiv. “We have no right to give up. Because what is the alternative?”
His remarks came after he abruptly dismissed General Khorenko, one of Zaluzhny’s deputies, in a move seen as a warning to Ukraine’s top general. However, the public’s unwavering support appears to be for the armed forces rather than the government. There have been protests across the country in recent months over what critics say is the misuse of funds during wartime.
Berlym and his comrades said that while they understood the frustrations of protesters, now was the time for solidarity. “When we come back from the war, we’ll sort it out. Everyone will answer for where they were during the war and what they did. Everyone.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/04/world/europe/zelensky-rebuke-general-zaluzhny.html
Ukraine’s counteroffensive was supposed to sustain political support for Kyiv by proving that it could reconquer lost territory. Now, supporters of Ukraine might need to make the inverse argument: Ukraine is not reconquering substantial territory, and aid is needed indefinitely to forestall a devastating defeat.
The window for a negotiated settlement favorable to Ukraine — if there ever was one — has surely closed, as Russia sees a technologically stalemated battlefield in which it has a long-term advantage in manpower. Ukraine now needs to outlast the Russians;
Has Ukraine's counteroffensive failed?
Military expert Sean Bell explains how five months into the spring offensive, things are looking pretty bleak for Ukraine. Conflicting Western domestic priorities, a protracted conflict between Israel and Hamas, and a growing war-weariness in the West also aren't helping.
Sunday 5 November 2023 18:32, UK
The UK's Ministry of Defence says Ukraine's advance in the south remains 'relatively static.'
https://news.sky.com/video/has-ukraines-counteroffensive-failed-13001382
Earlier lol:
Ukraine’s top general on the breakthrough he needs to beat Russia
Nov 1st 2023
General Valery Zaluzhny admits the war is at a stalemate
Five months into its counter-offensive, Ukraine has managed to advance by just 17 kilometres.
“Just like in the first world war we have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate,” he says. The general concludes that it would take a massive technological leap to break the deadlock. “There will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough.”!
The course of the counter-offensive has undermined Western hopes that Ukraine could use it to demonstrate that the war is unwinnable–and thus change Vladimir Putin’s calculations, forcing the Russian president to negotiate.
An army of Ukraine’s standard ought to have been able to move at a speed of 30km a day as it breached Russian defensive lines. “If you look at nato’s text books and at the maths which we did [in planning the counter-offensive], four months should have been enough time for us to have reached Crimea, to have fought in Crimea, to return from Crimea and to have gone back in and out again,”
Instead he watched his troops and equipment get stuck in minefields on the approaches to Bakhmut in the east, his Western-supplied equipment getting pummelled by Russian artillery and drones. The same story unfolded on the offensive’s main thrust, in the south, where newly formed and inexperienced brigades, despite being equipped with modern Western kit, immediately ran into trouble.
“First I thought there was something wrong with our commanders, so I changed some of them. Then I thought maybe our soldiers are not fit for purpose, so I moved soldiers in some brigades,” says General Zaluzhny. When those changes failed to make a difference, the commander told his staff to dig out a book he once saw as a student in a military academy in Ukraine. Its title was “Breaching Fortified Defence Lines”. It was published in 1941 by a Soviet major-general, P. S. Smirnov, who analysed the battles of the first world war.
Yet the delay in arms deliveries, though frustrating, is not the main cause of Ukraine’s predicament, according to General Zaluzhny. “It is important to understand that this war cannot be won with the weapons of the past generation and outdated methods,” he insists. “They will inevitably lead to delay and, as a consequence, defeat.” It is, instead, technology that will be decisive, he argues.
General Zaluzhny’s assessment is sobering: there is no sign that a revolutionary technological breakthrough, whether in drones or in electronic warfare, is around the corner. And technology has its limits. Even in the first world war, the arrival of tanks, in 1917, was not sufficient to break the deadlock on the battlefield: it took a suite of technologies, and more than a decade of tactical innovation, to produce the German blitzkrieg in May 1940.
The implication is that Ukraine is stuck in a long war—one in which he acknowledges Russia has the advantage. Nevertheless, he insists that Ukraine has no choice but to keep the initiative by remaining on the offensive, even if it only moves by a few metres a day.
General Zaluzhny is desperately trying to prevent the war from settling into the trenches. “The biggest risk of an attritional trench war is that it can drag on for years and wear down the Ukrainian state,” he says.
A collapse in Ukrainian morale and Western support is precisely what Mr Putin is counting on. There is no question in General Zaluzhny’s mind that a long war favours Russia, a country with a population three times and an economy ten times the size of Ukraine’s
For now, General Zaluzhny says, he has enough soldiers. But the longer the war goes on, the harder it will be to sustain. “We need to look for this solution, we need to find this gunpowder, quickly master it and use it for a speedy victory. Because sooner or later we are going to find that we simply don’t have enough people to fight.”
Nobody Believes in Our Victory Like I Do.’ Inside Volodymyr Zelensky’s Struggle to Keep Ukraine in the Fight
BY SIMON SHUSTER/KYIV
OCTOBER 30, 2023 8:00 AM EDT
Volodymyr Zelensky was running late.
The invitation to his speech at the National Archives in Washington had gone out to several hundred guests, including congressional leaders and top officials from the Biden Administration. Billed as the main event of his visit in late September, it would give him a chance to inspire U.S. support against Russia with the kind of oratory the world has come to expect from Ukraine’s wartime President. It did not go as planned.
That afternoon, Zelensky’s meetings at the White House and the Pentagon delayed him by more than an hour, and when he finally arrived to begin his speech at 6:41 p.m., he looked distant and agitated. He relied on his wife, First Lady Olena Zelenska, to carry his message of resilience on the stage beside him, while his own delivery felt stilted, as though he wanted to get it over with. At one point, while handing out medals after the speech, he urged the organizer to hurry things along.
The reason, he later said, was the exhaustion he felt that night, not only from the demands of leadership during the war but also the persistent need to convince his allies that, with their help, Ukraine can win. “Nobody believes in our victory like I do. Nobody,” Zelensky told TIME in an interview after his trip.
It is only getting harder. Twenty months into the war, about a fifth of Ukraine’s territory remains under Russian occupation. Tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed, and Zelensky can feel during his travels that global interest in the war has slackened. So has the level of international support. “The scariest thing is that part of the world got used to the war in Ukraine,” he says. “Exhaustion with the war rolls along like a wave. You see it in the United States, in Europe. And we see that as soon as they start to get a little tired, it becomes like a show to them: ‘I can’t watch this rerun for the 10th time.’”
Public support for aid to Ukraine has been in decline for months in the U.S., and Zelensky’s visit did nothing to revive it. Some 41% of Americans want Congress to provide more weapons to Kyiv, down from 65% in June, when Ukraine began a major counteroffensive, according to a Reuters survey taken shortly after Zelensky’s departure. That offensive has proceeded at an excruciating pace and with enormous losses, making it ever more difficult for Zelensky to convince partners that victory is around the corner. With the outbreak of war in Israel, even keeping the world’s attention on Ukraine has become a major challenge.
After his visit to Washington, TIME followed the President and his team back to Kyiv, hoping to understand how they would react to the signals they had received, especially the insistent calls for Zelensky to fight corruption inside his own government, and the fading enthusiasm for a war with no end in sight. On my first day in Kyiv, I asked one member of his circle how the President was feeling. The response came without a second’s hesitation: “Angry.”
The usual sparkle of his optimism, his sense of humor, his tendency to liven up a meeting in the war room with a bit of banter or a bawdy joke, none of that has survived into the second year of all-out war. “Now he walks in, gets the updates, gives the orders, and walks out,” says one longtime member of his team. Another tells me that, most of all, Zelensky feels betrayed by his Western allies. They have left him without the means to win the war, only the means to survive it.
But his convictions haven’t changed. Despite the recent setbacks on the battlefield, he does not intend to give up fighting or to sue for any kind of peace.
“He deludes himself,” one of his closest aides tells me in frustration. “We’re out of options. We’re not winning. But try telling him that.”
Assistance to Ukraine had become a sticking point in the debate over the federal budget. One of Zelensky’s foreign policy advisers urged him to call off the trip in September, warning that the atmosphere was too fraught. Congressional leaders declined to let Zelensky deliver a public address on Capitol Hill. His aides tried to arrange an in-person appearance for him on Fox News and an interview with Oprah Winfrey. Neither one came through.
Instead, on the morning of Sept. 21, Zelensky met in private with then House Speaker Kevin McCarthy before making his way to the Old Senate Chamber, where lawmakers grilled him behind closed doors. Most of Zelensky’s usual critics stayed silent in the session; Senator Ted Cruz strolled in more than 20 minutes late. The Democrats, for their part, wanted to understand where the war was headed, and how badly Ukraine needed U.S. support. “They asked me straight up: If we don’t give you the aid, what happens?” Zelensky recalls. “What happens is we will lose.”
Ten days later, Congress passed a bill to temporarily avert a government shutdown. It included no assistance for Ukraine.
Three of the senior officials in charge of dealing with this problem told me blackouts would likely be more severe this winter, and the public reaction in Ukraine would not be as forgiving. “Last year people blamed the Russians,” one of them says. “This time they’ll blame us for not doing enough to prepare.”
The cold will also make military advances more difficult, locking down the front lines at least until the spring. But Zelensky has refused to accept that. “Freezing the war, to me, means losing it,” he says. Before the winter sets in, his aides warned me to expect major changes in their military strategy and a major shake-up in the President’s team. At least one minister would need to be fired, along with a senior general in charge of the counteroffensive, they said, to ensure accountability for Ukraine’s slow progress at the front. “We’re not moving forward,” says one of Zelensky’s close aides. Some front-line commanders, he continues, have begun refusing orders to advance, even when they came directly from the office of the President. “They just want to sit in the trenches and hold the line,” he says. “But we can’t win a war that way.”
When I raised these claims with a senior military officer, he said that some commanders have little choice in second-guessing orders from the top. At one point in early October, he said, the political leadership in Kyiv demanded an operation to “retake” the city of Horlivka, a strategic outpost in eastern Ukraine that the Russians have held and fiercely defended for nearly a decade. The answer came back in the form of a question: With what? “They don’t have the men or the weapons,” says the officer. “Where are the weapons? Where is the artillery? Where are the new recruits?”
In some branches of the military, the shortage of personnel has become even more dire than the deficit in arms and ammunition. One of Zelensky’s close aides tells me that even if the U.S. and its allies come through with all the weapons they have pledged, “we don’t have the men to use them.”
Since the start of the invasion, Ukraine has refused to release official counts of dead and wounded. But according to U.S. and European estimates, the toll has long surpassed 100,000 on each side of the war. It has eroded the ranks of Ukraine’s armed forces so badly that draft offices have been forced to call up ever older personnel, raising the average age of a soldier in Ukraine to around 43 years. “They’re grown men now, and they aren’t that healthy to begin with,” says the close aide to Zelensky. “This is Ukraine. Not Scandinavia.”
The picture looked different at the outset of the invasion. One branch of the military, known as the Territorial Defense Forces, reported accepting 100,000 new recruits in the first 10 days of all-out war. The mass mobilization was fueled in part by the optimistic predictions of some senior officials that the war would be won in months if not weeks. “Many people thought they could sign up for a quick tour and take part in a heroic victory,” says the second member of the President’s team.
Now recruitment is way down. As conscription efforts have intensified around the country, stories are spreading on social media of draft officers pulling men off trains and buses and sending them to the front. Those with means sometimes bribe their way out of service, often by paying for a medical exemption. Such episodes of corruption within the recruitment system became so widespread by the end of the summer that on Aug. 11 Zelensky fired the heads of the draft offices in every region of the country.
The decision was intended to signal his commitment to fighting graft. But the move backfired, according to the senior military officer, as recruitment nearly ground to a halt without leadership. The fired officials also proved difficult to replace, in part because the reputation of the draft offices had been tainted. “Who wants that job?” the officer asks. “It’s like putting a sign on your back that says: corrupt.”
Amid all the pressure to root out corruption, I assumed, perhaps naively, that officials in Ukraine would think twice before taking a bribe or pocketing state funds. But when I made this point to a top presidential adviser in early October, he asked me to turn off my audio recorder so he could speak more freely. “Simon, you’re mistaken,” he says. “People are stealing like there’s no tomorrow.”
Even the firing of the Defense Minister did not make officials “feel any fear,” he adds, because the purge took too long to materialize. The President was warned in February that corruption had grown rife inside the ministry, but he dithered for more than six months, giving his allies multiple chances to deal with the problems quietly or explain them away. By the time he acted ahead of his U.S. visit, “it was too late,” says another senior presidential adviser. Ukraine’s Western allies were already aware of the scandal by then. Soldiers at the front had begun making off-color jokes about “Reznikov’s eggs,” a new metaphor for corruption. “The reputational damage was done,” says the adviser.
“It’s logical,” Zelensky tells me. “Of course we lose out from the events in the Middle East. People are dying, and the world’s help is needed there to save lives, to save humanity.” Zelensky wanted to help. After the crisis meeting with aides, he asked the Israeli government for permission to visit their country in a show of solidarity. The answer appeared the following week in Israeli media reports: “The time is not right.”
But it was also an acknowledgment that, ,on its own, Ukraine aid no longer stands much of a chance in Washington. When I asked Zelensky about this, he admitted that Biden’s hands appear to be tied by GOP opposition. The White House, he said, remains committed to helping Ukraine. But arguments about shared values no longer have much sway over American politicians or the people who elect them. “Politics is like that,” he tells me with a tired smile. “They weigh their own interests.”
https://time.com/6329188/ukraine-volodymyr-zelensky-interview/
As Bakhmut counteroffensive lags, soldiers burnt out from horrors of war
October 26, 2023 - Kivv Independent Exclusive Report
Fighting through what feels like an endless cycle of barely escaping death in a brutal war in which so many have already fallen, Ukrainian soldiers say they are exhausted by the horror they see daily.
The soldiers – most of them civilians until 2022 – say they are coping with survivor’s guilt. Many are amazed that they are still alive.
Emotional burnout and the desire to go home are increasing as Ukraine continues to wage its counteroffensive on three main axes, including the one near Bakhmut.
Judging by how difficult it is to advance in Donetsk Oblast, however, soldiers say that they don’t expect a breakthrough anytime in the future, and not being able to see an end to the fighting is tough to cope with.
“The war will be very, very long,” says 26-year-old senior driver Roman, call sign “Ninja,” who is deployed with the 92nd Separate Assault Brigade near Bakhmut.
“We’re already running out of people.”
261,000-strong Ukrainian Armed Forces. But more than a year and a half later, a series of high-casualty campaigns – such as the Battle for Bakhmut – has shrunk the original force, with soldiers often saying that only a fraction of today’s soldiers have served from the start of the war.
Ukraine continues to mobilize more men, but the survival rate of raw recruits is low and often complicates the job for the more experienced soldiers, as the new troops are not psychologically or tactically ready for the reality of war, battle-hardened soldiers say.
“If combat-capable people like us run out, we could only be replaced by people who don’t know anything,” said Roman, a Kharkiv native who has been serving since 2016.
Austrian warfare expert Tom Cooper said there appears to be a lack of experienced commanders, but Ukraine still has over half a million troops in its ground forces, in addition to reserves.
But for the soldiers on the ground losing their long-time comrades one by one, it’s an emotional and physical battle of attrition with an uncertain future.
Among the units that endured the brunt of Russia’s relentless assault on Bakhmut was the large 93rd Separate Mechanized Brigade, well known among soldiers as a unit often deployed to the worst spots of the war to “fill in the gaps.”
“The Russians were like going to work at 8 a.m. and finishing at 6 p.m. It was literary hell there (in Bakhmut),” said Oleksandr Maroshnyk, a 31-year-old infantryman from Odesa who serves with the 93rd.
Of the original 110 people that his company had when it was formed in June 2022, only four remain in action – the rest have been killed or wounded, mainly in Bakhmut, Maroshnyk said.
Multiple Ukrainian artillery units cited a severe lack of ammunition, particularly mortar bombs, and said they had to preserve the shells. Neither the Defense Ministry nor the General Staff confirmed the soldiers’ concerns when approached by the Kyiv Independent.
The hard truth for the soldiers, however, is that the war is a marathon with no end in sight, and they are desperate not to lose any more comrades.
“I’m not scared of death. But how many guys were killed,” 28th Separate Mechanized Brigade infantryman Anatoly, 41, from Vinnytsia Oblast, said, struggling to find the words to describe his shock.
“When will this fcking war end? How many more friends killed do I need?*”
Anatoly’s words were repeated by other soldiers – especially the infantrymen, who often refer to war as “a meat grinder for both sides.”
In a comment to the Kyiv Independent, the Defense Ministry said that the psychological state of the military is “restricted information that is not subject to disclosure.”
“I just want to go home, I’m so tired,” Anatoly blurted out wiping away tears, as shelling was heard in the background.
https://kyivindependent.com/as-bakhmut-counteroffensive-lags-soldiers-burnt-out-from-horrors-of-war/
‘They’re running out of time’: Ukraine’s counteroffensive is gaining urgency as winter approaches
It’s an understatement to say Ukraine’s counteroffensive, launched in June, has not been as successful as Kyiv and its Western allies hoped it would be — with Russian forces deeply dug in to defensive positions, progress has been tough for Ukraine
Ukraine’s counteroffensive has not achieved the presumed military and political objectives so far and the prospects of a breakthrough appear limited
Ukraine’s four-and-a-half-month-old counteroffensive has not achieved major territorial gains nor managed to slice through Russia’s ‘land bridge’ to Crimea
“Limited progress to date tempers hopes of a breakthrough in the near term, especially as the autumn weather makes large-scale movement of heavy military equipment more challenging, and Russia is ramping up pressure in other parts of the frontline,”
“Once it turns cold again, they’ll be able to use the vehicles more efficiently because the ground will be hard but [in the meantime] the offensive will undoubtedly slow down. ... So the best time for them to have broken through is now, and they haven’t done it,”
The problem for Ukraine, he said, is “that won’t look much like enough to justify all the help that’s been given” — some of Ukraine’s Western allies are starting to tire of Kyiv’s military and financial needs, which could become more pronounced as war erupts in the Middle East.
In the meantime, analysts say Russia has a distinct advantage in this conflict, given that it’s largely in a position of defense, rather than offense.
Russian forces had months to prepare layers of defenses including extensive networks of trenches; anti-tank obstacles such as ditches and “dragon’s teeth”; and minefields. Russian forces are also receiving support from artillery, attack helicopters and other aircraft, again impeding Ukraine’s forces.
Analysis by the think tank shows that, at the peak of their summer offensive between early June and late August, Ukrainian forces advanced an
average of only 90 meters (98 yards) per day on the southern front.
“its relatively slow pace of advance and the trade-offs it has made to preserve personnel and
equipment indicate that the [Russian] defense has significant advantages,”
Aside from Russia’s substantial defensive fortifications, the slow pace of Ukraine’s was not due to poor Ukrainian strategic choices, the CSIS noted, **but was likely caused “by a Ukrainian change in force employment, especially the deliberate adoption of small-unit tactics
@JulianRoepcke
Oct 15
#Analysis
Can anyone remember the war in Ukraine? It should be about him now.
➡️The Ukrainian has been running for four months and ten days #counter-offensive in the south of the country. However, you hardly notice that it is still running, and not only since the outbreak of the war in Israel.
➡️After the counter-offensive in the Zaporizhia region was initially shrunk from three to one direction, it lost at the latest after the liberation of Robotyne (on 28. August) much of their momentum. This was the complete opposite of what some observers had expected – or at least hoped for.
➡️In September the Ukrainians tried unsuccessfully to conquer Werbowe and Nowopopiwka. In October they tried to advance towards Kopani and Nowopokrowka. Also in vain.
➡️They also significantly reduced the number of troops involved. Two advances to the south, which reached Novoprokopiwka, each consisted of less than ten men – without vehicles – and were destroyed by Russian soldiers on the ground.
➡️Beyond the use as „ armored buses “, the western tanks and armored personnel carriers have proven to be predominantly useless due to the massive Russian positions, impenetrable minefields and ongoing FPV kamikaze attacks, in terms of their intended function (quick penetration, deep wedge beating and flanking the Russian troops). Instead, the Ukrainians „ undertake an offensive on foot “, as Chief of Intelligence Budanov stated.
➡️The Ukrainian counter-offensive achieved at least tactical success in the first two months, but now only does it to an extremely small extent (individual rows of trees are conquered, others are lost).
➡️From strategic successes such as reaching the Sea of Azov, the liberation of larger cities such as Tokmak or Polohy or at least the cutting off of Russian supply routes between Donbas and Crimea, Kiev is as far away as at the beginning of the undertaking in early June.
➡️What results from this? Difficult to say. Especially since no further „ Game Changer “ are expected. Storm Shadow and Scalp EG are running out, Taurus won't come, but a few dozen ATACMS. The same applies to weapons for ground war or anti-aircraft defense against drones. Even a few older F-16s, maybe 2024, maybe later, will not change the situation significantly.
➡️The government in Kiev also knows that Moscow is expanding 50 meters of new positions for every meter of liberated Surowikin line and that it is more fortified than ever before. Against this background, the chances of liberation of Zaporizhia, Khersons and the Crimea continue to decrease.
➡️And in the east? There, the past two months have shown that Russia no longer even sees itself on the defensive, but is constantly planning and carrying out new offensives.
➡️The advances on Kupjansk and Awdijiwka have so far failed. The mere fact that the Kremlin mobilizes reserves to bring other Ukrainian areas under its control shows how safe you are in Moscow, that this war can still be won with a combination of long breath and complete ruthlessness towards your own troops.
➡️And if I look at the (unlimited!) Seen hesitantly in Berlin, Washington, London, Paris and Warsaw, I don't know why Putin's calculation shouldn't work ---
RE: Day 620. Ukrainian f-16s are a reality! Russia continues to waste its military.