Breaking News : Russians Pulling Back In Northern Ukraine
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Summary
- Russia has decided to "drastically reduce combat operations" around the capital Kyiv and the northern city of Chernihiv, its deputy defence minister says
- He is among officials in Istanbul for face-to-face talks with a Ukrainian delegation
- Ukraine says its top priority from the talks, which will begin early on Tuesday, is to negotiate a ceasefire
- Hopes of progress at the talks are slim, with both sides playing down the chances of a breakthrough
- Chelsea owner and Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich has turned up at the meetings
- The Kremlin dismisses reports that the billionaire was poisoned earlier this month
- Turkey's President Erdogan says it's time the talks yield "concrete results"
Ukraine war latest: Russia says it will 'drastically reduce' attacks around Kyiv - BBC News
Tags
Who is online
57 visitors
The Russian said they are pulling back as a signal in advance of peace talks.
This could be something.
It would be sad if Putins plan all along was to bomb the shit out of Ukraine until they came to the table to give him the two areas he wanted and promised not to join Nato which is what he said he wanted before this began . I can see him using Biden's latest booboo to promote his us against the world narrative and then claim victory against the "nazies" who can obviously no longer start a war against Russia and he does indeed get what I mentioned above. Except for the little detail of thousands of Russian deaths I can see this as possibly solidifying his hold on the Russian people that only hear what he wants them to hear. Of course I will be most interested to see what security guarantees he could give Ukraine that would be acceptable to them and if Russia is going to help pay for rebuilding the country he destroyed.
My guess it is not a good something. I'm pretty sure that Putin wanted everything east of the Dnieper river and all of the coast at the least and, had it gone as he thought it would at the start, maybe all of Ukraine. Since then he's gotten his ass handed to him and he's looking for a way out. Problem, he can't simply go back to what the situation was before the invasion as claiming that as a victory would be a pretty hard sell. I think he's going to waste time in order to reposition his troops to hold on to as much of the east as he can an complete taking the coast if he can. If he can do that, Ukraine is going to be pretty much screwed.
I hardly know what Ukraine's military posture is right at the moment, but if they could manage it, I would think they would want to move as many forces as they could to the south and start pushing the Russians back in the south as much as possible. I wouldn't agree to a cease fire, or not for very long, unless Putin started making some serious concessions I don't really see him making. Putin is a pathological liar and what he says will not match what he does. I'd really hate to see Ukraine give him time to consolidate and get more time to move more troops in. If Ukraine has the strength, they need to keep pushing.
Of course, it isn't my people dying or my cities and economy being destroyed, so, easy for me to say.
I would not believe a word of what Putin says. Let's wait and see if they actually do follow through which I doubt will happen.
At this moment the Russians are shelling Kyiv. So much for the BS from Putin.
Yup. Why I say Ukraine needs to keep kicking their ass as much as they can. If half of what I've been hearing isn't just our own side's disinformation, the Russian grunt isn't a very happy individual at the moment, most likely with their own command. Gotta wonder how much more they can stand of their command's incompetence.
A report yesterday stated that a commander of a tank battalion was killed by his own troops. They ran over him with a tank. The Kremlin confirmed that he was killed but did not state how. Intercepted conversations between Russians one stated that one of the men had run over him with a tank. That unit suffered 50% casualties so I'm sure that the troops were fed up with the stupidity of the command.
Speaking of which, one of the most baffling things about the Russian army is they still, and I would like to emphasize "still", do not understand how fundamentally essential a professional NCO element is to a modern army. I don't care what equipment, no matter how advanced, they come up with, they couldn't come up with a greater force multiplier than establishing a good NCO corp.
when I was deployed to Bosnia in '97 we did a combined fire exercise with the Russian Artillery. They were amazed not only by the size and speed of our M109 Paladin capabilities but the fact that we did not rely on an officer to give the final command to fire for each howitzer. They could not wrap their heads around that the Fire Direction Chief and Howitzer Crew Chief positions are Staff Sergeants.
In total we had 12 Howitzers (6 American, 6 Russian) on the firing point. Total fire mission times and accuracy of fires were so far off from each other that one of the Russian officers admitted that, if it come down to an artillery on artillery fight they would lose quickly.
I'm hardly a subject matter expert but my guess is that what you saw there was the difference between centralized and decentralized command structures and their comparative advantages. Perhaps the biggest problem with the Russian model is that it seems to kill initiative. One thing I've heard more than once about the Russian troops in Ukraine is that, unless someone tells them to do something, they don't do anything or do the wrong thing. Quite different from what you and I were taught in things like "Lead, follow or get out of the way, " or being briefed on the "commander's intent."