Aren't you thread banned?
That seems too good to be true given the distances, and the reported progress to date
Who are the Daily Kos.?
USA?Canada?
More good news
The troops that trained with UK Special forces back in the Uk look to be also making an impact in the south. They were trained in how to deal with the heavily fortified Russian defenses. Could we see something noteworthy happen in the south over the next week or two.
She made it.
Indeed Chomsky is a good example of a reductionist who cherry-picks info to fit a narrative, his narrative, which "coincidentally" always aligns with his fringe world views. That's always the red flag.
The war exposed quite a number of people like this, individuals who happily parroted Kremlin propaganda for years because it aligned with their beliefs.
There's a couple of things. First of all, I think there is a general tendency to exaggerate the usefulness of NATO supplied weapons and to underestimate the capability, ingenuity, tenancy and overall impressive nature of the Ukrainian resistance. In the early days of the war, Javelin missiles were useful to stop the first and last tanks in a convoy. But to get into the position to fire them was no mean feat, and the rest of the group was then destroyed by accurate artillery fire from regular Ukrainian artillery. The Javelin was important in this, but it was one factor of many. However, the narrative went out that the Javelin was responsible for holding up the Russians. This narrative flatters NATO countries, but it suits the purposes of Ukraine more because they can say "those weapons were great, give us more". It also suits the Russians, who can say "We would have won, but for those pesky NATO weapons". So there is an inbuilt tendency to exaggerate the benefits of NATO weapons, good and all as they are.
Second, it takes a long time to train fighter jets and their long term strategic benefits are limited. Jets are useful for precision strikes, but they don't win wars.
Third, NATO were never going to just give everything Ukraine wanted at once. They need to have a ladder of escalation. They also need to emphasise their ongoing support over the medium term rather than any suggestion that they will just dump a load of weapons in Ukraine and say "have at it". This is important because it demonstrates to the Russians that there are perils with the war dragging on. Far more important than any particular battle field victory.
Fourth, if you think back to Jan/Feb 2022, few would have predicted the level of support that would be given to Ukraine. Ukraine was not a Western European country. It was not an EU Member State. It was a poor and strange country in Eastern Europe, barely understood by most people in the West. The fact that it is now thought of as being effectively part of the "Collective West" and Russia is now a parriah nation demonstrates that there hasn't been appeasement, there has been a very significant response against Russia.
So while I agree with you that NATO countries could provide more weaponry more quickly, I don't think it is fair to blame them for not doing so, and I think that not enough credit is being given to the tenacious Ukrainians for fighting back against the Russians to date.
The most well known leftist who adopts the Kremlin line is Naom Chompsky. He was, at least until very recently, considered to be the opposite of a clown.
I'm pretty sure that it is not the case that he was just given a big bag of money and told to go out and spread the good word of Putin.
Instead, he is, as other posters have pointed out, ideologically opposed to the USA and to any military assistance abroad. He also needs to be seen to be outside of mainstream or conservative thinking. And he also, in a weird way, thinks that he is being compassionate for his fellow man by suggesting in a rather Utopian way, that if only there was peace there wouldn't be so many Ukrainians being killed at the moment.
These guys were saying the same thing about the invasion of Iraq and they had a point. Lots of people, including myself, agreed wholeheartedly that the USA was wrong in that instance. We believed that they were speaking from a position of high morality.
However, with Russia's invasion of Ukraine the tide has really gone out on these people. They are not high minded or moral. They are just contrarians who object to the established order because it appeals to a certain demographic and it gets them paid.
40 Cesars/Archers pounding those trenches in the south, for a month, should do a lot of good. Time for the west to shift gear.
I don't think the war would be over no matter what was supplied but if everything that is going to be drip fed was just given straight away or ASAP including training on fighter jets starting immediately a huge number of Ukraine civilian and soldiers lives would be saved and Russia army casualties would be far higher.
By now they'd have probably retaken the south and northern luhansk province up by svatove. And by now they'd probably attempting to retake Crimea, Mariupol and Donetsk. Bakhmut would never have fallen.
But alas the West has appeased Russia too much and prolonged this war.
For ordinary Joe's like us there's no way of telling what state the russian forces are in (I'm sure the IC community know full well the current situation). They could collapse in days or hang in there right through the winter. As you said the more attrition the better before winter.
Had the US supplied large quantities of ATACMS in 2022 this war would surely be over by now.
I know Russia are using them but I wonder will they increase production of them to use on Ukrainian military.
So it seems, as we speculated about previously , the Cluster Munitions are having a decisive impact.
I think Moscow Mick only sucks at Putins teat , cos he knows if he lived in Russia his corruption would of earned him kudo's
Yeah and the problem is that they will be adding to these every day making them stronger or more of them. That's why it's super important that Ukraine can get as far as they can before the really bad weather happens as Russia just needs time to increase their defences. So the more pain Ukraine can dish on the Russians before the bad weather happens the better.
100%... taking tokmak would open up a potential dash to the coast but the town is 25km or so from the frontline with enormous russian defensive positions in-between. the russians will throw absolutely everything at the ukrainians to stop them getting to tokmak in order to prevent a potentially war ending scenario from occurring.
map below courtesy of ISW which illustrate the dense russian defenses.
That’s where the fallacy part of the “no true Scotsman” fallacy lives. Concentrating on one particular aspect in isolation, demanding purity, and dismissing the overwhelming evidence as a whole. There’s nothing that says the far left can’t be susceptible to hypocrisy.
It's funny how a policy of "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" was criticised when the US indulged in it e.g. with the Taliban, but is now a perfectly sensible policy when the anti-America/NATO types do it.
Any Ukrainian gains will have been a success (and we're already past that criteria), russia aren't advancing, their economy is collapsed and they're now having to defend Moscow from daily attacks.
From Ukraine's perspective, it won't be over until they have their territory back, however long that takes.
From "the west's" perspective, now that all bridges with russia have been burned, by russia, while russians were standing on them, continued support of Ukraine is still the cheapest ever dismantling of a superpower. The weapons to Ukraine will continue to flow, once F-16 are added, then there will be clamouring for F-18 maybe F-35 (I doubt the latter, but I doubted we'd see Abrams as well).
It also acts as a cautionary tale for others thinking to do the same (China with Taiwan), doubly so by NATO and allies all turning the weapons production back to full, so there will be far more exercises carried out and equipment available if and when needed (my own opinion is that China will just wait it out and both countries will meet in the middle at some point far in the future).
As others have said, artillery superiority on the Ukraine side makes it a long winter for russian troops, but I do expect them to lash out at civilians.
Badly failed businessman you mean surely?
Did you see the footage from the Bray chap called Finn last night on RTE? In one of the sectors he was in, he noted that the Ukrainians were just collecting their own casualties and filmed Russian bodies rotting away on the roadsides. I'm sure they'll be tidied up in time but not a priority when their f***er friends are still trying to wipe you out. Better things to be doing.
I would question how Noted Businessman Mick Wallace could be considered "far left" though, purely from an economic perspective, for someone to be quite ... enthusiastic in the pursuit of private capital wealth.
You’re engaging in the “no true Scotsman” fallacy. Daly and Wallace are, by any reasonable definition, on the (far) left of Irish politics.
I will note that “being soft” on Russia is not a prerequisite for being on the left. Brendan Ogle is a contrary example to be commended: https://www.newstalk.com/news/war-on-ukraine-the-left-is-being-too-soft-on-putin-brendan-ogle-1388301
The balls on whoever did this
There's a cohort of Left Wing people who, in a ideological desperation to pin the blame on The West/NATO/The USA, will jump through hoops to at best, Both Sides the war & at worst, openly support Russia's right to invade or will argue away Ukrainian autonomy like it's nothing. From the likes of Jeremy Corbyn to Brazil's Lula to Sabine Higgins, nominally sober and left-leaning figures have simply ignored the concept of Russia as either autocratic - or Empire Building, such is the myopia for all things "west".
I wish you were right, but looking at the local far-left crowd, or the likes of the Linkspartei back in Germany, they are fully onboard with the Kremlin line. Anything that goes against the "evil" United States and NATO must be supported.
I'd put them in a wheelie bin marked 'clowns'. I wouldn't even call them leftists. Most people on the left have compassion for the common man.
Anyway:
This could well be Ukraine moving laterally along the Russian defensive line as consolidating this line for defense for themselves. I just hope they keep pushing. If they can do the same at the tokmak like then Russia has basically lost the entire south.
They do. For example, Clare Daly and Mick Wallace have consistently voted against Europe in favour of Putin's Russia.
The recent term Campist encapsulates their thinking:
"A leftist who supports any country/organization simply for being opposed to the United States or the West, including authoritarian governments who would otherwise not follow leftist beliefs."
They are typically smart enough to make a vapid condemnation of Putin, but typically it's just window dressing before making statements that are directly in line with Putin's. The "Putin is bad but" trope.
Expectations by who? I don't recall anyone from Ukraine laying out their expectations. Things haven't gone gung-ho and that's a disappointment to the war fan boys out there who then throw their soothers at the laptop when there isn't carnage and Russians dying/fleeing while the Ukrainians dance at the crossroads in celebration. Who set the time limit on these expectations? Did someone say if ye lads aren't in some village with X thousand dead Russians then go home and the war is over? No they didn't.
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