A View of the War in Ukraine

Because it's always good to know more than less, Saker (controversial, yes) presents his update on the war in Ukraine.

Excerpts:

...the Ukrainian soldiers have A LOT of VERY REAL courage.  Not only that, in both of these operations, a great deal of careful planning went into the preparations of these missions.  So they are not only courageous, they are SMART.

Yes, the Ukie Volkssturm is a joke, but not the entire Ukrainian military and most definitely not the Nazis of the Azov “battalion” (it is not really a battalion, but rather a regiment or a small brigade, but spread out in key sectors of the Ukrainian defenses).  Why is that so important to realize?

Because a HUGE battle is preparing in the Donbass....

Anyone who followed the progress of this war already knew that Donbass was the primary Russian objective.  Kiev?  Not so much.  Donbass is heavily ethnic Russian whereas Kiev is heavily ethnic Ukrainian.  Putin doesn't need a pain in the ass like Kiev would be.  But he DOES need a clear path to open water.

 ...[Sidebar: some of you must have heard that canard about the Russians “running out of ammo”, right?  Well, local residents near the Ukrainian positions in the Donbass report that for three days the Russian artillery has been shelling the Ukrainian positions nonstop.  In reality, anybody who has studied the Soviet and, later, Russian military knows that with the exception of some very modern systems which have just been deployed, Russia has huge stores of ammunition.  In fact, when the Russians prepare a military offensive the expenditures in ammo, POL, and any other form of logistics required are carefully calculated.  If not, then the order to attack will not be given. ...

As to the future:

...I don’t like making predictions, even less so, time-related ones, but I think that we need to prepare ourselves for a major battle lasting several weeks, possibly even a month....

...Have have to assume that the PSYOPs of the Empire of Lies will go in full attack mode, and since it will be very hard to make sense of what will be going on, we have to ready for a major attack on our minds....

... Once that Ukrainian force in the Donbass is defeated this will basically mean the end of the 2nd phase of this Special Military Operation (SMO) and the very best and combat capable Ukrainian will have disappeared and a 3rd phase will begin,...

That 'full attack mode' prediction came true last night with the lengthy Fox/Brett Baier interview of Zelenskiy, followed by a long-ish 'analysis' of same by a panel including the Washington Examiner's New World Order/Bushie editor.  (N.B.  Fox deleted some of the content--the stuff that makes Zelenskiy look like the trash he is.)  That is the first chapter.  Soon, Hannity will join the monkey-chorus with a 3-hour special running video of suffering moms and children.  (Some may obviously be Mexican, Vietnamese, or African--but Hannity will claim they are all Ukrainian.)

...we need to keep another thing always present in our minds: while in actual combat the Russians are facing Ukrainians, in the war itself Russia is not fighting the Nazis in Kiev, but the US/NATO/EU and their vassal states.  It is also certain that the “Biden” administration does not want peace but, instead, they want that war to last as long as possible and to destroy as much of the Ukrainian population and civilian infrastructure as possible....

Plenty more at the link.  Here's the updated map of the situation.  The big black arrow shows Russian troop movement from Kiev to Donbass.  The little black arrow shows how Ukraine would like to move forces to reinforce the 'kettled' army (60-80K men).  Maybe they will succeed..... And the yellow circle denotes the location of Phase Two's upcoming battle which will be not "maneuver" but standard force-on-force attrition-war.  (Red areas are Russian controlled, blue are Ukraine. )