Former British Army Colonel Ingram: Russia wants Ukraine to capitulate, pause the war, restore foreign ties, rebuild its army and strike again.
It will come back for another slice of Ukraine, Georgia or elsewhere. Moscow plays for generations; the West plays by elections.
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Ingram: It is too early to say Putin’s inner circle is turning on him. Putin controls them.
If one speaks against him, he tends to have an “accident,” usually a ninth-floor window. Putin is oligarch-in-chief: he lets them keep money and corruption, or he takes them out.
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Ingram: After Putin’s staged reelection, he may claim a mandate, call this an existential war against NATO and order general mobilization.
Ukraine kills or badly wounds 30,000+ Russians a month; 39,000 in June. Russia cannot replace them fast enough.
Kapustin, commander of Ukraine's Russian Volunteer Corps: What breaks a captured Russian soldier isn't our gear. It's that after four days drinking from puddles, we hand him water from our own hands.
That's when something cracks. 1/
Kapustin: Russian POWs from Vovchansk arrive with frostbitten feet, some missing toes.
Sent out for weeks without winter gear, they wrap their feet in foil thermal blankets, thinking it's waterproof. One captured 18-year-old lost several toes after being sent to fetch snow. 2/
Kapustin: Russian soldiers infiltrating near our lines dropped radios for phones rigged with Starlink, reporting coordinates by Telegram.
Once Starlink access was cut, they lost their only link to command. We took many of them prisoner, frostbitten and starving. 3/
Who else but Ukraine can shut the Black Sea to Russia with naval and aerial drones? In 18 days in July, Ukraine hit 196 vessels
Russia’s Azov oil-product exports stopped. In Black Sea ports, exports fell nearly in half to 1 million tons. Tanker calls dropped from 55 to 27, EP.1/
Together with strikes on Russian refineries, these attacks stopped exports of key oil products.
Russia no longer exports gasoline. Jet fuel exports stopped. Diesel shipments fell to 4% of the level before Ukrainian drone strikes on refineries, oil sites, and logistics.
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Ukrainian drones hit rudders, propellers, and bridges.
The ship loses movement, drifts, waits for a tugboat, and goes into repairs. One repair can cost $2-5 million.
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Michael Clarke: Syrskyi was trained in the Soviet military and tends to think in a Soviet way.
But he saved Kyiv in 2022, planned the successful Kharkiv counteroffensive and later designed Ukraine’s operation in Kursk. 1/
Clarke: At the front, Syrskyi sometimes is called a butcher. People accuse him of throwing troops into assaults like Soviet and Russian generals.
That criticism can be unfair. Sometimes commanders must hold ground despite knowing an operation will cost many lives. 2/
Clarke: Syrskyi was less popular among troops than Zaluzhnyi.
Zelenskyy pushed Zaluzhnyi to advance more aggressively, while Zaluzhnyi argued that it would cost too many soldiers. Zelenskyy thought he was too soft and too sentimental about his men. 3X
Hodges: Ukraine has a real chance to recover all of Crimea. Its long-range strikes on Russian oil and gas damage Russia’s ability to sustain the war and wreck its economy.
Russia controls ships under the Kerch Bridge because it fears Ukraine could ram or blow it up.
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Hodges: To liberate Crimea, Ukraine has to isolate it. Ukraine is destroying bridges, fuel ships, ferries and mainland logistics from Azov to northern Crimea.
Then Ukraine makes Crimea untenable by hitting airfields, naval sites, air defenses, radar and logistics.
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Hodges: Crimea back under Ukraine’s control would hit Putin politically, militarily and psychologically.
Ukraine’s job is not to keep Putin in power. It is to recover its land and stop Russia from threatening the Black Sea and Azov Sea.