How many of you actually thought Ukraine was EVER in the running?

[Dafinch]

Putin has given up on ambitions to conquer Ukraine after military losses that could take a decade to repair, says US intel

The Russian president had initially aimed for total control of Ukraine, but punishing setbacks have forced him to embrace more modest goals.

news.yahoo.com

Putin has given up on ambitions to conquer Ukraine after military losses that could take a decade to repair, says US intel ​

Tom Porter
Fri, May 5, 2023 at 3:58 AM PDT·3 min read

Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a government meeting on tourism development in Russia via a video link from Saint Petersburg on May 2, 2023.MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images

• Russian President Vladimir Putin has scaled back his ambitions in Ukraine, US intel says.
• He is focused on the more modest goal of preventing Ukraine from joining NATO, an official said.
• Russia has suffered serious setbacks in its bid to seize control of Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has drastically scaled back his ambitions in Ukraine after Russian military setbacks, US intelligence officials said.
Avril Haines, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), told the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday that Putin was now focused on the more limited goal of preventing Ukraine from joining NATO, the defense treaty that forms the main bulwark against Russian aggression in Europe.
"We assess that Putin probably has scaled back his immediate ambitions to consolidate control of the occupied territory in eastern and southern Ukraine and ensuring that Ukraine will never become a NATO ally," Haines said.
"He may be willing to claim at least a temporary victory based on roughly the territory he has occupied," Haines added.
Defense Intelligence Agency director Lt. Gen. Scott D. Berrier added that it may take up to a decade from Russia to replenish its troops.
"It's gonna take them a while to build back to more advanced" Berrier said, according to the New York Post.
"The estimates go from five to 10 years based on how sanctions affect them and their ability to put technology back into their force."
When Russia launched its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, US intelligence said that the Kremlin aimed to topple the government in Kyiv, and seize control of the country.
But Ukrainian forces repelled the Russian military in the Kyiv region, then pushed them back along a broad front of territory they had seized in southern and eastern Ukraine. Despite the setbacks, last June Haines said Putin still believed that seizing control of most of Ukraine was possible.
In recent months, Russian attempts to seize more territory in those regions have faltered, amid steep battlefield losses. Haines said that Russia was now suffering severe personnel and ammunition shortages.
"Russian forces gained less territory in April than during any of the three previous months as they appeared to transition from offensive to defensive operations along the front lines," Haines said.
However, she added that Ukraine remained heavily dependent on Western weapons to offset Russia's advantage in manpower, that neither side had a decisive advantage and the conflict would likely continue to be a "brutally grinding war of attrition."
Haines told lawmakers Thursday that Putin may seek a ceasefire in order to seek to rebuild Russia's depleted military, which according to US estimates has suffered more than 200,000 casualties.
Putin may believe that a ceasefire would be to his advantage as a way of prolonging the conflict, and eroding Western support for Ukraine, said Haines.
"We continue to assess that Putin most likely calculates that time works in his favor and that prolonging the war may be his best remaining pathway to eventually securing Russia's strategic interests in Ukraine," Haines said
"Putin's willingness to consider a negotiated pause may be based on his assessment that a pause would provide a respite for Russian forces as they could try to use that time to regain strength before resuming offensive operations at some point in the future, while buying time for what he hopes would be an erosion of western support for Ukraine," Haines said.
"Moscow has suffered military losses that will require years of rebuilding and leave it less capable of posing a conventional military threat to Europe and operating assertively in Eurasia and on the global stage," Haines said.
"As a result, Russia will become even more reliant on asymmetric options such as nuclear, cyber, space capabilities, and on China."

 

[StevieRay]

????????????????????? go u Nazi fake ??????

 

[Dafinch]

W00T: Patriot air defense system downs a Russian hypersonic missile over Kyiv​

Saturday May 06, 2023 · 10:20 AM PDT

The UAF has had trouble with defending against the more advanced hypersonic Russian missiles until a few days ago.

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine on Saturday said it had used the U.S.-made Patriot air defense system to shoot down a Russian hypersonic missile in the skies over the Kyiv capital region — demonstrating that it now has the ability to thwart one of Moscow’s most-feared weapons.
Until now, the hypersonic missile, called Kinzhal, “Dagger” in Russian, had been unstoppable by Ukraine, and several had struck targets since the start of Russia’s war in February 2022. Traveling five times faster than the speed of sound, and at a lower elevation than traditional ballistic missiles, the Kinzhal was too fast for Ukraine’s air defenses to even react.

“Congratulations to the Ukrainian people on a historic event!” the head of Ukraine’s air command, Mykola Oleshchuk posted, along with a lightning bolt emoji. “Yes, we brought down the ‘unparalleled’ Kinzhal!”
www.washingtonpost.com/...


On May 5, the Defense Express publication analyzed debris of the intercepted missile and concluded that Ukrainian forces had downed a hypersonic Russian Kinzhal missile, which the country was previously unable to intercept. However, Air Force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat refuted these claims at the time, though the Ukrainian military confirmed that a Kinzhal had been intercepted by Ukrainian air defenses on May 6.
In April, Kyiv received Patriot air defense systems from the United States, the Netherlands, and Germany, which marks a significant development in the country’s military capabilities and defense against Russian aggression.
english.nv.ua/…

the Kh-47M2 Kinzhal is an air launched version of the 9K720 Iskander-M ground launched ballistic missile.

The U.S. officials said that they had received information about the strike from the Ukrainian military through classified channels. One official added that U.S. military analysts were able to verify the claim using technical means. Nevertheless, independent analysts were reluctant to confirm the interception until more information was available about the type of missile Russia fired and whether it was hit by a Patriot.​

The Patriot is by far the most expensive single weapon system that the United States has supplied to Ukraine, at a total cost of about $1.1 billion: $400 million for the system and $690 million for the missiles.
www.nytimes.com/...

 

[StevieRay]

 

[StevieRay]

 

[Dafinch]

Ukraine Update: Prigozhin declares he is pulling Wagner from Bakhmut, to be replaced by Kadyrov​

 

[StevieRay]

??

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1654503235216891906

 

[StevieRay]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1645801161830825985

 

[StevieRay]

Ukraine's Air Force confirmed that the drone shot down today in Kyiv was their own Ukrainian TB2 drone

 

[Dafinch]

Ukraine Update: Putin presides over shrunken parade as reports show Wagner retreat from Bakhmut ​

 

[SheriffJoe]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1656064697869774850

 

[Dafinch]

Ukraine Update: Russian military teeters on the brink of chaos, as Ukrainian forces advance ​

 

[StevieRay]

Ukraine Update: Russian military teeters on the brink of chaos, as Ukrainian forces advance ​

??????????????
This is what a stupid fucker
Looks like. ?????????? Daily Kos

 

[Dafinch]

Ukraine Update: The counteroffensive hasn’t begun, but Russian panic is well underway ​

 

[Dafinch]

Ukraine’s Advances Near Bakhmut Expose Rifts in Russian Forces​

1.2k
Marc Santora and Andrew E. Kramer
Sat, May 13, 2023 at 7:09 AM PDT

Flowers adorn graves in the main cemetery in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, May 9, 2023. (Finbarr O’Reilly/The New York Times)
OUTSIDE CHASIV YAR, Ukraine — The Ukrainian army is advancing in attacks near the eastern city of Bakhmut, Ukrainian commanders said Friday, in fighting that has shifted the front line only slightly but is exposing fissures, confusion and alarm among Russia’s forces in the war.
Russia’s pro-war bloggers were quick to claim that Ukraine’s long-anticipated counteroffensive had begun, but Ukrainian officials downplayed the advances and described them in more local terms. Ukrainian soldiers broke through Russian lines south of Bakhmut on Wednesday, they said, and then exploited that breach, assaulting Russian forces near the city and threatening Russian flanks to the north and south.
A video that appears to have been posted first by the Ukrainian news outlet Channel 24, which said it was provided by Ukraine’s 77th Airmobile Brigade, showed parts of northern Bakhmut on fire Friday evening.
- ADVERTISEMENT -

Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times
Bakhmut has been at the epicenter of the war in eastern Ukraine for months: a mostly ruined city where tens of thousands of soldiers are believed to have died, and the only place over hundreds of miles on the front where Russia was consistently on the attack. That changed this week, as Ukraine put Russian forces on the defensive, presenting them with a difficult strategic decision about reinforcing the city and setting off a new round of recriminations between Russian commanders.
Videos released Friday by Ukraine’s 3rd Separate Assault Brigade showed soldiers piling out of armored personnel carriers and assaulting a Russian trench. “Forward, forward!” a soldier yelled in the video, filmed on a helmet camera. The soldiers dived for cover as Russian fighters threw a hand grenade, then ran forward and threw their own grenade into a Russian bunker. The video could not be independently verified.
“The defensive phase of the battle for Bakhmut is ending,” said Andriy Biletsky, who has ultimate command of the brigade, among other units in the Ukrainian army. Now, he said, Ukraine would ramp up the pressure on the Russians from the north and south.
“We advanced a little more on our flank,” said a drone operator in the Adam Tactical Group, who asked to be identified only by his nickname, Sem. In an interview Friday, he described an overnight seesaw battle to the south of Bakhmut, in which Russian soldiers tried to recapture a position but were repelled by a Ukrainian artillery bombardment.
Another Ukrainian soldier, who gave his call sign as Bandit, said the artillery and rocket fire echoing around the hills near Bakhmut was “all our fire going to the Russian side.”
“We are still learning the enemy and want to see what he is doing in this situation,” he said, adding that Ukrainian soldiers were testing Russian positions and “clearing one forest belt after another.”
A retreat from Bakhmut, a city that lacks strategic importance but has become a symbolic prize, would represent an embarrassing setback for the Russian military. Russia has not captured a Ukrainian city since July and had pressed ahead into Bakhmut despite soaring losses.
It was difficult to gauge whether Ukraine’s advances would be sustained. Russian forces had at one point flushed Ukrainian troops out of all but a few city blocks.
Ukrainian advances this week have cut through Russian lines in the largest bulge by only about 3 miles, but the success erased what Moscow’s forces had painstakingly achieved over several months.
That presents Russia with a difficult choice. If Russia does not reinforce the flanking positions around Bakhmut, it risks a politically humiliating setback. But if it diverts reserve forces toward the city, it could weaken defenses in the south, where many analysts expect Ukraine to strike toward the Sea of Azov in an attempt to cut off a supply route to occupied Crimea.
Ukrainian officials have not portrayed the attacks as the start of a widely anticipated counteroffensive. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in an interview with the BBC this week, said Ukraine wanted more weaponry and ammunition to arrive before it would begin the offensive.
The stakes of Ukraine’s offensive extend to the country’s efforts to secure more aid: A military breakthrough could persuade Western officials to send even more materiel, while failure or stalemate could push them to curtail support or encourage negotiations. European foreign ministers urged China’s top diplomat this week to make Beijing do more to resolve the war, and China, which has cast itself as a potential mediator while giving Russia diplomatic and economic help, announced an envoy would visit Ukraine and Russia next week.
So Ukrainian leaders, keenly aware of their reliance on Western support, have taken pains to distinguish recent attacks from the broader offensive. The commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, this week described Ukraine’s actions as mostly defensive, but said soldiers were able to “carry out effective counterattacks.”
“In some areas of the front, the enemy could not withstand the onslaught of the Ukrainian defenders and retreated to a distance of up to two kilometers,” he said in a statement.
Russian military bloggers have responded with alarm to Ukraine’s gains near Bakhmut. The bloggers, who often report from the front and have links to various commanders or the Wagner mercenary group, are fiercely pro-war and can be influential within Russia, urging Moscow to commit more resources to the fight.
“Wagner gave a lot of blood and sweat for this territory, some gave their lives,” wrote Aleksandr Yaremchuk, a Russian military correspondent aligned with Wagner, whose fighters have led the nearly yearlong fight for Bakhmut. “It’s hard for me to believe that other units are so easily abandoning their positions.”
The outcry drew a rare acknowledgment by the Russian Ministry of Defense, which Friday said its forces retreated in one area around Bakhmut.
The head of Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, appeared to support the bloggers’ assessment. On Thursday, he posted an open letter to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu about the losses on the flanking positions, saying that “the enemy carried out several successful counterattacks.”
The flurry of posts, videos and statements also exposed tensions and rifts among Russia’s disparate forces in Ukraine. Prigozhin, long an aggressive critic of Shoigu’s and other top defense officials, this week issued a series of expletive-laden audio and video messages, including with comments that some observers interpreted as his first direct criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Cracks appeared elsewhere, too, as Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, whose paramilitary forces have fought alongside Wagner in Ukraine, criticized Prigozhin, his longtime ally, in a video broadside.
Some prominent Russian pro-war bloggers warned that the animosity was beginning to affect battlefield performance at a crucial moment.
“There is no single command that is respected without exception,” wrote a blogger, Anastasia Kashevarova. “We have a mass of people at the front, and no one can reach an agreement with each other.”
“The enemy,” she added, “is using this.”
c.2023 The New York Times Company

 

[StevieRay]

???

the Nazi propaganda fake news coming out of Ukraine ??

 

[Dafinch]

A fault in their lines...Russia's fatal military feature.​

https://www.dailykos.com/users/b12love
Saturday May 13, 2023 · 7:17 AM PDT


I’ve only just now realized how much more screwed Russia is than I had previously recognized. Thanks to all of the incredible reporting on this site (especially Kos and Mark, of course!), my understanding of this war is frankly better than it was for some I’ve been more directly involved with. To offer something back, I would like to use the recent Ukrainian advances north of Bakhmut to illustrate a likely design feature of the coming Ukrainian counteroffensive.
One technique Russia uses for internal security is to keep any power center from becoming too strong, that’s why the Russian army has plenty of boom but little brain. It’s also why there’s and army, a separate national guard, a separate presidential guard force, Wagner and other PMC, etc. Russia plays their forces against one another, different organizations and different unit loyalties, and of course have different command structures. Military operations are complex so coordination is always a problem. But on defense, the lack of coordinated action can rapidly accelerate out of control.

Anytime two different units link together to defend a position, (i.e. Wagner gets the built up area of Bakhmut, then one army unit protects the line North and a different Russian unit guards the line going South), there’s a weakness. As we just heard about in Bakhmut, one unit (evidently) started pulling back while the adjacent unit remained in place. Even if both units were following a coordinated plan they were not doing it in coordination. Different units pass their word from HQ to the trenches differently, so there can be a time gap between when one unit gets word to move, and the other unit hears the same word through its official channels. This can cause panic if one guy asks his platoon leader if they’re leaving, hears no, but is watching the guys to his right grab their packs and haul ass. That’s what’s called an ‘exposed flank’ or a ‘gap in the line’ in military jargon.
What’s this all mean? It means if you’re going on offense, the best place to do it is where two different units link up. And not only does Russia like to put different units next to each other on the line, it doesn’t have any choice...too short of manpower. That means at select points along the entire line of contact, Russia has put units with different command structures next to each other. There is virtually zero chance for units with different command structures to coordinate a defense involving breaches. Induced panic is inevitable, and will spread. In fact, we’re already hearing indication of panic starting to spread. Russia has placed units under different commands, who don’t trust each other, next to each other, and Ukraine is going to exploit this during the counteroffensive.
Individual units can still fight effectively , but only after re-establishing a continuous perimeter. When there’s a gap between one unit’s new perimeter and the other units’, that gap will fill with a flow of Ukrainian forces. And if they’re fast and aggressive, they can be deep in Russian occupied territories ambushing units along their withdrawal routes, deeping the sense of being cut off and isolated.
This is where Russia’s dog-eat-dog culture destroys them. It will become a free-for-all, each man for themselves. Not only will the Russian occupation of Ukraine potentially end, completely, but the Russian Federation itself may splinter.
Slava Ukraine

POLL
1458 votes Show Results

UKRAINE'S OFFENSIVE WILL BE SUCCESSFUL BECAUSE:​

 

[Dafinch]

Russian air force gets AA'ed inside Russia​

Saturday May 13, 2023 · 10:37 AM PDT


kyivindependent.com/…

A Russian Sukhoi Su-34 supersonic fighter-bomber jet was downed in Russia’s Bryansk region, near the Ukrainian border, Russian state-controlled TASS news agency reported on May 13 following earlier reports of a downed helicopter in the same area.
Other, unconfirmed reports claimed that two Russian jets, as well as two Mi-8 transport helicopters "crashed" in Bryansk region on May 13. Russian Telegram-based media outlets Mash and Baza shared reports about two jets and two helicopters, adding that the reports "are now being verified."
Russian law enforcement is looking for “saboteurs” in the Klintsi community of the Bryansk region, according to Russian media reports.
The videos posted online showed what appeared to be a fighter jet and helicopter on fire.
The crash is being investigated, TASS reported, citing Russian government agencies.

 

[StevieRay]

The Boss

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1656470976543227905

 

[Dafinch]

The Boss

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1656470976543227905

Yeah, "The Boss," that's why he ain't got no job, just took a 5 million dollar dildo up the ass, and is looking at THIRTY-FOUR FELONIES, and counting, lol, you brain dead NAZI turd.

Storm Shadow strike targets top-level Russian meeting; plus Russian stuff on fire​

quaoar
Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)
Friday May 12, 2023 · 6:14 PM PDT

Recommend 458
Share Tweet
102 Comments 102 New

UPDATE: Saturday, May 13, 2023 · 10:11:08 AM PDT · quaoar
UPDATE: It seems to be confirmed that the Luhansk building was destroyed by a Storm Shadow cruise missile.



What has been reported to be a military repair plant in Luhansk was hit by something quite powerful, most likely a Storm Shadow, but that hasn’t been confirmed. Turns out it was more than just a repair plant.
This was a high-value target for who was there as well as what was there.

Almost scored a big hit.

It seems it wasn’t just a lucky chance that Vodolatskyi, wearing a general’s uniform, was there.

The massive damage to the building indicates that this was much more than a drone hit.


Here’s another reason why the strike was most likely from a Storm Shadow. Ukraine deployed decoy missiles to make sure the real warhead got through.

------------------------------------------------------------------
A thousand Ukrainian prisoners for this loser? Sure, I’d make that deal.

-----------------------------------------------------------------—
Prigozhin is just trolling now. He sucks as a military leader but he’s Russia’s No. 1 troll.

-----------------------------------------------------------------—
The only thing this boot-licking asshole should be invited to is a prison cell.

---------------------------------------------------------------—
This tire fire is gonna burn forever.

-----------------------------------------------------------------—
Norilsk is way the hell in northern Siberia, way, way, way out of drone range.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
The first of many to come no doubt.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Hahahahahahahahahahahaha. And people in hell want ice water. They ain’t gettin’ it either.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Saved by the backhoe.


-----------------------------------------------------------------—
Sometimes war can be very boaring.

-----------------------------------------------------------------—
This badger picked the correct side to socialize. The Russians would have eaten him.