No media bullet points today to post…..
The Ukraine forces ARE on the offense, slowly…..
Ukraine women fighting the conflict in many ways….
The Ukraine Southern front push…
Much attention is now shifting here, to the southern front line less than 100 miles north of the Azov Sea, where Ukrainians are eager to sever the “land bridge” connecting mainland Russia to Crimea, which Russia invaded and illegally annexed in 2014. Kyiv is also intent on liberating cities such as Melitopol and Enerhodar, where the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is located….
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Peace and Settlement Analysis….
For now, he said, the West’s job is to continue supporting Ukraine militarily “to put them in the best position, whenever that point it”.
Officials are extremely reluctant to be drawn into when that point will come.
But, if Ukraine continues to win back territory in the coming months, the debate will become more acute: just how far are Ukraine’s Western allies prepared to support Kyiv’s war aims?
In blunt terms, returning to the front lines which existed on 24 February, when Russia launched its all-out invasion, is one thing.
Encouraging Ukraine to go beyond them, to recapture areas seized by Russia in 2014 – Crimea and large parts of the Donbas – is another.
Quiet channels of communication do continue, involving the Pentagon and the Russian Defence Ministry, or CIA director William Burns and his Russian counterpart Sergei Naryshkin.
But, for all the talk of when and how peace talks should begin, we still seem to be a long way from a diplomatic solution to the war in Ukraine…
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Battle Field Updates…..
Ukrainian forces are pushing on into the winter after those two sweeping counteroffensives in the northeast and south. They are also once again stepping up strikes on Russian supply routes, command centers and ammunition depots from new forward positions.
In an effort to staunch its losses and regain momentum in the war, the Russian military has been funneling newly drafted conscripts with little training and mostly inadequate equipment along the front lines in Ukraine, the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington research group, said in a Friday assessment.
But as the ground hardens and fighting intensifies, Russia remains mostly on the defensive, and analysts said that the Russian-held area east of Kherson city and the Dnipro River was not well defended.
“Russian forces clearly do not expect to be able to prevent Ukrainian forces from getting across the river, nor are the Russians prioritizing defensive positions to stop such a crossing,” the Institute for the Study of War said this past week after analyzing publicly available satellite photos of the Russian defensive positions.
The Russian withdrawal from Kherson was both an embarrassment for the Kremlin, which had only recently declared the region to be a part of Russia, and a strategic setback, as it put the Ukrainians in a better position to threaten supply lines from Crimea with long-range precision weapons provided by the West….
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The Ukraine women swerving in their military, some in combat….
While registering for military service is compulsory for men, women can choose to volunteer. After the invasion, many did so, and almost 60,000 women are now in the Ukrainian armed forces, sometimes filling combat roles….
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The determination of Ukrainian women to fight Russians, or spy on them from behind enemy lines or raise money for the troops reflects an unflinching determination of Ukrainians, male and female alike, to sacrifice for their country. At a time when the United States is so divided, Ukraine feels the opposite: There is a passionate, uplifting, leveling unity here, and it’s one reason Vladimir Putin may be in trouble.
The Ukrainian government says that 151 female soldiers have been killed or are missing so far. About 350 have received awards such as “Hero of Ukraine.”
Today in the war in Ukraine, the sexism of Russian troops may have hurt them, because they did not always realize what women are capable of….