Russian troops ARE taking advantage of Ukraine’s military waiting for US and Western weapons has mounted an concerted action to take Ukraine’s second biggest city….
The stakes ARE HIGH with Putin and Zelensky firing their military leaders for replacements that can push their forces harder….
Ukraine troops under constraints of low ammo are low in morale…
In the past three days, Russian troops, backed by fighter jets, artillery and lethal drones, have poured across Ukraine’s northeastern border and seized at least nine villages and settlements, and more square miles per day than at almost any other point in the war, save the very beginning.
In some places, Ukrainian troops are retreating, and Ukrainian commanders are blaming each other for the defeats.
Thousands of Ukrainian civilians are fleeing to Kharkiv, the nearest big city. A reception center that hummed with a sense of order and calm on Saturday had transformed into a totally different scene on Sunday, as exhausted people shouted at each other and families with no place to go spilled out onto the grass.
As the sense of panic spreads, especially in Kharkiv, some hard questions loom: How far will this go? Is it just a momentary setback for the underdog Ukrainians? Or a turning point?
Military experts say the Russian advance has put Ukraine in a very dangerous spot. Ukrainian troops have been complaining for months about severe shortages of ammunition — exacerbated by the tangles in the U.S. Congress that delayed the delivery of key weapons. And Ukrainian soldiers, by all accounts, are exhausted.
More than two years of trying to fight off a country with three times the population to draw from has left Ukraine so depleted and desperate for fresh troops that its lawmakers have voted to mobilize convicts, a controversial practice that Ukraine had ridiculed Russia for using in the first half of the war….
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The city of Kharkiv itself is safe — at the moment. It sits about 20 miles from the border. But just outside the city, people are running for their lives. The Russians are pressing on Lyptsi, another small town that is even closer to Kharkiv than Vovchansk. Residents who fled in evacuation vans on Sunday said the situation in Lyptsi was not looking good.
“For the last three days they were shelling us every 10 minutes,” said Halyna Surina, who escaped on Sunday afternoon. “There was artillery, airplane bombs and drones flying around. I could hear helicopters — and they were not our helicopters.”….
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“The situation is difficult, but the defence forces of Ukraine are doing everything to hold defensive lines and positions, and inflict damage on the enemy,” added Syrskyi, who was appointed as the army commander earlier this year.
However, the Institute for the Study of War, a US thinktank, said on Saturday that previous Russian claims to have captured four villages appeared to be accurate and described the recent gains as “tactically significant”. On Sunday, Russia claimed to have taken control of another five villages.
The UK foreign secretary, David Cameron, told Sky News on Sunday that the Russian assault marked an “extremely dangerous” moment in the war.
The Russian offensive may require Ukraine to reposition troops to the northern front, just as Russian forces are also probing in the south and east of the country. Russian military bloggers said Moscow’s troops were looking to seize a window of opportunity, pressing Ukraine back amid a delay in western aid arriving….