By Noah Rothman
More than one week into Ukraine’s daring advance into Russian territory, Kyiv has publicly acknowledged the incursion and divulged the intention behind it.
“It is now our primary task in defensive operations overall: to destroy as much Russian war potential as possible and conduct maximum counteroffensive actions,” said Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. Achieving that objective now involves “creating a buffer zone on the aggressor’s territory.” At the very least, all operations that “inflict losses” on the Russian military and “their military-industrial complex” help bring a “just end to this aggression.”
The Biden administration doesn’t appear to agree. True to the posture it has struck since almost the moment Moscow’s forces invaded Ukraine for a second time in February 2022, the administration has deferred to its fear of making any sudden movements that might antagonize the Russian bear. The Ukrainian undertaking in Kursk and Belgorod Oblasts is no exception.
Via the Wall Street Journal:
The Biden administration, which has said it didn’t know about the Ukrainian attack before it was launched, has barred Ukraine from using U.S.-provided longer-range missiles called ATACMS to strike Russian territory.
Washington isn’t sharing intelligence with Ukraine on targets inside Russia, said a senior U.S. official, who added that the Biden administration doesn’t want to be seen as enabling an attack into Russian territory.
If the Pentagon is neither allowing Ukrainian forces to target the troops advancing on it from inside Russia nor is it sharing relevant intelligence, the Biden administration doesn’t just want to avoid being “seen as enabling” Ukraine’s gambit. They actively oppose it.
Whatever the prospects for Ukraine’s success inside the Russian Federation, Kyiv has committed to this operation. That commitment has come at the expense of the Ukrainian position on the frontlines inside its own country.
Russian forces have reportedly diverted soldiers from some parts of occupied Ukraine but not from areas where the Kremlin’s forces are advancing on Ukrainian territory. In the Donbas, Russian troops are moving forward, capturing settlements and forcing Kyiv to order the evacuation of Pokrovsk, a city with a pre-war population of over 60,000. Meanwhile, Russian forces have slowed Ukraine’s advance into Russia. And although the Kremlin’s tempo of operations inside Ukraine has declined in recent weeks, the pressure Moscow is putting on Ukrainian forces in Donetsk has increased.
“The Kremlin’s goal will be to turn Kursk into little more than an embarrassing mosquito bite amid a bloodbath inside Ukraine,” the Economist reported. “Ukrainian soldiers on the ground inside Russia say they are already beginning to see a different level of resistance. Losses are increasing. The Russians have reinforced with better-trained units, including marines and special forces.”
Joe Biden talks a big game about the threat Russia’s invasion of Ukraine represents both to the U.S.-led world order and the prospects for liberal democracy more broadly. But his actions betray the president’s lack of faith in his own rhetoric. Throughout Russia’s war, Biden has conjured up Russian “red lines” in his own head, scrupulously observed them only to allow Ukraine’s initiative to slip away, and finally abandoned them only when he was the last person to recognize how little bearing his solipsism had on Russian strategic planning. The invasion and occupation of Russian sovereign territory is just the latest tripwire that would supposedly trigger a global conflagration if crossed. The Biden team is right to be cautious, but overcaution has thus far typified its response to this crisis.
Ukraine’s audacious attempt to reclaim momentum on the battlefield may fail for want of Western support. If it does, it risks becoming not just a dangerous turning point in the war in Europe but the capstone in Joe Biden’s legacy of spectacular failures abroad.
“Ukraine Dares, Biden Dithers”
Not just Biden, but the whole stinking lot of them. They have managed to reduce the strongest military the world has ever seen, into a laughing stock that no country takes seriously any longer.
Pokrovsk is another terrible tragedy in the making. The putinaZis claim to have taken nearby Zalizne. DT:
“Moscow has claimed to have captured a “major” town in eastern Ukraine as its forces continue to make grinding advances in the Donetsk region.
Russia’s defence ministry said on Monday it had “liberated” the town of Artemovo, known as Zalizne in Ukraine, describing it as one of the area’s “major population centres”.
With a recorded population of 5,000 people in 2022, its capture would represent the largest single gain made by Russia in recent weeks after capturing a series of smaller settlements nearby, some no bigger than a single street.
But as all eyes remain fixed on Ukraine’s unprecedented two-week-old invasion into Russia’s Kursk region, Kyiv has repeatedly warned Moscow is steadily driving towards the key hub of Pokrovsk.
The city is one of Ukraine’s main defensive strongholds in the Donetsk region that supplies Ukrainian troops and towns across the eastern front and has long been a major target for Russia.
Ukraine’s army chief confirmed that “heavy fighting” was taking place close to Pokrovsk, where Russian forces are now less than six miles from the city limits.
Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky said that the enemy had tried to storm their positions 45 times in the past 24 hours, while a record number of clashes were recorded last week.
He added that Kyiv was “doing everything necessary” to protect the town of Toretsk, 29 miles east of Pokrovsk, which has seen an intensified Russian push as well.
Officials in the city on Monday ordered the forced evacuation of families with children from Pokrovsk, where 53,000 civilians including 4,000 children remain.
Civilians have “a week or two, no more,” Serhiy Dobriak, the head of Pokrovsk’s military administration warned, as he urged civilians to get out as soon as possible.
If the city were to fall, it would be the largest population centre taken since the eastern city Bakhmut fell to Russia in May 2023.”
We know that Biden has successfully blocked the UK from permitting Storm Shadow inside putlerstan and doesn’t seem in any hurry to rescind it. We also know that Ukraine has limited supplies of ATACMS (some equipped apparently with cluster munitions) and Storms for use inside Ukraine and the borders.
So why aren’t the defenders pounding the fuck out of the orcs in the Pokrovsk area with these potent weapons to push them back? Anyone know?
The problem is that no one knows. But, maybe it’ll be worth it to review Ukraine’s great performances in the past years, especially the Kursk offensive, which NO ONE predicted, and NO ONE would’ve given a dime to bet it would go so well.
I’m positive that the Ukrainian general staff knows what it’s doing. Remember, the cockroaches are paying a very high price for razed real estate. Ukraine shouldn’t be stupid to sacrifice its valuable troops and resources for land that can be retaken again.
Have to agree. It’s better to use the troops to capture russian soil than waste them in a meat grinder. Everywhere is suddenly full of experts claiming this is a bad move and Ukraine can’t do this or that. Yet none of them saw it coming, or could predict how effective it is.
A bell goes off in my head when I read or hear the word “expert”.
Ukraine desperately needs foreign troops placed in key cities like Odesa and Mykolaiv to free off their own troops for the front line and the Kursk salient.
Couldn’t just one brave, principled country step up to the plate and send a division? Or maybe just a few brigades? Not too much to ask is it?
How about you Poland?
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I count the days to see this historic administration to end. Historic in that it’s the most cowardly that our great nation has ever had.