Russia invades Ukraine Feb 2022

[Banks of the Bann]

@ChrisO_wiki
3h • 13 tweets • 3 min read •  Read on X
1/ Pokrovsk and Kupyansk are falsely being portrayed by the Russian media as decisive imminent victories, says Igor 'Strelkov' Girkin. He warns that Russsia is failing to make progress on the Zaporizhzhia front, which he describes as the decisive theatre of the Ukraine war.

2/ Writing from the jail where he has been imprisoned since last year on charges of inciting extremism, Girkin dismisses the increasingly bloody battles for Pokrovsk and Kupiansk – which have cost thousands of Russian lives – as irrelevant to the war's main objectives:

3/ "The tactical successes in Kupyansk and Pokrovsk, which give hope for the rapid liberation of these two cities (the Kharkiv and Donetsk axes), are being presented to our press as some kind of decisive victories.

4/ "I must emphasize once again that both of these successes were achieved in secondary axes of the Special Military Operation.

5/ "The Kupyansk axe is the Kharkiv Oblast, which we no longer lay claim to and which, as far as I understand, is not even included in our territorial exchange plans. Moreover, it leads us deep into enemy territory in a direct westward direction.

6/ "And Pokrovsk, which, in principle, plays no significant role without the capture of the entire Slovyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration. Otherwise, the Donbas will not be liberated.

7/ "Pokrovsk is a salient in the Ukrainian Armed Forces' defences; taking it will only straighten their line of defence. Taking both of these points won't lead to the final collapse of the Ukrainian Armed Forces' front, their defeat and rout—which is what we should strive for.

8/ "At the same time, fierce fighting on the Zaporizhzhia Front isn't leading to any significant advances precisely because the enemy understands that this is the decisive front.

9/ "And it is here, if they are defeated and the front line is seriously pushed back, it will threaten their entire eastern group in the Donbas and in the Zaporizhzhia region to the east. There, the enemy is fighting fiercely.

10/ "We must understand that no tactical points, no advances of 10, 50, or even 100 kilometers will lead us to victory without defeating the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

11/ "We can take line after line, settlement after settlement, village after village, and even city after city (although the pace at which we are taking them is not impressive). If we don't set ourselves the goal of strategic victory, we will never achieve it.

12/ "Achieving a strategic victory without devoting all of the state's resources is impossible. The enemy understands this perfectly well and is straining all their forces. We, however, continue to pretend we're not fighting, but rather "conducting a special operation."

13/ "Therefore, my prognosis is as follows: After the liberation of Kupyansk and Pokrovsk, the situation will, unfortunately, not fundamentally change. Tactical successes will not lead to the collapse of the Ukrainian Armed Forces' front." /end

Source:

Стрелков Игорь Иванович

• • •

[Main Street]

Phillips O'Brien newsletter

Weekend Update #157: The Battle Of Pokrovsk Might Be Ending

And here it is today, 460 days later, with the Russians finally closing in on taking the town.
It would have shamed a snail to move at the pace that the Russian Army has moved at during this time. I checked and an average snail at a normal pace can move about 3 inches a minute—about 15 feet or 5 metres an hour. There are some legendarily fast snails that have moved at 10 feet a minute, but I'm more than happy to use the speed of a normal, even slightly unathletic snail. Such a mediocre snail starting at the Russian front line on August 1, 2024, would have moved more than 31 miles (47 kilometres) between then and now.

The Russian Army could only dream of moving as fast as a (mediocre slow) snail.

[Hand of God]

Condolences to Gallsman, armaghniac and Banks of The Bann on the death of Dick Cheney.

I know his war mongering was a source of great inspiration to them.

[Banks of the Bann]

Ah there you are numbskull, was beginning to think I had scared you away from this thread.

Was beginning to feel like the old days with you and the Burdman out of hibernation and back at it again.

Anyway, feeble attempt at trolling, do try harder.

By the way, come up with those agreements with Russia that the West and Ukraine have broken? That's a few weeks now. Anything?

[Banks of the Bann]

And while you're there numbskull:

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/zarah-sultanas-pompous-luxury-beliefs-about-ukraine/

Any comment? Warhawk is she, aye?

[Hand of God]

And while you're there numbskull:

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/zarah-sultanas-pompous-luxury-beliefs-about-ukraine/

Any comment? Warhawk is she, aye?

The Spectactor with a smear article on the left? 

I can only read the first few lines as I wouldn't dare subscribe to that right wing rag but the quotes attributd to Sultana seems perfectly fair. She calls Putin a gangster dictator and NATO a war machine.

Both seem like perfectly fair and balanced comments.

The fact that you form your opinions from The Spectator is telling.

[Banks of the Bann]

And while you're there numbskull:

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/zarah-sultanas-pompous-luxury-beliefs-about-ukraine/

Any comment? Warhawk is she, aye?

The Spectactor with a smear article on the left? 

I can only read the first few lines as I wouldn't dare subscribe to that right wing rag but the quotes attributd to Sultana seems perfectly fair. She calls Putin a gangster dictator and NATO a war machine.

Both seem like perfectly fair and balanced comments.

The fact that you form your opinions from The Spectator is telling.

Oh no need to stop at a few lines, have a read below:

I'm sure your wee tankie cheekie cheeks will be burning reading it. Enjoy.

Any update on the broken agreements btw?

[Banks of the Bann]

Excellent article by a Ukrainian journalist. One for all tankies to read. Should be compulsory reading for  president-elect Catherine Connolly.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/zarah-sultanas-pompous-luxury-beliefs-about-ukraine/

Zarah Sultana loves to pose as a champion of the working class, seeing the world through the lens of class struggle. Even, it seems, the war in Ukraine. In her latest interview, she calls Nato 'an imperialist war machine' and advocates for putting all our effort into ending the war, rather than making weapons, thereby giving money to those who profit from conflict. 'Putin is a dictator, a gangster,' she says, but 'Zelensky isn't a friend of the working class either'. She met Ukrainians and Russians in Paris, she adds, who explained this to her.

I'd like to add my own voice to this debate. I think I'd qualify, in her book, as working class. I'm from a family that lived on what is, by British standards, the breadline. My mother spends 12-hour night shifts at a paper factory that could be bombed by Russia any day, for a salary that works out at about £4,000 a year. Our upbringing is typical of those in our village. I have to inform Sultana that her class-war rhetoric would strike working-class Ukrainians as an egregious, pompous luxury belief – marinated in the fashionable politics of people who jet off to Paris to compare notes on the working class.

Sultana embodies the kind of British leftist who would do anything for the world's working class except listen to them. From the offset, she has jumped the wrong way. Russia's appetite for its former colony – in the name of recreating the 'Rusky Mir' – is a textbook example of imperialism. And yet, just before the full-scale war, she signed a statement urging Nato to halt its 'eastward expansion' and 'address Russia's security concerns'. Now, four years later, she is still echoing Russia's talking points. Sultana talks as if Zelensky, Starmer and Donald Trump haven't spent every day trying to find a way to confront neo-imperialist occupation.

And yes, Britain could 'stop the war' by doing what she wants: cutting off weapons for Ukraine and abandoning it with no way to defend itself. But it wasn't Zelesnky's choice to start this war, and he has no option but to fight it, while begging the world for missiles and jets for Ukrainians to survive. If the arms didn't come, the fighting would stop – and the subjugation would start. A subjugation that Ukraine experienced during the Nazi occupation and then under communism. One that the butchered people of Bucha experienced in 2022. Is this the remedy that Ms Sultana prescribes? That we stop fighting, take our beating and call it 'peace'? Is this her definition of working-class empowerment? When a country is faced with subjection, it doesn't matter if you're working or middle class: the Russian bullet goes through the flesh just as easily.

The truth is that when working-class Russian soldiers crossed the border to occupy Ukraine, working-class Ukrainians queued at the enlistment offices to defend their homes. Today, even more working-class Russians, lured by fat military contracts, are killing Ukrainians for cash, at the frontline and in the rear, where Russian pilots rain missiles on working-class apartment blocks. Just last week, a Russian drone hit a Kyiv nursery full of working-class toddlers.

There is no doubt that arms manufacturers profit from war, that's the reality of the modern world: they can't produce weapons for free, and Ukrainians can't defend themselves with moral platitudes. Defence needs arms, arms need a business model. Without western weapons, the mass graves in Bucha and Izium would stretch across the entire country. The working class of Ukraine do not wish to see their families slaughtered. If Sultana doesn't want a 'forever war' and truly believes in 'wages, not weapons; welfare, not warfare', as she writes, she should direct that message to Putin and demand he withdraw his troops.

Ukrainians have been incredibly lucky to have Britain by their side as a true ally in the darkest days. London has committed more than £20 billion to Ukraine since the full-scale war began, including £13 billion in military aid. According to an Ipsos poll, most Britons, 59 per cent, continue to support this today, and more than half believe that economic sanctions on Russia are necessary, even if it means higher energy and food prices. This is not an easy toll for a nation living so far from the actual conflict, and every Ukrainian I know, including myself, will forever be grateful for such a generous contribution. Without British artillery shells, drones and missiles, there would be many more dead Ukrainians, and no more independent and free Ukraine.

The strange thing is that, having lived in Ukraine for most of my life, Sultana's class-war politics just don't apply. The cleavage that defined politics in my lifetime was between those who looked to Moscow or those who saw Ukraine as part of democratic Europe. The market economy Sultana criticises has been Ukraine's lifeline: our post-Soviet battle has been rooting out corruption and replacing oligarchy with a system of civil liberties, rights and the rule of law. After a slow start, Ukraine was making good progress on this front, which Putin could not tolerate as we were providing a model of what Russia might be if it did the same. A model that maximises opportunities for the poor.

Sultana may deplore the 'capitalism' of the United Kingdom, but as I am a beneficiary of that system – since arriving at this magazine three years ago and given complete freedom to write – I can understand why this is what Ukrainians want for themselves. Stability. The rule of law. Democracy. My sense is that the British people instinctively understand this, which explains their incredible solidarity with Ukraine – seen not just with their military help, but in the Ukrainian flags which still fly around the country. In this way, the workers of the world do unite: against tyranny, imperialist repression and the ideology that hard-left people like Sultana flirt with. An ideology that only the elite can afford.

I hope Sultana keeps enjoying lecturing about peace under the safe skies protected by the Nato alliance she despises. If she truly knows how to make the Russian guns fall silent, if she knows the right way to put all that necessary effort to achieve a lasting peace, she's more than welcome to travel with me to Kyiv and explain her groundbreaking plan to the Ukrainian nation and President Zelensky. There are plenty of working-class Ukrainians who would be only too pleased to explain their hopes for their own country, their gratitude for Britain's support – and their hard-won knowledge that freedom isn't free, it needs to be fought for and defended.


WRITTEN BY
Svitlana Morenets
Svitlana Morenets is a Ukrainian journalist and a staff writer at The Spectator.

Bump

[Banks of the Bann]

I'm sure you'd love to categorise the piece as a 'smear article' (while not having read it) but the author is working class and Ukrainian. Working class Ukrainians - Betrayed by the western tankie class like Catherine Connolly and Zarah Sultana.

[Hand of God]

I'm sure you'd love to categorise the piece as a 'smear article' (while not having read it) but the author is working class and Ukrainian. Working class Ukrainians - Betrayed by the western tankie class like Catherine Connolly and Zarah Sultana.

The fact you don't see an issue with you trying to put forward a reprehensible right wing, neo liberal war hawk editorial as somewhat credible is wild.

Do you not find it odd an editorial can be so partisan in it's defence of a nation who is committing a genocide of the native minority in an apartheid state while conversely being so partisan in it's support of Ukraine in its resistance against a Russian invasion under the guide of freedom and democracy?

Why would a working class Ukrainian think a right wing Tory warhawk editorial is a good outlet to convince working class people of her opinion being authentic?

[jb77]

I hope you good folk get paid for your efforts

[gallsman]

Condolences to Gallsman, armaghniac and Banks of The Bann on the death of Dick Cheney.

I know his war mongering was a source of great inspiration to them.

Cutting stuff.

[armaghniac]

Condolences to Gallsman, armaghniac and Banks of The Bann on the death of Dick Cheney.

I know his war mongering was a source of great inspiration to them.

Cutting stuff.

Half an attempt at wit.

[Hand of God]

Condolences to Gallsman, armaghniac and Banks of The Bann on the death of Dick Cheney.

I know his war mongering was a source of great inspiration to them.

Cutting stuff.

Half an attempt at wit.

Would you like to help your buddy who has resorted to posting up opinion pieces from the Tory press office?

[Banks of the Bann]

I'm sure you'd love to categorise the piece as a 'smear article' (while not having read it) but the author is working class and Ukrainian. Working class Ukrainians - Betrayed by the western tankie class like Catherine Connolly and Zarah Sultana.

The fact you don't see an issue with you trying to put forward a reprehensible right wing, neo liberal war hawk editorial as somewhat credible is wild.

Do you not find it odd an editorial can be so partisan in it's defence of a nation who is committing a genocide of the native minority in an apartheid state while conversely being so partisan in it's support of Ukraine in its resistance against a Russian invasion under the guide of freedom and democracy?

Why would a working class Ukrainian think a right wing Tory warhawk editorial is a good outlet to convince working class people of her opinion being authentic?

No help needed numbSkull. I'm more than happy to cut through your bullshit, it's easy, though tiring at times.

1. It's an opinion piece, not an editorial.

2. Everything through the prism of Israel-Palestine as usual. At least you're managing to keep your overt anti-semitism in check under your latest incarnation. For the time being anyway, I'm sure the 'you know whos' are lurking at the back of your mind somewhere, ready to jump out anytime.

3. Point no 2 above results in your usual faulty logic, i.e. the Spectator's stance on Israel-Palestine invalidates any output from that publication on any other topic.

4. Point no 3 is convenient for you as it allows you to ignore what the author, a working class Ukrainian, has to say. In doing so you demonstrate the very tankie qualities she cites in her article:

'..leftist who would do anything for the world's working class except listen to them'

5. She is doing well to be published in the Spectator, what would you suggest, she try to get published in the 'Morning Star' so that a bunch of braindead tankies can insult her and treat her experience with derision.

6. Your arrogance is astounding in that you think a working class Ukrainian has to convince you that her voice is 'authentic'.

7. Your response to the article proves the point she is making about British (and Irish) leftists. Since you probably didn't even read the article I'll summarise for you:

Your views on the Ukrainian conflict are an 'egregious, pompous luxury belief' to working class Ukrainians fighting for their survival in a war of attempted annihilation of their nation.

You 'would do anything for the world's working class except listen to them'

In Ukraine, your pathetic 'class-war politics just don't apply.'

Like Sultana, you are 'enjoying lecturing about peace under the safe skies protected by the Nato alliance she despises'

8. I'll go one further, you and those like you are charlatans. I've said it before. You're not anti-war or anti-imperialist. You hate the west and the USA. That's it.

p.s. Have you managed to find any agreements with Russia that Ukraine has broken? If not, perhaps you can withdraw the claim here.