Im seeing a lot of posts on reddit celebrating Ukraine victories. So what’s actually happening in this war now?
As far as I can tell Russia has achieved what they planned to so far, and have plenty of resources in reserve for the battles to come. Ukraine is fucked and the only reason Zelensky hasn’t given up yet is because his balls are in a NATO star shaped vise.
The Scott Ritter Twitter thread already linked is good to go over the general strategy. I have found Brian Berletic’s weekly updates super informative as well (YouTube, The New Atlas).
This website has very accurate assessments:
ISW assesses that the Kremlin has revised its campaign plan in Ukraine after the failure of its initial campaign to capture Kyiv and other major Ukrainian cities and its subsequent failure to adjust its operations in late March.
Russia’s main effort is now focused on eastern Ukraine, with two subordinate main efforts: capturing the port city of Mariupol and capturing the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts.
The Kremlin may intend to capture Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts before seeking to negotiate a Kremlin-favorable ceasefire and claim that Russia has achieved its war aims. […] Kremlin claims that Russian forces solely attacked northeastern Ukraine to degrade Ukrainian forces before achieving the “main goal” of capturing Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts – such as statements made by the Russian General Staff on March 25 – are false.
They’ve given up on Kiev entirely and are pulling back their units. They already abandoned Hostomel Airport that they took the first few days and had kept until now. They’re not “losing” but things aren’t looking good for them.
Kremlin claims that Russian forces solely attacked northeastern Ukraine to degrade Ukrainian forces before achieving the “main goal” of capturing Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts – such as statements made by the Russian General Staff on March 25 – are false.
Why is this false though? Donbas has been the stated main objective from day 1. Like honestly, if we believe the ~200k invasion force estimate, those were spread between Donbas, Kherson, Mariupol, Chernihiv, Kiev, Kharkiv, Sumy regions and all the smaller pushes (Izyum etc). So even highballing here there were at best 50-100k troops around Kiev. Do we really believe a professional military would try a proper assault on a city of almost 3mio people, the capital no less, with that small of a force? This is all armchair-general stuff, but that should sound insane to anyone.
