In late August there appeared a smaller army based on NATO training, equipment, and the cream of the AFU mobilization crop -- plus several thousand "foreign volunteers" -- including at least hundreds of Americans.
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It has now emerged the Poles have already lost ~5000 casualties on Ukrainian battlefields.
The current Polish government will almost certainly not survive this debacle.
There are at least hundreds more from other countries, including the US.
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Many mocked my blog post of September 30th – entitled Turning Point.
Few saw in the battle for Liman a turning point that favored the Russian military position.
And yet here we are: Ukraine is at its weakest ever; Russia at its strongest.
There are increasing signs the narrative field is being sown to condition the public mind for Zelensky's predestined fall from grace.
Ukrainian leadership is exuding desperation.
They know the true score.
They know time is running out.
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They know their autumn “conquests” were Pyrrhic in the extreme – many thousands of casualties and severe losses of equipment without ever inflicting a meaningful defeat on Russian forces, who are content to fall back to prepared lines to await the next wave of cannon fodder.
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They know and are humiliated by how the Russians effected, with impressive speed and negligible cost, the withdrawal of over 20,000 troops and their equipment from Kherson, over what were (allegedly) acutely vulnerable and tenuous lines of communication across the Dnieper.
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With each passing day I am increasingly convinced the Ukrainian army is largely a spent force.
And with each passing day it is increasingly apparent that the Russian forces along the line are stronger than at any previous time in this war.
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This doesn’t preclude a Russian general with more ambition than sense making a stupid move that gets a bunch of men and equipment shot up. You always see this sort of stupidity in war.
Nor are the Ukrainians beyond massing another 35k+ men for a cannon fodder run.
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But the tide of this war has been discernibly altered over the past month.
The AFU is exhausted and depleted. It can no longer mount a credible offensive against Russian defenses. Yet it is apparently still willing to sacrifice men and equipment in futile attempts.
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All sorts of intrigue on the war front the past two weeks. Hard to get a confident handle on what is brewing.
There was a major AFU buildup in the Kherson region, and some probing attacks that have been defeated with relative ease and high AFU losses.
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In recent hours there are reports that some Ukrainian troops that were in the south have now been moved to the north, in the area where the September AFU offensive has long-since bogged down after suffering huge losses near Kupyansk and Liman.
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It seems unlikely, but it could be the Kherson action was a feint. Or possibly it has simply encountered so much resistance that the AFU command has decided to look elsewhere for some success. So now they’re hoping to reprise their September success in the Kharkov region.
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I took a weekend break from the Twitter Wars only to return again to find the #SlavaUkraina trolls in a wanton orgy of premature exultation, and the Russophiles sunken yet again into the pit of despair and premature fault-finding.
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One thing is screamingly obvious: although scores of people replied to my blog post from Friday (mostly near-zero follower freshly minted troll accounts – including dozens of the dog-faced meme-bots), vanishingly few had actually read it.
So, permit me to excerpt some of the more relevant passages.
After describing the events of the first three weeks of Ukraine’s under-powered September “counter-offensive” in the Kharkov region, I succinctly summarized the indisputable reality of the situation:
@JohnLChapman I acknowledge I'm one of relatively few that believes it was a deliberate move.
These are the relevant facts:
- all Russian regulars were withdrawn in advance, leaving only a token force of Donbass militia and Rosgvardia
- large numbers of civilians evacuated in advance
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@JohnLChapman - it is false that significant amounts of equipment were left behind
- it was a perfectly orderly if rapid withdrawal, with pre-prepared ambuscades along the way
- they withdrew to pre-prepared lines of defense on the east side of the Oskol River
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@JohnLChapman - the reserves they brought up were deployed on the east side of the Oskol (to the pre-planned line of defense) while Balakleya and Kupyansk were still Russian-controlled
- they have continued to defend and hold the strategic part of Kupyansk against all attempts to take it
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