The news we hear from mainstream media since the war in Ukraine has all been messages of hope, news about Ukrainians who are standing tall, failures of the Russians to achieve their goals. Since Russian news is banned from U.S. news media, and that seems to be interpreted as ignoring anything that shows Russia is succeeding, a great many facts are lost and perspectives have been skewed.
But this is the bottom line.
It is a race against time. The U.S. and NATO need for Zelenskyy and Ukraine to hold on for at least a couple of months. If he doesn’t, if he surrenders, then not only is Russia emboldened to expand itself in other ways but China will be emboldened and will likely attack Taiwan, knowing that the U.S. and NATO will be ineffective in preventing it.
After a couple of months, the suffering imposed by U.S./NATO sanctions will start to severely affect the Russian people. Russia will become less stable, and Putin’s support will become tenuous. Conceivably, his reign could end – or Putin himself could become unstable and do rash things.
But the Ukrainian people will be subject to major suffering. The only way that Zelensky has to relieve this suffering right at moment is to acquiesce. It will lose some territory, but it will likely be safe from further invasion for the foreseeable future.
I don’t blame Ukraine for putting out propaganda to get sympathy and perhaps actual material support from the rest of the world.
But I’m not going to believe it 100%, much as I would like to.
I’m going to throw some other information at you, some of it originating from the other side. So don’t take that as gospel either.
The graphic below is from a Russian information source for March 11, this is the information that the people of Russia are seeing. Even without a translation, you can see that the Russians believe they have control over almost half of Ukraine and that the major cities of Mariupol, Kharkiv, Odessa and Kyiv are in deep trouble.
Compare it to the chart beneath it, we see Russian control from the Ukrainian point of view. They are kind of the same, except the territory controlled is much thinner.
Even if you figure that the truth is somewhere in between, Ukraine is in deep trouble.
The link below is a video from 5 days ago, from Youtube channel “Task & Purpose” by Chris Cappy. He is doing his best to sort out objectively what is going on there without regard to sides. This is worth a listen. He appears to be balanced and technical in his approach.
A couple of things of interest, he is noting that maintenance for the Russian equipment is starting to become a problem. For example, the tires of military transport vehicles appear to be dry rotted and are failing because of it. He notes that this is likely because some general responsible for maintaining tires, simply pocketed the money. If this becomes a systemic problem, this could severely limit the amount of time Putin has to finish this before spare parts run out.
He dismisses the idea that the 40 mile convoy stops frequently, he notes that this is normal, that the drivers are human and need sleep.
Cappy seems to feel that Putin has only a month or two to pull this off before the Russian people start to rebel. I’m sure Putin knows this too.
The next video is from Felix Rex with Michael De La Broc and Punching Bag Post contributor George Mcmillan.
We don’t necessarily agree with all of the opinions expressed on this, but Michael is on the ground in Kyiv and has access to more facts than anyone else we have access to.
The Russians are starting to consolidate, making their advance easier.
The Russians are deploying their drones, not sure why they were not used in the first week. The Russian Air Force is starting to increase its operations, making more of a tactical impact.
The Ukrainians seem to be defending Kharkiv, but the Russians have a huge advantage. Anticipate that Russia will have a continually increasing advantage.
The area in the south around Nicolev is crucial for the Russians, it would provide transit routes north for Russia and would essentially make Ukraine a landlocked country.
The chart below shows the movements of the Russian military, it is a bit hard to read, but you see how many lines of attack there are. This is a very complex situation
