Doesn't matter.
As long as you can't drive a train or a truck over that broken bridge, it's mission accomplished.
Ukraine’s offensive derails secret efforts for partial cease-fire with Russia, officials say
- Thread starter oil&gas
- Start date
As long as you can't drive a train or a truck over that broken bridge, it's mission accomplished.
WHoa whoa whoa, If Russia withdraws and even forfits all it's over season money as reps but keeps the washing machines, this must not stand. After getting back all it's land and reps Ukraine must immediately launch attacks into Russia killing civilians, raping women and taking hostages. Have you learned nothing from the terb hate crew? Frankie and pals spend all that time posting 40 times a day teaching us and we learn nothing. Oh wait. Stupid me, that's only OK when you are targeting Jews, I am sure Frankie would point out that Russians are people.
I am so sorry.
I'd agree the incursion is nothing more than a publicity stunt.
That said I would still say it is in Putin's interest to end the
war at this point and that has nothing to do with the incursion
of Ukraine's troops into Russia which will be devoured.
Supply of aid to Ukraine, though less than sufficient for
Ukraine to win the war, seems to have no end.
Ukraine is already set to receive extra military aid from
Sweden. That doesn't bode well for Russia given that it
is also bound to lose tens of billions through confiscation
of its assets. Putin may count on Trump's return. Trump
will give NATO-Europe and Canada a hard time by coercing
them into spending more money on purchase of U.S.-made
weapons and military technologies on top of giving away
their stocks of ammunition and arms to Ukraine in exchange for
America's protection of Europe from nuclear attack. As
cheap as members of NATO-Europe, France in particular,
are, they may have no other choice but to go along with
Trump. Even without U.S. material contribution to the proxy
war NATO-Europe UK and Canada together have the means
to bleed Russia dry in a protracted war of attrition.
Trump's return will help Putin out only if NATO-Europe and Canada
decide against footing the bill for the U.S. on the proxy war.
Except that Russia = Israel in this metaphor.
Russia has invaded Ukraine and is illegally occupying parts
Israel has invaded Palestine and is illegally occupying the entire country
You are Putin if you're using this metaphor.
Speak the pravda komrade! Pravda! Swallow that pure Russian truth nice and smooth... take it right down your throat and swallow and you won't even taste it!
Never mind the PR coup and humiliation of Putin's Russia.. this Ukrainian "Special Military Operation" has cut off vital military, transportation, natrual gas supply lines as well as as dislodged a main Russian Command center. It also netted Ukraine tonnes of abandoned ammunition, weapons, armoured vehicles including tanks. As well ahs hundreds of prisoners of war that Putin has felat are so valuable that HE has opened the prisoner exchange auction with the first bid.
Blah, blah, blah....
Do you understand that Russia has mortally poisoned itself by drinking its own tea? They have lost their hair, but still insist it's their choice of a new hairstyle. The polonium that is the Russki Mir is still latently destroying the internal organs of the brain and the body of the Federation.
Even if they ceased fire now, Russia is fucked.
In fact, as a result of the semi-permanent changes and new contracts relating to the former Gas Station known as Russia, these deadbeats won't be able to sell enough gas and oil to begin to pay reparations, least of all stop their country's economic collapse. Except for Belarus, Hungary and one other of Putin's booklickers, Europe is OFF Russian gas for the foreseeable future. Aside from the Nordstream pipelines being gone forever, much of Europe has entered into contracts with Qatar and other countries for LNG and invested in their own LNG facilities. If Germany backed out of the deal with Qatar, they'd be on the hook for the massive LNG infrastructure Qatar is building based on that contract.
And what western countries are going to go into what will become another shit hole country with internal conflict and strife to see who shakes out as the next Tsar?
Nah, Russia is just the Walking Dead. They just haven't fallen over... yet.
Ukraine is invading with British tanks. What does it mean for us?
Aug 18, 2024
When footage of British Challenger 2 battle tanks being used by the Ukrainian army for its counterinvasion of Russia emerged on Tuesday, Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence were ready.
For the previous 48 hours, officials and political aides working for Sir Keir Starmer and John Healey, the defence secretary, had been in talks about how far to go to confirm growing British involvement in the incursion towards Kursk.
The stakes were high. Unseen by the world, British equipment, including drones, have played a central role in Ukraine’s new offensive and British personnel have been closely advising the Ukrainian military for two years, on a scale matched by no other country.
By Friday, a Russian MP, Mikhail Sheremet, predicted that “the presence of western military equipment” in the attack meant “the world is on the brink of a third world war”.
Nikolai Patrushev, a key Putin aide, accused western intelligence agencies of helping plan the attack, launched on August 6, in which President Zelensky ordered a rapier thrust into Russia via three mechanised infantry brigades and three air assault brigades.
When the war in Ukraine began in 2022, the Conservative defence secretary at the time, Sir Ben Wallace, authorised the Ukrainian military to use British equipment inside Russia provided it complied with international law, which permits offensive attacks against airfields and supply lines in self-defence.
Defence officials point out that more than 2,000 Russian attacks on Ukraine, some against towns and civilians, have been launched from the Kursk pocket.
The decision Starmer and Healey took last week was not a policy shift but a change of tone to be more open about Britain’s role in a bid to persuade key allies to do more to help — and convince the public that Britain’s security and economic prosperity is affected by events on the fields of Ukraine. A senior Whitehall source said: “There won’t be shying away from the idea of British weapons being used in Russia as part of Ukraine’s defence. We don’t want any uncertainty or nervousness over Britain’s support at this critical moment and a half-hearted or uncertain response might have indicated that. We should be proud that we’ve donated kit that is helping Ukraine in their defence.”
To ensure a united British front, Healey and David Lammy, the foreign secretary, have set up a joint Ukraine unit between the MoD and the Foreign Office. Aides stress that the pair have made seven joint foreign trips, including a first one together to Kyiv while in the opposition and their first as ministers to the Middle East. “We are incorporating defence into our reset of our relations with allies,” a defence source said. Healey and Lammy also held a joint briefing, with officials, for a cross-party group of 60 MPs on Ukraine at the MoD.
Starmer has also asked the National Security Council to draw up plans to provide Ukraine with a broader range of support. Last week he sent John Bew to Kyiv. Bew was foreign policy adviser to the last three Tory prime ministers but has agreed to stay on to help the new government with his huge range of contacts.
“It’s not just about the military support, but it’s about the industrial, economic, and diplomatic support,” the defence source said. “If Putin succeeds in Ukraine he’s not going to stop there. But also the economic implications of that are massive, because we all saw how heavily Britain got hit when he first invaded.”
The night before Zelensky addressed the cabinet last month, he and Healey had dinner with defence industry bosses.
So what is Zelensky up to? The answer is partly political and partly military. The Ukrainian president suggested last week that the incursion was designed to ensure future peace talks were conducted on Ukraine’s terms, but no one thinks talks are possible before the spring and probably not until the autumn of 2025.
In reality, it was partly designed to boost morale at home and shore up Zelensky’s position. His democratic mandate ran out in May and his only authority now comes from martial law.
Michael Clarke, one of Britain’s leading defence analysts, said: “It’s a classic military counterpunch, trying to relieve pressure elsewhere. What the Ukrainians are hoping is that it reduces the pressure in the Donbas region [where Russian attacks are concentrated].” Another military source said: “They wanted to create a strategic dilemma for Russia, which is: do they take troops away from their main effort in Ukraine to deal with this?”
As a surprise military operation, it showed bravura. “Ukraine detected that Russia doesn’t have enough electronic warfare detection to go round,” a security source said. “They found the hole and just punched it and nothing was on the other side.”
Unlike the repeatedly announced Ukrainian counteroffensive last year, which went nowhere, Ukraine did nothing to signal the attack in advance, a point made by the Ukrainian defence minister in a conversation with Grant Shapps, another former Tory defence secretary, last week. Shapps is now drumming up support for Ukraine with a planned tour of key European capitals.
However, if Kyiv hoped Russia would immediately divert troops from Ukraine to retake the Kursk pocket, Russian generals seem instead to have capitalised on the absence of four crack Ukrainian regiments to press their attacks around Pokrovsk and Chasiv Yar.
The next few months could be pivotal. The one British weapon which cannot be used inside Russia is also the most powerful, the Storm Shadow cruise missile. Shapps, Wallace’s successor, authorised its use — after a battle with an initially reluctant Rishi Sunak — in Crimea.
At the D-Day commemorations which Sunak left early, Shapps also spoke to Starmer about extending its use into Russia in case the Tory government wanted to change the rules before the election.
The prime minister has since publicly voiced support for extending permission to Russian territory. But since the missile is a joint project, that also requires the permission of the US and France (where the missiles are called Scalp), both of whom fear escalation with Russia.
Clarke said: “I am a bit surprised that they are this cautious. The argument Starmer makes is that he is trying to square it with the allies because if it looks as if the Brits were too far ahead of their Nato allies, it might be counterproductive.”
However, both the UK and — somewhat later — France have allowed Storm Shadow/Scalp to be used in Crimea to “functionally disable” much of the Russian Black Sea fleet.
In the coming weeks Healey will attend a new meeting of the Ukraine Defence Co-ordination Group, where Britain will press European allies to send more equipment and give Kyiv more leeway to use them in Russia. Healey spoke last week to Lloyd Austin, the US defence secretary, and has been wooing Boris Pistorius, his German opposite number.
Germany, whose Taurus missiles have a similar 155-mile range to Storm Shadow but a more powerful warhead, has been the country under the most pressure to move. However, it was revealed yesterday that Germany has actually frozen military aid to Ukraine because of a domestic budgetary crisis. Pistorius had asked for £3.4 billion of additional supplies but that was rejected by the finance ministry.
Wallace called on Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, to drop his opposition to Taurus being used by Ukraine. “Storm Shadows and French Scalp have shown their worth in deteriorating Russian command-and-control centres and strategic targets,” he said. “There can be no more excuses for Germany to continue to block the supply of Taurus missiles, which could bring extra capability and a welcome refresh of ammunition stocks.”
Ukraine could do with such weapons now since it is targeting airfields in the Kursk pocket where Russian “glide bombs” are launched. “If the Ukrainians are to make a success of this Kursk offensive, they’ve got to do something about the glide bombs,” Clarke said. “You’ve got to go after the airbases and the storage.”
British officials and experts think their European allies are too concerned about provoking Russian escalation. Despite increases in the military kit supplied to Ukraine, security officials say there has been no sign of Russia even threatening to use tactical nuclear weapons — the nightmare scenario which would make the third world war threats credible.
“The Russians always spit fire and brimstone,” said one defence source. “I can promise you they haven’t moved a muscle in the direction of nuclear use since the war began. We look at this all the time because tactical nuclear use involves lots of stages. Lots of people are involved, lots of movement of missiles.”
Targeting a “moderately concentrated” brigade of 5,000 troops would need “five or six” nuclear warheads, the source said, an ineffective strategy.
Such a move makes no political sense for Putin, who is understood to have been restrained by his Chinese allies. They have made clear that their support is dependent on no nuclear deployment. But Russia has also been warned of a massive US-led conventional response if they go nuclear. In October 2022 General David Petraeus, the former director of the CIA, who commanded US forces in Afghanistan, issued a public warning to Putin. He said: “We would respond by leading a Nato (collective) effort that would take out every Russian conventional force that we can see and identify on the battlefield in Ukraine and also in Crimea and every ship in the Black Sea.”
British sources say his intervention was made with the approval of the Biden administration. Some believe Beijing and Washington have a tacit agreement to restrain both sides.
What happens next depends on the game of military cat and mouse. The assumption is that Russia will counterattack at Kursk before the winter sets in at the end of October. Western analysts agree the Ukrainians will not want to try to hold all the ground they have taken.
For now, it is a success for Zelensky and an embarrassment for the Russian military, which has already lost 15,000 armoured vehicles and 6,000 tanks and been forced to deploy veteran T-54 tanks, a 70-year-old model decommissioned more than 40 years ago.
But with the possibility of a second Donald Trump presidency in November, Starmer’s team and senior figures from the last government — including Boris Johnson, Shapps and Wallace — are all engaged in an effort to shore up support.
Shapps said: “A democratic country invaded by its autocratic neighbour isn’t just a disaster for that nation but for the whole world. Democracies must therefore stop at nothing to ensure that freedom wins. We cannot simply hope for Ukraine to win against Russia, we have to provide the means, too.”
Aug 18, 2024
When footage of British Challenger 2 battle tanks being used by the Ukrainian army for its counterinvasion of Russia emerged on Tuesday, Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence were ready.
For the previous 48 hours, officials and political aides working for Sir Keir Starmer and John Healey, the defence secretary, had been in talks about how far to go to confirm growing British involvement in the incursion towards Kursk.
The stakes were high. Unseen by the world, British equipment, including drones, have played a central role in Ukraine’s new offensive and British personnel have been closely advising the Ukrainian military for two years, on a scale matched by no other country.
By Friday, a Russian MP, Mikhail Sheremet, predicted that “the presence of western military equipment” in the attack meant “the world is on the brink of a third world war”.
Nikolai Patrushev, a key Putin aide, accused western intelligence agencies of helping plan the attack, launched on August 6, in which President Zelensky ordered a rapier thrust into Russia via three mechanised infantry brigades and three air assault brigades.
When the war in Ukraine began in 2022, the Conservative defence secretary at the time, Sir Ben Wallace, authorised the Ukrainian military to use British equipment inside Russia provided it complied with international law, which permits offensive attacks against airfields and supply lines in self-defence.
Defence officials point out that more than 2,000 Russian attacks on Ukraine, some against towns and civilians, have been launched from the Kursk pocket.
The decision Starmer and Healey took last week was not a policy shift but a change of tone to be more open about Britain’s role in a bid to persuade key allies to do more to help — and convince the public that Britain’s security and economic prosperity is affected by events on the fields of Ukraine. A senior Whitehall source said: “There won’t be shying away from the idea of British weapons being used in Russia as part of Ukraine’s defence. We don’t want any uncertainty or nervousness over Britain’s support at this critical moment and a half-hearted or uncertain response might have indicated that. We should be proud that we’ve donated kit that is helping Ukraine in their defence.”
To ensure a united British front, Healey and David Lammy, the foreign secretary, have set up a joint Ukraine unit between the MoD and the Foreign Office. Aides stress that the pair have made seven joint foreign trips, including a first one together to Kyiv while in the opposition and their first as ministers to the Middle East. “We are incorporating defence into our reset of our relations with allies,” a defence source said. Healey and Lammy also held a joint briefing, with officials, for a cross-party group of 60 MPs on Ukraine at the MoD.
Starmer has also asked the National Security Council to draw up plans to provide Ukraine with a broader range of support. Last week he sent John Bew to Kyiv. Bew was foreign policy adviser to the last three Tory prime ministers but has agreed to stay on to help the new government with his huge range of contacts.
“It’s not just about the military support, but it’s about the industrial, economic, and diplomatic support,” the defence source said. “If Putin succeeds in Ukraine he’s not going to stop there. But also the economic implications of that are massive, because we all saw how heavily Britain got hit when he first invaded.”
The night before Zelensky addressed the cabinet last month, he and Healey had dinner with defence industry bosses.
So what is Zelensky up to? The answer is partly political and partly military. The Ukrainian president suggested last week that the incursion was designed to ensure future peace talks were conducted on Ukraine’s terms, but no one thinks talks are possible before the spring and probably not until the autumn of 2025.
In reality, it was partly designed to boost morale at home and shore up Zelensky’s position. His democratic mandate ran out in May and his only authority now comes from martial law.
Michael Clarke, one of Britain’s leading defence analysts, said: “It’s a classic military counterpunch, trying to relieve pressure elsewhere. What the Ukrainians are hoping is that it reduces the pressure in the Donbas region [where Russian attacks are concentrated].” Another military source said: “They wanted to create a strategic dilemma for Russia, which is: do they take troops away from their main effort in Ukraine to deal with this?”
As a surprise military operation, it showed bravura. “Ukraine detected that Russia doesn’t have enough electronic warfare detection to go round,” a security source said. “They found the hole and just punched it and nothing was on the other side.”
Unlike the repeatedly announced Ukrainian counteroffensive last year, which went nowhere, Ukraine did nothing to signal the attack in advance, a point made by the Ukrainian defence minister in a conversation with Grant Shapps, another former Tory defence secretary, last week. Shapps is now drumming up support for Ukraine with a planned tour of key European capitals.
However, if Kyiv hoped Russia would immediately divert troops from Ukraine to retake the Kursk pocket, Russian generals seem instead to have capitalised on the absence of four crack Ukrainian regiments to press their attacks around Pokrovsk and Chasiv Yar.
The next few months could be pivotal. The one British weapon which cannot be used inside Russia is also the most powerful, the Storm Shadow cruise missile. Shapps, Wallace’s successor, authorised its use — after a battle with an initially reluctant Rishi Sunak — in Crimea.
At the D-Day commemorations which Sunak left early, Shapps also spoke to Starmer about extending its use into Russia in case the Tory government wanted to change the rules before the election.
The prime minister has since publicly voiced support for extending permission to Russian territory. But since the missile is a joint project, that also requires the permission of the US and France (where the missiles are called Scalp), both of whom fear escalation with Russia.
Clarke said: “I am a bit surprised that they are this cautious. The argument Starmer makes is that he is trying to square it with the allies because if it looks as if the Brits were too far ahead of their Nato allies, it might be counterproductive.”
However, both the UK and — somewhat later — France have allowed Storm Shadow/Scalp to be used in Crimea to “functionally disable” much of the Russian Black Sea fleet.
In the coming weeks Healey will attend a new meeting of the Ukraine Defence Co-ordination Group, where Britain will press European allies to send more equipment and give Kyiv more leeway to use them in Russia. Healey spoke last week to Lloyd Austin, the US defence secretary, and has been wooing Boris Pistorius, his German opposite number.
Germany, whose Taurus missiles have a similar 155-mile range to Storm Shadow but a more powerful warhead, has been the country under the most pressure to move. However, it was revealed yesterday that Germany has actually frozen military aid to Ukraine because of a domestic budgetary crisis. Pistorius had asked for £3.4 billion of additional supplies but that was rejected by the finance ministry.
Wallace called on Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, to drop his opposition to Taurus being used by Ukraine. “Storm Shadows and French Scalp have shown their worth in deteriorating Russian command-and-control centres and strategic targets,” he said. “There can be no more excuses for Germany to continue to block the supply of Taurus missiles, which could bring extra capability and a welcome refresh of ammunition stocks.”
Ukraine could do with such weapons now since it is targeting airfields in the Kursk pocket where Russian “glide bombs” are launched. “If the Ukrainians are to make a success of this Kursk offensive, they’ve got to do something about the glide bombs,” Clarke said. “You’ve got to go after the airbases and the storage.”
British officials and experts think their European allies are too concerned about provoking Russian escalation. Despite increases in the military kit supplied to Ukraine, security officials say there has been no sign of Russia even threatening to use tactical nuclear weapons — the nightmare scenario which would make the third world war threats credible.
“The Russians always spit fire and brimstone,” said one defence source. “I can promise you they haven’t moved a muscle in the direction of nuclear use since the war began. We look at this all the time because tactical nuclear use involves lots of stages. Lots of people are involved, lots of movement of missiles.”
Targeting a “moderately concentrated” brigade of 5,000 troops would need “five or six” nuclear warheads, the source said, an ineffective strategy.
Such a move makes no political sense for Putin, who is understood to have been restrained by his Chinese allies. They have made clear that their support is dependent on no nuclear deployment. But Russia has also been warned of a massive US-led conventional response if they go nuclear. In October 2022 General David Petraeus, the former director of the CIA, who commanded US forces in Afghanistan, issued a public warning to Putin. He said: “We would respond by leading a Nato (collective) effort that would take out every Russian conventional force that we can see and identify on the battlefield in Ukraine and also in Crimea and every ship in the Black Sea.”
British sources say his intervention was made with the approval of the Biden administration. Some believe Beijing and Washington have a tacit agreement to restrain both sides.
What happens next depends on the game of military cat and mouse. The assumption is that Russia will counterattack at Kursk before the winter sets in at the end of October. Western analysts agree the Ukrainians will not want to try to hold all the ground they have taken.
For now, it is a success for Zelensky and an embarrassment for the Russian military, which has already lost 15,000 armoured vehicles and 6,000 tanks and been forced to deploy veteran T-54 tanks, a 70-year-old model decommissioned more than 40 years ago.
But with the possibility of a second Donald Trump presidency in November, Starmer’s team and senior figures from the last government — including Boris Johnson, Shapps and Wallace — are all engaged in an effort to shore up support.
Shapps said: “A democratic country invaded by its autocratic neighbour isn’t just a disaster for that nation but for the whole world. Democracies must therefore stop at nothing to ensure that freedom wins. We cannot simply hope for Ukraine to win against Russia, we have to provide the means, too.”
Except what I wrote has absolutely nothing to do with Ukraine and Russia and everything to do with mocking you.
Another fail of understanding from you.
Also this
"Israel has invaded Palestine and is illegally occupying the entire country" it not actually true, but no use pointing it out to you is there.
Maybe it's my inner fat guy talking but what is wrong with tasting it. No homo.
Based on Russian comments, shouldn't that be world war ten?
There are times when I'm proud to be British.Ukraine is invading with British tanks. What does it mean for us?
Aug 18, 2024
When footage of British Challenger 2 battle tanks being used by the Ukrainian army for its counterinvasion of Russia emerged on Tuesday, Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence were ready.
For the previous 48 hours, officials and political aides working for Sir Keir Starmer and John Healey, the defence secretary, had been in talks about how far to go to confirm growing British involvement in the incursion towards Kursk.
The stakes were high. Unseen by the world, British equipment, including drones, have played a central role in Ukraine’s new offensive and British personnel have been closely advising the Ukrainian military for two years, on a scale matched by no other country.
By Friday, a Russian MP, Mikhail Sheremet, predicted that “the presence of western military equipment” in the attack meant “the world is on the brink of a third world war”.
Nikolai Patrushev, a key Putin aide, accused western intelligence agencies of helping plan the attack, launched on August 6, in which President Zelensky ordered a rapier thrust into Russia via three mechanised infantry brigades and three air assault brigades.
When the war in Ukraine began in 2022, the Conservative defence secretary at the time, Sir Ben Wallace, authorised the Ukrainian military to use British equipment inside Russia provided it complied with international law, which permits offensive attacks against airfields and supply lines in self-defence.
Defence officials point out that more than 2,000 Russian attacks on Ukraine, some against towns and civilians, have been launched from the Kursk pocket.
The decision Starmer and Healey took last week was not a policy shift but a change of tone to be more open about Britain’s role in a bid to persuade key allies to do more to help — and convince the public that Britain’s security and economic prosperity is affected by events on the fields of Ukraine. A senior Whitehall source said: “There won’t be shying away from the idea of British weapons being used in Russia as part of Ukraine’s defence. We don’t want any uncertainty or nervousness over Britain’s support at this critical moment and a half-hearted or uncertain response might have indicated that. We should be proud that we’ve donated kit that is helping Ukraine in their defence.”
To ensure a united British front, Healey and David Lammy, the foreign secretary, have set up a joint Ukraine unit between the MoD and the Foreign Office. Aides stress that the pair have made seven joint foreign trips, including a first one together to Kyiv while in the opposition and their first as ministers to the Middle East. “We are incorporating defence into our reset of our relations with allies,” a defence source said. Healey and Lammy also held a joint briefing, with officials, for a cross-party group of 60 MPs on Ukraine at the MoD.
Starmer has also asked the National Security Council to draw up plans to provide Ukraine with a broader range of support. Last week he sent John Bew to Kyiv. Bew was foreign policy adviser to the last three Tory prime ministers but has agreed to stay on to help the new government with his huge range of contacts.
“It’s not just about the military support, but it’s about the industrial, economic, and diplomatic support,” the defence source said. “If Putin succeeds in Ukraine he’s not going to stop there. But also the economic implications of that are massive, because we all saw how heavily Britain got hit when he first invaded.”
The night before Zelensky addressed the cabinet last month, he and Healey had dinner with defence industry bosses.
So what is Zelensky up to? The answer is partly political and partly military. The Ukrainian president suggested last week that the incursion was designed to ensure future peace talks were conducted on Ukraine’s terms, but no one thinks talks are possible before the spring and probably not until the autumn of 2025.
In reality, it was partly designed to boost morale at home and shore up Zelensky’s position. His democratic mandate ran out in May and his only authority now comes from martial law.
Michael Clarke, one of Britain’s leading defence analysts, said: “It’s a classic military counterpunch, trying to relieve pressure elsewhere. What the Ukrainians are hoping is that it reduces the pressure in the Donbas region [where Russian attacks are concentrated].” Another military source said: “They wanted to create a strategic dilemma for Russia, which is: do they take troops away from their main effort in Ukraine to deal with this?”
As a surprise military operation, it showed bravura. “Ukraine detected that Russia doesn’t have enough electronic warfare detection to go round,” a security source said. “They found the hole and just punched it and nothing was on the other side.”
Unlike the repeatedly announced Ukrainian counteroffensive last year, which went nowhere, Ukraine did nothing to signal the attack in advance, a point made by the Ukrainian defence minister in a conversation with Grant Shapps, another former Tory defence secretary, last week. Shapps is now drumming up support for Ukraine with a planned tour of key European capitals.
However, if Kyiv hoped Russia would immediately divert troops from Ukraine to retake the Kursk pocket, Russian generals seem instead to have capitalised on the absence of four crack Ukrainian regiments to press their attacks around Pokrovsk and Chasiv Yar.
The next few months could be pivotal. The one British weapon which cannot be used inside Russia is also the most powerful, the Storm Shadow cruise missile. Shapps, Wallace’s successor, authorised its use — after a battle with an initially reluctant Rishi Sunak — in Crimea.
At the D-Day commemorations which Sunak left early, Shapps also spoke to Starmer about extending its use into Russia in case the Tory government wanted to change the rules before the election.
The prime minister has since publicly voiced support for extending permission to Russian territory. But since the missile is a joint project, that also requires the permission of the US and France (where the missiles are called Scalp), both of whom fear escalation with Russia.
Clarke said: “I am a bit surprised that they are this cautious. The argument Starmer makes is that he is trying to square it with the allies because if it looks as if the Brits were too far ahead of their Nato allies, it might be counterproductive.”
However, both the UK and — somewhat later — France have allowed Storm Shadow/Scalp to be used in Crimea to “functionally disable” much of the Russian Black Sea fleet.
In the coming weeks Healey will attend a new meeting of the Ukraine Defence Co-ordination Group, where Britain will press European allies to send more equipment and give Kyiv more leeway to use them in Russia. Healey spoke last week to Lloyd Austin, the US defence secretary, and has been wooing Boris Pistorius, his German opposite number.
Germany, whose Taurus missiles have a similar 155-mile range to Storm Shadow but a more powerful warhead, has been the country under the most pressure to move. However, it was revealed yesterday that Germany has actually frozen military aid to Ukraine because of a domestic budgetary crisis. Pistorius had asked for £3.4 billion of additional supplies but that was rejected by the finance ministry.
Wallace called on Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, to drop his opposition to Taurus being used by Ukraine. “Storm Shadows and French Scalp have shown their worth in deteriorating Russian command-and-control centres and strategic targets,” he said. “There can be no more excuses for Germany to continue to block the supply of Taurus missiles, which could bring extra capability and a welcome refresh of ammunition stocks.”
Ukraine could do with such weapons now since it is targeting airfields in the Kursk pocket where Russian “glide bombs” are launched. “If the Ukrainians are to make a success of this Kursk offensive, they’ve got to do something about the glide bombs,” Clarke said. “You’ve got to go after the airbases and the storage.”
British officials and experts think their European allies are too concerned about provoking Russian escalation. Despite increases in the military kit supplied to Ukraine, security officials say there has been no sign of Russia even threatening to use tactical nuclear weapons — the nightmare scenario which would make the third world war threats credible.
“The Russians always spit fire and brimstone,” said one defence source. “I can promise you they haven’t moved a muscle in the direction of nuclear use since the war began. We look at this all the time because tactical nuclear use involves lots of stages. Lots of people are involved, lots of movement of missiles.”
Targeting a “moderately concentrated” brigade of 5,000 troops would need “five or six” nuclear warheads, the source said, an ineffective strategy.
Such a move makes no political sense for Putin, who is understood to have been restrained by his Chinese allies. They have made clear that their support is dependent on no nuclear deployment. But Russia has also been warned of a massive US-led conventional response if they go nuclear. In October 2022 General David Petraeus, the former director of the CIA, who commanded US forces in Afghanistan, issued a public warning to Putin. He said: “We would respond by leading a Nato (collective) effort that would take out every Russian conventional force that we can see and identify on the battlefield in Ukraine and also in Crimea and every ship in the Black Sea.”
British sources say his intervention was made with the approval of the Biden administration. Some believe Beijing and Washington have a tacit agreement to restrain both sides.
What happens next depends on the game of military cat and mouse. The assumption is that Russia will counterattack at Kursk before the winter sets in at the end of October. Western analysts agree the Ukrainians will not want to try to hold all the ground they have taken.
For now, it is a success for Zelensky and an embarrassment for the Russian military, which has already lost 15,000 armoured vehicles and 6,000 tanks and been forced to deploy veteran T-54 tanks, a 70-year-old model decommissioned more than 40 years ago.
But with the possibility of a second Donald Trump presidency in November, Starmer’s team and senior figures from the last government — including Boris Johnson, Shapps and Wallace — are all engaged in an effort to shore up support.
Shapps said: “A democratic country invaded by its autocratic neighbour isn’t just a disaster for that nation but for the whole world. Democracies must therefore stop at nothing to ensure that freedom wins. We cannot simply hope for Ukraine to win against Russia, we have to provide the means, too.”
This is one of them.
I hope this is sarcasm but sadly know it's not.
Zelensky and his cronies thank the sacrifice of their soldiers so that their proxy “war” from our laundered tax money can be used for their new Bugatti’s.
Attachments
Depending on place, 50-100 m. Big enough that equipment can't cross but a committed person should be able to swim.
Of course you agree with dan but lets see:
- Captured a bunch of Russian troops that can be used in prisoner exchanges. More significantly, these are mainly 18-19 year old conscripts including those from the big cities where Putin's power base is.
- Caused Russia to shift experienced combat units from the South East.
- Taking land that could be used in any hypothetical negotiations
- Boosting morale of Ukrainian people and troops
- Showing international backers that Ukraine can fight
- Gaining experience in offensive combat operations
- Creating a buffer zone to distance Russian glide bombs from Ukraine
- A chance to ambush Russian convoys while redeploying (or letting the Russians strike their own convoys)
- Give Putin and his generals a black eye
No single move will conclusively end this war, other than Putin deciding to withdraw from Ukraine but this is a productive attack. Just look at how far back Russia has been building new defensive lines.
