LTSC1980 Oh this is not true at all. Ukraine is WINNING now. It’s completely turned around at least for probably the next 3 months. The Russians can’t supply their front line any more in Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts and in Crimea. They are running out of fuel already in Crimea. The Ukrainians also now have a slight excess of soldiers over the Russians and a big excess of drones adn that means they can probe weak points and they have rolled back some of the Russian advances and continue to do so.
It’s small changes so far but seem likely to get larger. And meanwhile, Putin has a history of not being able to react to changes on the battlefield in less than months. Three months before he did anything about Kursk oblast. Right now he is pre-occupied with internal matters in the Kremlin and in Russia. Responding with tighter and tighter control of the internet which the Russians are objecting to and claiming that the Russians shoot down all the Ukrainian missiles and droens when the Russians in Moscow can watch drones flying around a bit faster than a fast car circling skyscrapers in Moscow and hitting its oil refinery and other targets with loud booms. And Russia can’t seem to shoot them down.
But Putin is just so slow because he is so risk averse. He still seems to cling onto the illusion that somehow Russia will get control of all of Donbas.
Meanwhile the reality on the ground is that Russia is retreating in most places while the soldiers lie to the generals saying they are really advancing.
News today includes that the Ukrainians are destroying air defence systems that Russia is trying to move by road to protect its route by road to the vulnerable oblasts
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It’s unbelievable what we’re witnessing.
Ukraine 🇺🇦 is attacking the air defense systems that the Russian army 🇷🇺 is moving to try to protect its logistics routes.
In the video, you can observe how Ukrainian Special Operations Forces 🇺🇦 struck two Russian Tor-M2 air defense systems 🇷🇺:
—One of the systems was attacked while being transported on the M-14 highway near Mariupol during the night of May 29.
—The second Tor-M2 🇷🇺 was intercepted near Melitopol.
The Ukrainian 🇺🇦 pressure against the Russian 🇷🇺 land corridor connecting Crimea to Rostov continues to intensify.
Those air defences are very valuable for Russia and to lose them while trying to move them to protect that route is very embarrassing and difficult for them.
Some of the people I follow are now speculating about which part of Kherson or Zaporizhzhia oblasts will be liberated first. This is a very vulnerable part of the front line and if Ukraine did get hold of it then it would make things even more difficult for the road route to Crimea as it is very close to the roads from Kherson oblast to Crimea
It’s what they call “shaping” operations at present. The Ukrainians will monitor what is going on and then they will see where the front lines get weak.
The advances of 2022 when they liberated Kherson city and almost all of Kharkiv oblast seemed impossible from around october 2024 to around February 2026 and even the advance in August 2024 Kursk oblast would no longer be possible faced with drones controlled via optical vfibers by the Russians flying faster than motorbikes.
But that has changed in February to May. Now Ukraine has fixed wing FPV drones that can hit targets over 100 km behind the front lines and land mines on the roads from the air.
It also has interceptor drones that can stop the Russian drones from attacking them if they can surge enough of them into a place where they are advancing.
Putin has done several own goals
- Cut off internet connectivity via telegram so that his soldiers can’t coordinate with each other
- This also cuts of fund raising they did for drones for their units so now they can only use officially supplied drones
- Monopoly on drones produced by the state in inadequate numbers and not nearly so able to improve quickly as the Ukrainian drones because of bureaucracy
- Meanwhile soldiers are constantly pushed to advance against impossible odds which reduces the size of his army and he can’t recruit fast enough to keep up because the Ukrainians have prioritized attacking those advancing soldiers
- Not put any preparation into protecting the land route - this is the slow inertia of the Russian bureaucracy made worse by corruption and embezzlement by the oligarchs
- perhaps 3 months from now they will protect the route with nets and air defences but for now they are unprotected
All this means that they can’t supply the front line through the bottleneck of the Azov coast road plus the railways as they are both targets now.
Without supplies the soldiers run out of fuel and munitions. And then the soldiers reducing in numbers also and all this gives an opportunity for the Ukrainians and they are taking it.
The Ukrainians also have
- unmanned ground vehicles to supply their soldiers, evacuate and even hold positions
All this creates an opportunity for the next few months while Putin is paralysed with indecision, the soldiers won’t tell him the truth etc for the Ukrainians to advance.
Their aim is a peace deal and ceasefire. But they would enter the ceasefire and deal with a much stronger position if Russia is losing territory in a big way in the next few months. And for instance suppose that Ukraine retakes occupied Kherson and part of Zaporizhzhia - and maybe also the region including the Zaporizhzhia oblast - that would be of major significance for Ukraine after the war is over - as well as liberating the people in those places.
There have also been hints they might liberate Mariupol but that’s a big stretch.
But it points to a future where the Russians may have to concede some areas of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblast and even parts of Donetsk that they would never have considered before and that then would make it a stronger ceasefire and peace deal for the Ukrainians. Partly symbolically and partly in actual better position on the ground.
And most of the mainstream media outside of the Ukrainian news don’t seem to have a clue about this. Which suits Ukraine just fine, the less aware the world is and Russia is the better from their point of view. They are much less dependent on the US than before, only really for air defences where the US can help a lot. And have plenty of help from their other allies but most of this is their own indigenous equipment especially the drones. Also their own ballistic and cruise missiles now.
It became clear a few weeks ago that Putin was just not goingto agree to a reasonable ceasefire. And so the negotiations have to be carried out on the battlefield as they sometimes describe situations like this
I think Ukraine decided it can’t reason directly with Putin right now so they need to show him on the battlefield that he needs to agree to a peace deal. And so that’s their priority. But he can end this at any time by saying he is ready to negotiate in earnest.
He can also agree to a ceasefire at any moment - a full ceasefire or a ceasefire in the air stopping all long distance missiles, or any variation in between there are several alternatives there for him to choose between.
So - but he is not likely to do that in less than several months because he still seems to mistakenly believe he will eventually win all of Donbas. So that’s why there’s this “negotiation on the battlefield” going on.
