Beyond whether or not the T-Rump will attend the funeral for Queen Elizabeth, the war in Ukraine is again nailing the top news story for the day — and a bonus is how the Ukrainian military played the Russkies like a cheap-suited fiddle in a way-low-brow chess match:
"Ukraine’s restraint in Kherson now looks like a tactical decision. As Ukrainian Minister of Defense Oleksii Reznikov admitted Saturday, Ukraine’s generals had been planning to launch two campaigns simultaneously."
https://t.co/7RaLUrcoER— Dan Lamothe (@DanLamothe) September 12, 2022
In a quick-read essay this morning at The Atlantic, Phillips Payson O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and author of, “How the War Was Won: Air-Sea Power and Allied Victory in World War II,” explains how the Ukrainians sucker-punched the Russkies utilizing a shitload of resources — read the whole piece, way-interesting:
This stunning Ukrainian advance was anything but sudden. It resulted from a patient military buildup, excellent operational security, and, maybe most important, the diversion of some of the Russian army’s most powerful units from Kharkiv Oblast itself. The overall planning by the Ukrainian government and armed forces worked well on so many levels that it produced one of the greatest military-strategy successes since 1945.
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Though the war is far from over and Russia can find new ways to punish Ukraine, collapsing Russian forces have not only been pushed back; in abandoning their former headquarters in Izium, they also left behind large stores of equipment and ammunition that the Ukrainians can now use against them. Even if the Russians stabilize the line in the coming days, they will be in a far worse position than they were on September 1. Building on months of careful efforts to both prepare Ukrainian forces and waste Russian ones, Ukraine has achieved a strategic masterstroke that military scholars will study for decades to come.
Putin’s army was/is a joke. And the real question is how will Putin handle it.
Shit could get heavy — per The New York Times late this afternoon:
More than 40 local elected officials across Russia signed a two-sentence petition on Monday that ended with: “We demand the resignation of Vladimir Putin from the post of president of the Russian Federation!”
The petition, pushed by opponents of the Ukraine invasion, had no practical impact, and it was roundly ignored in Russia’s state-controlled media. But it was striking in its very existence, showing that despite the Kremlin’s extraordinary crackdown on dissent, Ukraine’s counteroffensive successes have left opponents of President Vladimir V. Putin newly emboldened — and his supporters looking for someone else to blame.
Further and a nasty plus on Russia’s armed forces — from The Washington Post, also late this afternoon:
Whether the gains are permanent depends on Russia’s next moves, especially whether President Vladimir Putin implements a military draft or orders reinforcements from elsewhere to offset heavy losses in Ukraine, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share recent intelligence analyses.
In mere days, Ukrainian military forces have retaken nearly all of the Kharkiv region that Russian forces occupied since the opening of the war. The rapidity of the pullback appears to have stunned Russian military troops and commanders, officials said.
“The Russians are in trouble,” one U.S. official said bluntly.
“The question will be how the Russians will react, but their weaknesses have been exposed and they don’t have great manpower reserves or equipment reserves.”
And, too, there’s the dangerous nit-twit T-Rump and shit beyond the Queen’s funeral — war and Putin’s obvious war criminal facade:
(Image by Rainer Hachfeld/Neues Deutschland, Germany, and found here.)
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky yesterday on the creepy, crazy-ass shit between the Orange Turd and Vlad (via The Hill): ‘“I believe he had enough time, plenty of time, to understand who Putin is … I think he was sitting at such a high position where it’s not even possible not to recognize that [Putin] is the opponent in terms of values to your own people. He [Trump] has all the might of this country — intelligence, data — to create [a] psychological profile … Ukraine in his eyes is too far away. But this war has no distances it could not cover, so I believe he needs to look at the situation without, as we say, pink glasses on.”‘
Yet Zelensky should know he’s not dealing with anyone with any semblance of sense.
And here we are once again…
(Illustration out front: Pablo Picasso’s ‘Les Deux Saltimbanques: l’Arlequin et Sa Compagne,’ found here.)