Western media have finally change course. They are now admitting that the much promoted Ukrainian counter-offensive has failed. In fact, the acknowledge that it never had a chance to win in the first place.

The Hill, the Washington Post and CNN now agree that the Ukrainian army will never achieve its aims.

western MSM has a rare encounter with reality!

That makes it difficult for the Biden administration to get Congress approval for $24 billion in additional ‘aid’ to Ukraine. It does not make sense to pay for a cause that is evidently lost.

b seems overly hopeful regarding the rationality of US congress, but i think hes right- why would we throw more money at them, US politicians have made it clear they do not support bringing Ukraine into NATO if they do not win this conflict. of course, US politicians are prone to lying and misleading

Nothing has come from the ‘peace conference’ which Saudi Arabia arranged on Ukraine’s behalf

lol. lmao even. props to big dog MBS for trying

Despite the onslaught of bad news the Ukrainian army is still trying to take Russian positions in the south and east of Ukraine. But it simply does not have enough in men and material to break through the lines.

Even if they would manage to get a local breakthrough there are not enough reserves to push for the necessary follow up. Just one of the NATO trained brigades has still been held back. All others have been mauled in their various deployment zones.

nothing has changed it seems

In the northeast around Kupyansk the Russians have started their own offensive which has the Ukrainians on the run. Ukraine has ordered the evacuation of the area

But Kupyansk is a Russian city and people refuse to leave.

show this to the libs claiming Russians are committing genocide in the regions they capture. curious that these civilians are content with Russian occupation when you believe what western media claims

The Russian campaign is slowly speeding up. As the Ukrainian Strana.news reports (machine translation):

Also in Ukraine, it is recorded that from Kupyansk to Bakhmut, Russia has increased the number of attacks.

"Over the past month, the total number of attacks in the Kupyansk, Limansky and Bakhmut directions has grown significantly. In July, during the week there were 6-6.5 thousand attacks, during the last week-9 thousand attacks, " - said the representative of the National Guard Ruslan Muzychuk.

According to him, the Russian Federation does not experience “shell hunger”.

Aviation is also actively used, and over the past few weeks, more than 50 air attacks have been taking place every day, and sometimes more than 80.

That is bad news for the Ukrainian side which lacks the reserves to counter the Russian onslaught. There are also less weapons coming in from the West. F-16 fighter jets will be delayed for another nine months due to training issues. Tanks and other material are in short supply.

these supply issues sure bode well for the west’s performance in WW3 sicko-hyper

Strana also report of an interview with a knowledgeable Ukrainian soldier (machine translation):

Continuing the topic of the situation at the front, an interesting interview was given by a Ukrainian sniper fighting near Bakhmut with the call sign “Grandfather”. On the air of political scientist Yuri Romanenko, he was introduced as Konstantin Proshinsky (this is a pseudonym).

The fighter spoke in detail about his vision of the situation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Russian army.

  1. Mobilization. In his opinion, it is conducted incorrectly. Recruits are sent to the front who have never been trained, and they are often over 50 years old and with a whole bunch of diseases.
  1. No rotation. The soldier says that “the same brigades” are fighting at the front, and people are not taken out of the front line for six months or more. Whereas by Western standards, they can be kept in a war zone for no more than three months.
  1. Behavior of mid-and high-level commanders. According to Proshinsky, many of them are trying to arrange a “mini-Stalingrad” on the positions, forcing them to go into frontal assaults on well-fortified Russian positions.
  1. The Russian Army began to fight better.
  1. Proshinsky believes that Russia has not yet used much of what it has against Ukraine.

The soldier thinks that the Russians will not move from their positions and that a stalemate peace like in Korea would be the end result.

UAF in real dire times— recruiting the elderly, poor logistics, engaging the enemy at inopportune times, and Russia has yet to waver

I believe that to be wrong. Russia’s aim is to liberate at least the four regions that it has claimed for itself. For political reasons it can not stop before that is done.

Should the Ukraine continue to fight after that, Russia is likely to set new aims and take more land.

more editorializing, but it doesnt seem unreasonable. i thought Russia would stick to its original goal of Donetsk and Luhansk, but if Zaporizhzhia and Kherson are receptive to Russian governance, it would be foolish for Russia to give them up

  • ZoomeristLeninist [comrade/them, she/her]@hexbear.netOPM
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    some Ukrainians are being coerced into serving. libs will call me a Russian bot for this, but i dont think the same can be said for Russia. they have enough active military personnel to avoid drafting; they havent even deployed them all

    but yeah, war is depressing. hopefully before we go extinct we will achieve communism and end war

    • cynesthesia [any]@hexbear.net
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      there were tens of thousands of casualties from wagner’s prisoner troops. they recruited a lot out of prisons - how is that not coercion

    • BeamBrain [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      Does Ukraine really need to coerce people into serving? I was under the impression that the country had huge numbers of bloodthirsty fascists salivating at the thought of killing “RuZZian orcs.”

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        The Ukrainian leader said all officials responsible for military conscription in each region of the country were dismissed.

        Mr Zelenskyy said a probe into military recruitment centres across the nation exposed illegal dealings including bribery.

        The investigations also unveiled reports of officials helping men dodge conscription by fleeing across borders.

        There is currently a wartime ban on travel for draft-eligible men.

        “This system should be run by people who know exactly what war is and why cynicism and bribery during war is treason,” Mr Zelenskyy said on Friday.

        ‘recruitment’ lmao

      • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        There are a huge number of racists in Ukraine but that doesn’t make it a monolith. When you see things like 76% approval for Bandera, some people support him killing Jews but some were genuinely miseducated on him.

        Also, a lot of these people have families in places where bombs have fallen, will fall, or are currently falling. In the face of a massive enemy like Russia, even as a Ukrainian reactionary there is a good case to be made to just stay and protect your family since you aren’t going to stop the bombs. Being there to rescue a survivor right after a bomb hits is much more likely to help them than making sure a thermobaric missile kills 17 people instead of 16 on the front lines.

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        It’s a country of like I think forty million people. It’s not a monolith. The Banderites are strongest in Galacia, which varying amounts of support beyond that.

    • SuperNovaCouchGuy2 [any]@hexbear.net
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      some Ukrainians are being coerced into serving. libs will call me a Russian bot for this,

      Nah they can’t, even western news outlets acknowledged that zelenskyyyy banned all working age men from leaving the country, effectively condemning them to die in the war as cannon fodder for NATO.

      • NoGodsNoMasters [they/them, she/her]@hexbear.net
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        libs will call me a Russian bot for this, but i dont think the same can be said for Russia.

        I think they were talking about libs calling them a bot for saying Russia didn’t have to rely on coercion. I’d still disagree with that though because afaik Russia actually has been (or at least was at one point, correct me if that’s changed) using conscripts in Ukraine.

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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      I’m not sure if there’s been conscription of new soldiers, but Russia has taken some pretty marked measures to ensure they have enough people - Retirements for older soldiers have been postponed, they’ve called in retired technicians and specialists to take over positions within russia to free up young workers for military duties. I think there was some serious resistance to the call up early on. Maybe not widespread, but enough to be noteworthy.

      • those are typical wartime measures tho. unemployment is currently incredibly low in Russia, so pulling ppl out of retirement is to maintain a reserve army of labor. i dont think this is good and hope Russia has a proletarian revolution, but by capitalist standards, they arent acting inordinately cruel

    • Aabbcc@lemm.ee
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      libs will call me a Russian bot

      Everyone who disagrees with me is a lib is great defense. Chuds will disagree with me though

        • Aabbcc@lemm.ee
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          I don’t consider myself a lib. Housing should not be an asset for profit. Workers pay should increase based on the value they create. Housing first policy for the homeless. Food prices should not be rising based on corporate profit seeking

          I think I’m still pro market economy, but not in a capitalist sense. A market economy can incentivize progress, but workers shouldn’t be forced to participate at minimum wage through the threat of hunger and homelessness.

          corporate power lobbying has ruined public infrastructure and that’s bad.

          But I’m not backing Russia fully on this invasion thing, so I’m definitely a liberal!

          • somename [she/her]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            I don’t think anyone here really supports Russia, in the sense that we want them to conquer Ukraine. More that we don’t see prolonging the war as useful for anything but killing more people and selling more weapons. Peace is what we should all aim for here.

            • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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              Yeah. A Russian victory, or at least a favorabel stalemate, is desirable because it would harm NATO, not because there’s anything good about Russia. There’s some argument to be made that it’s likely better than allowing Ethnic Russian Russian Speaking Ukrainians to fall in to the hands of the Banderites that run Kiev, but that’s kind of up in the air.

          • JuneFall [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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            Workers pay should increase based on the value they create

            Who do you think should get shares from the worker’s fruits of labours, too? Who do you think ought to distribute them on the level of a company and on the level of societies?

            Housing should not be an asset for profit

            What changes in laws and legislation as well as enforcement of power are needed for that? To de-commodify what Neoliberalism and Colonialism as well as Imperialism did privatize over the last centuries will be a hard fight.

            How do you think power can be generated to achieve those goals? Which in itself are idealist or utopist. The question is how to change the world after all.

            pro market economy, but not in a capitalist sense

            So “Markets Not Capitalism: Individualist Anarchism Against” type?

      • JuneFall [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        Quite a leap you do there. Ignoring political science and social science of more than 100 years, ignoring how social democratic liberals in the Weimar Republic did ally with conservatives and the military against party member who weren’t in favour of the war with talk of traitors and propaganda of being the voice of the enemy (which is the back then equivalent of “Russian Bots”) is certainly something.

        You also ignore the difference i.e. from USA liberal’s who favour property rights over people’s lives and often espouse values only as long as it doesn’t cost a thing and how they do support the US empire and often its wars.

        You also leap since OP didn’t say “all are against me!”, but was precise. That you don’t understand slang is kinda a You problem. You also deny the experience of others, maybe that is something that you also do in your regular life and social interactions? If so you can utilize a change of perspective and behavior to get more from the world. People here - even ones who are far from Russian propaganda - are often called Russian bots by people on many instances, often by people labeling themselves as liberals. I have different views than many on this site and yet I can differentiate what people say.

        Finally do you think your argument is in any way new or interesting? Like, what was your motivation to post it?