- Ukraine says it has liberated four villages in the south-east, calling these the first settlements won back from Russia since Kyiv’s counter-offensive began
- On Monday morning, officials reported that “the national flag is once again waving” over Storozhove, in the Donetsk region
- A day earlier, footage showed Ukrainian troops celebrating in Blahodatne and Neskuchne - and a minister said nearby Makarivka was also taken
- The settlements are relatively small - and Moscow is yet to confirm any retreat
- The Institute for the Study of War backs up Kyiv’s claims, saying Ukraine captured “multiple settlements” along the frontline over the weekend
- On Saturday, President Zelensky acknowledged that the long-awaited counter-offensive was under way
I understand this is a positive news in the first week of the counter offensive, but to me - it makes me feel depressed.
It makes me look at the size of Ukraine and the occupied areas. There are thousands or probably ten thousands of occupied settlements and villages. Reporting 5 of e.g. 18.000 liberated… it is positive, it is a news, it makes me depressed looking at the scaled of what lies ahead in this war to get Russia out of Ukraine.
The thing I am hoping for and expecting, that this is not a continuous speed. In the past, we have seen Russian lines disintegrate, troops flee in civilian clothing and the front lines moved tens of kilometers within a single day.
I understand we’re you’re coming from but I think that’s a wrong way to look at it. The villages and towns rarely are equal in the face of front-line activities - some offer great defense opportunities and can be held for months. Most are strategically unimportant and their freedom is reclaimed by battles fought in other locations. History books are full of small town names that have witnessed grand battles and sometimes a victory over a small patch of land can translate to a much greater victory later on.
Edit: typo
I think it’s what you said, it is not continuous speed. The offensive may slow down, may accelerate - let’s be honest, there is even the chance of failure. However, looking at the last 6-9 months, we should be optimistic. The recapture of a small village may not seem impactful, for people who were born there, lived there until the war or even still live there under Russian oppression - it means the world to them.
Just remember how Kharkiv oblast was liberated in September 2022. Ukraine made some progress in the weeks before, which put enough pressure on the Russian occupiers to make the continued occupation untenable, so they had to pull back into Luhansk.
Something similar could easily happen here, all it needs is a cirumvention of the defense fortifications to push far enough to disrupt e.g. the supply lines between Donetsk and Crimea, and significant parts of the occupation could crumble quickly.
27k settlements according to a quick search. Yikes.
But progress in anything is rarely sweeping and most commonly a matter of chipping away at an issue one tiny step at a time. Environmental issues, social issues. Unless you’re finally hitting a watershed moment it’s a depressing battle of inches. But you won’t ever get the former unless you commit to the later.
Also, while it’s easy to reduce humanity down to numbers at the scale of a war, to the people finally getting to rejoin their country today – this is the victory that matters. The one they will remember most clearly after the war is over. To us on the outside it might seem small, but to those people it’s their entire world.
Ukraine will need to push through the first and second lines of defense, where the Russians are extremely dug in. Once they breech those fortifications it should become like driving a scalpel through Russian defenses.
If they manage to go through the first lines of defense, they’ll operationally encircle a lot of Russian positions on the west, either prompting the Russian forces to retreat or get trapped in the pocket.
TL;DR this is the hard part
Hopefully russia crumbles from within. They are doing everything possible to show that this is a battle between “good” and “evil” - the destructin of cities, kidnapping children, rape, castration, civilian deaths from distance and in person.
This will not happen. The reason that you think that is due to the fact that this is the most propagandized wars I’ve ever seen from personal experience. That heavy amount of propaganda is flowing both ways.
Basically, everything you just described is the natural consequence of war. That’s not excusing the Russians, but acknowledging that there are always examples of everything on that list on both sides in basically any war. It doesn’t matter if one side causes much more of those things than the other side when it comes to propaganda. All that matters is that both sides have done it. Then, the Russians use that to make their own propaganda. Which they’ve done. The Russian population honestly also believes that this is a war of good vs evil, too. To be clear, I’m not saying that it is, just that the Russian population, fed Russian propaganda, believe in this war.
The end result of all of the above words is that the unrest in Russia at this point is due to Russians being unhappy that Putin isn’t more aggressive. If Putin is replaced in a coup, the person that replaced him will be more aggressive against Ukraine, not less.
undefined> Basically, everything you just described is the natural consequence of war. That’s not excusing the Russians, but acknowledging that there are always examples of everything on that list on both sides in basically any war. I
Except the Ukrainians aren’t intentionally striking civilians, raping, killing soldiers who have surrendered, castrating soldiers - we would have heard about it from the russians (though anything they release has to be treated with suspicion).
The russians appear to want to be labelled as “evil”.
And so they will be, except by russian sympathizers, whether they admit it or not.
The Ukrainians have explicitly struck civilians. They’ve accepted responsibility for some of them and lied about some of the others where the US’s intelligence agencies believe that it was the Ukrainians. Fuck, in the recent discord leaks, we discovered that our security agencies don’t even know what the truth is with Ukraine because we don’t really have intelligence assets with the Ukrainian side, and we know that the Ukrainians lie to us about a lot.
Who used an unwilling suicide bomb to take out a strategic bridge? Who attacked a NATO countries infrastructure in an act of war? Who used a car bomb against a Russian, I don’t know, unpopular political figures daughter? The car bomb intentionally killed civilians, and did so intentionally in a civilian area. Dugin is, within Russia, right now, effectively only a pro-war blogger. He doesn’t have political power. He also doesn’t even have the ear of powerful people, really. But killing him(who was the likely target), a civilian, was apparently worthwhile for the Ukrainians. He and his daughter were civilians.
For the other stuff, the Russians absolutely are saying that that is happening. I agree with you that those claims, coming from the Russians, do need to be treated with skepticism. But you are wrong that the Russians aren’t claiming the Ukrainians are doing those things. They absolutely are. The fact that you don’t think they are making those claims makes me wonder where you are getting your information from.
So, the worst crime the Russians committed was starting the war. All of their other crimes follow from that first crime. Without it, none of the others would have happened. That is because war itself is evil. It makes good people do horrible things. Don’t even think about what it makes bad people do. Every side in every war, has done, and will do what you are saying the Ukrainians haven’t done. They have. I’m not saying it is official policy, but that probably isn’t true, even for the Russians.
The Russians don’t want to be labelled evil. Do you really think that? NO ONE THINKS THEY ARE EVIL. HITLER didn’t think he was evil. No. The Russians don’t think they are evil, and they don’t want other people to think that either. Saying that doesn’t require any knowledge about this war, just knowledge about human nature. You want to think they’re evil? That is entirely fair. But if you actually believe they think they’re evil, that is just stupid.
To be clear, I’m not a Russian sympathizer. As said above, the Russians committed the largest crime possible by invading. Everything else came about because of that. I am a war nerd. It is something I find interesting. Part of the problem with the fucking propaganda for this war is that it makes actually finding out what is happening the most difficult to follow of all of the wars in my lifetime. It also leads to just stupid fucking opinions, like if someone says the Ukrainian offensive is going poorly means that that person is a Russian Sympathizer. Being morally right doesn’t mean that everything you do is effective.