More pressure on America to send aid to the Ukraine…..
And ?
Some critical discussion about Western and Ukraina miscues in the conflict and a warning that Putin IS building a new wave troops to push into combat in the coming months while America takes it’s time with aid and the Ukraine drags its feet in drafting more troops sirely needed ….
According to Zelenskyy, unless the stalled multibillion-dollar package is approved soon, his forces will have to “go back, retreat, step by step, in small steps.” He also warned that some major cities could be at risk of falling.
Obviously, Zelenskyy’s warnings are part of a broad diplomatic effort to free up the military aid his forces so desperately need and have been short of for months — everything from 155-millimeter artillery shells to Patriot air-defense systems and drones. But the sad truth is that even if the package is approved by the U.S. Congress, a massive resupply may not be enough to prevent a major battlefield upset.
And such a setback, especially in the middle of election campaigns in America and Europe, could very well revive Western pressure for negotiations that would obviously favor Russia, leaving the Kremlin free to revive the conflict at a future time of its choosing.
Essentially, everything now depends on where Russia will decide to target its strength in an offensive that’s expected to launch this summer. In a pre-offensive pummeling — stretching from Kharkiv and Sumy in the north to Odesa in the south — Russia’s missile and drone strikes have widely surged in recent weeks, targeting infrastructure and making it hard to guess where it will mount its major push.
And according to high-ranking Ukrainian military officers who served under General Valery Zaluzhny — the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces until he was replaced in February — the military picture is grim….
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The officers also said they now need more basic traditional weapons as well as drones. “We need Howitzers and shells, hundreds of thousands of shells, and rockets,” one of them told POLITICO, estimating that Ukraine needed 4 million shells and 2 million drones. “We told the Western partners all the time that we have the combat experience, we have the battlefield understanding of this war. [They] have the resources, and they need to give us what we need,” he added.
Europe, for its part, is trying to help Ukraine make up for its colossal disadvantage in artillery shells…
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“We don’t only have a military crisis — we have a political one,” one of the officers said. While Ukraine shies away from a big draft, “Russia is now gathering resources and will be ready to launch a big attack around August, and maybe sooner.”……
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Nato foreign ministers met in Brussels.
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Jens Stoltenberg, the alliance’s secretary-general, announced that when it comes to the future of aid to Ukraine, “today, allies have agreed to move forward with planning for a greater Nato role in coordinating security assistance and training.”
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Asked about a possible €100bn Nato fund for Ukraine, the Polish foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, told reporters: “we support the secretary-general’s efforts.”
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The German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, said “it is essential that we pour the ad-hoc structures into reliable, long-term structures.”
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The British foreign secretary, David Cameron, urged allies to boost defence spending. “The most important thing we can do to make sure this alliance continues to grow and continues to strengthen is to ensure that we all spend over 2% of our GDP on defence,” he said.
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The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, reiterated his call for more air defences. “This terror is wreaking havoc on cities and villages throughout Ukraine, and Russia is particularly relentless in bombarding frontline and border areas,” he wrote.
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Ukraine’s partners are not providing Ukraine with enough air defence, the country’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, told Reuters in an interview.
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Russian security official Nikolai Patrushev said today, without providing any evidence, that “Ukrainian special services” were behind last month’s deadly concert shooting near Moscow.
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Two Russian TU-95MS strategic bomber planes performed a scheduled five-hour flight over neutral waters of the Barents and Norwegian seas….
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Apr 3, 2024 – ISW Press
Russian forces appear to have increased the number and size of mechanized ground assaults on select sectors of the frontline within the past two weeks, marking a notable overall increase in Russian mechanized assaults across the theater. Ukrainian officials stated on March 20 that Ukrainian forces repelled a large Russian assault in the Lyman direction and published geolocated footage showing Ukrainian forces damaging or destroying several Russian armored vehicles east of Terny (west of Kreminna).