Ukraine says it has liberated four villages in the south-east, calling these the first settlements won back from Russia since Kyiv's counter-offensive began
On Monday morning, officials reported that "the national flag is once again waving" over Storozhove, in the Donetsk region
A day earlier, footage showed Ukrainian troops celebrating in Blahodatne and Neskuchne - and a minister said nearby Makarivka was also taken
The settlements are relatively small - and Moscow is yet to confirm any retreat
The Institute for the Study of War backs up Kyiv's claims, saying Ukraine captured "multiple settlements" along the frontline over the weekend
On Saturday, President Zelensky acknowledged that the long-awaited counter-offensive was under way
Now we see Schrodingers offensive has resolved itself- any success means the offensive is now happening for real and however meek the victories they will be inflated to an appropriate size. I'm sure the Western news and the redditors that lap it up will be just as excited when the offensive grinds to a halt and these villages are retaken
Don't you know that Marx himself called for strong repressive governments that order their citizens to attack neighboring countries and specifically target civilians?
It's good news; though, nothing spectacular like the earlier offensive. It's to be expected though, the muscovites have had time to build up those defences.
Sure, you just keep gargling Putin's cock and calling everyone else fascists. lmao. I'm a Marxist. Proud anti-imperialist. Full-on America-bad here. But I'm not going to defend a literal authoritarian dictator and an obvious war of aggression. You 🤡
Lmao sure. Keep simping for the dictator that literally locked up Pussy Riot and LGBTQ folks for existing. Your projection and false concern bullshit doesn’t work for people with more than two neurons to rub together.
I don't know why you think opposing America's forever wars equals claiming that their targets are perfect utopias. The US literally has over 20% of the world's prison population working as slaves for private profit. Why do you libs always try to use the gays to push your far right agendas? A few comments ago you were calling people homophobic slurs. smh
And for the record I happily suck dick. That you brain dead orcs see that as an insult just shows your full ass. It’s whose cock you’re sucking is (obviously) the problem, war crime apologist.
I don’t give a fuck what you believe, tankie fuck. Your concern trolling while simping for a country and dictator that literally imprisons people like me will never not be obvious, meaningless hypocritical trolling. You christofascist Putinists all give actual communists a bad name. Marx would be ashamed.
OoOoo THREE responses! 🤡 You suuuuure showed me! That MUST mean you’re right, and not just a big dim tankie fuck whose worn out the patience of those around you. Get fucked tankie, you’re on the wrong side of history, and i absolutely love how mad you are that you and yours are losing this safe space.
Lmfao the projection is insane. Where did I ever imply I support America? Fuck America. Fuck the prison industrial complex. But fuck you for playing apologetics for an obvious war of aggression, filled with war crimes, started at the behest of an authoritarian anti-lgbt dictator that happily kills his own people to maintain his tenuous grasp on power. This isn’t hard.
This is such a brain dead take. The state of Russia did not launch a war of aggression at the behest of a dictator to maintain a tenuous grasp on power.
The US, the only country to ever use nuclear bombs against an opponent, who used them against civilians, decided to build a transnational nuclear military. They called it NATO. It is accountable to no citizens. It is accountable to no democratic body of any nation. It is accountable to the hegemonic power of the US. Instead of the US building an empire in Europe to project its force against Russia and China, it built this new thing, this never before seen thing. It is a military that supervenes national borders and national sovereignty. It occupies Europe without oppressing those that it occupies. And it has always been and forever will be directed at controlling Europe against all that threaten the interests of the US, including European nations. Specifically, it is directed at Russia, just as the Third Reich was, which is why NATO was built after the fall of the Third Reich and staffed with "former" Nazi officers at all levels of the organization.
This transnational nuclear force has been deploying nuclear capabilities in a never ending march to completely encircle Russia for the past several decades. Through the coup in Ukraine in 2014, the US finally had a right-wing government that would support the continued expansion of this transnational nuclear force aimed directly at Russia. Russia has been strategizing about this possibility since NATO was formed and we know this because A) Russia was invaded TWICE by Western countries through the Ukraine border, the most recent one being the Third Reich and B) as the USSR was being dismantled all leadership on both sides was very clear about how important it was that Ukraine not be militarized against Russia. We know that the US has been strategizing since the 1990s on how to militarize Ukraine against Russia.
So when the Russian state finally intervenes to stop the expansion of the transnational nuclear military that draws direct inheritance from the last fascist regime that invaded Russia through Ukraine, it is the height of clownishness to attribute the invasion to "Putin hates queer people and thinks he's Adonis and also is a ruthless dictator that lives only to kill and be rich". Your analysis doesn't even reach the complexity of a 17 year old explaining the drama in the WWE.
I truly don’t give a fuck what you suggest, you tankie fuck. Nothing I said is homophobic. It’s not the dick sucking that’s bad, it’s who your mouth Is attached to, moron.
Hold on. Wait a sec. What do you mean? Do you think Ukraine isn't crawling with Nazis or what? You can't possibly be still on last spring's yank war propaganda?
If you are a proud anti-imperialist Marxist, I am Karl Marx and strip you of your Marxist label right now. You are a weasel and a grifter, and a useful idiot of genocidal Anglo empire.
In a few days you weasels will experience horror, if you think this is too much. And your brain will either be dewormed or you get contained in some obscure Lemmy instance, or go back to Reddit, the CIA hometown.
LMFAO sure, sure sure. Totally coherent. You fucking clown. You think this is bad, just wait until the API is depreciated, till Apollo shuts down, till the NSFW subs are driven out. It brings me nothing but joy to see you losers drowned out and chased out of your cesspool as the next Eternal September sets in.
you know it's possible to 'dislike' Russia and at the same time know that they will completely overpower Ukraine, right? you're letting your hatred for Russia blind your understanding of military power and strategy
lol, Russia can't even overpower a 5 ft 6 inch bald man riddled with amphetamine paranoia. The chances of them overpowering a real army backed by modern technology is about the same as you not accepting the "russia strong" bukkake
Ukraine has the Leopard and the Abrams. The Abrams was made specifically to fight the Soviets. In a weird way it's like the Abrams is "going home".
ISW is one of, if not the most highly regarded military think tanks in the world. They're backing these claims which means it's true.
Ukraine hasn't even used F16s or the Abrams yet and they're still succeeding. Russia is using T-90s, but mostly T-72s. Do you know the last time the M1A1 went up against a T-72? When the US invaded Iraq, the US defeated the Iraqi army within a month.
YOU seem to be the one who has no idea what they're talking about
and how did those tanks perform this weekend? and how many of those tanks are ACTUALLY IN UKRAINE right now? without air support those tanks are sitting ducks and will continue to be destroyed.
ISW was founded by an historian. please tell me you're joking when saying anything they say should be taken seriously. this shit is so easy dude, how do you all get dooped by these people every time.
The reason I know you're talking out of your ass is because the Abrams isn't even in Ukraine right now. You clearly aren't following what's going on in the war.
They're training them in Germany. Similar for the F16s. The Leopards are performing quite well however.
Set your confirmation bias aside. ISW is highly regarded and demoting them to a glorified historian is a gross oversimplification.
hey buddy just doing a 6 month checkin with ya. how are those leopards performing in Ukraine? and where the heck are those f16s that are totally going to change the course of the war?
Anyone that "knows" they will completely overpower Ukraine apparently stopped paying attention to reality many years ago. They've been proven to be incapable of it.
Yeah the correlation I see is that people who are paying really close attention to the war are most optimistic about Ukraine's chances, relative to the not paying much attention mainstream and the delusional cohort who are getting their news updates from Russian sources.
oh cool, i've found the military understander. so what is Ukraine's strategy here? What does victory look like for them?
In weapons, ammunition, and soldiers Russia outnumbers the AFU, as assessed by any reasonable expert. Russia sees this as a special military operation, not a war. They are comfortable being conservative with their resources and not committing too many at once (which is what they've done so far). Even with this restraint, they are killing Ukrainian soldiers at a higher rate than Russian soldiers are dying. Russia has an army, including reserves, of around 2million soldiers.
Look I hate seeing young men sent into a meat thresher because they are serving the interests of NATO and capitalist interests. I wish the AFU had the courage to not waste the lives of their soldiers and come to the negotiating table so that no more lives are senselessly wasted
i am once again urging you to understand that the war began in 2014.
the LPR and DPR regions are ethnically russian. they were living peacefully until 2014 when their political parties were disbanded and they've been systematically shelled by ukranians every day since 2014. minsk 2 would have reintegrated Donbas with Ukraine with some protections for its minority population, but Ukraine didn’t even implement the first step. zelensky was elected on a platform of ending the war, but when he tried Azov told him they would rather coup his government than stand down. at some point when negotiations are broken down the only thing any organization has left to do is resort to violence, which the Russian state did when it felt threatened enough by NATO (which if you’ll recall spent months warmongering prior to the invasion start) to justify the risk.
That's the most tankie shit I have read in a while. I don't get how anyone with a modicum of humanity can go out of their way to defend the war of aggression Russia is waging against the people (mostly civilians!) of Ukraine.
You seriously need to stop living in your tiny bubble. The shit you are spewing is just sad and you probably don't even get why what you say is awful.
So I sincerely ask you to either become a better person or just stfu.
I love how you think the person who is going against the dominant Western narrative is the one living in a bubble when the US operates the largest, most effective, and most funded disinformation and propaganda apparatus in the history of the world.
Of course, the people of the Donbas were just sitting there peacefully doing nothing when all of a sudden the Ukranians started shelling them. That was the start of the military action, silly me. Good thing all those vacationing Russian soldiers happened to be there a the time to defend them.
In 2022 it also just happened that russia was hosting possibly the largest military excercise in recent memory right on Ukraine's border when the situation turned too menacing. Good they happened to have all those cruise missiles ready as if they hadn't acted, russia would have been wiped out or something...
Occam's razor cuts well on the two "possible" viewpoints of this war.
First is that big country sees an opportunity to capture land from a smaller one. In multiple stages between 2014 and 2022. A very limited amount of assumptions that can explain what is happening...
Second presumes that all the occupied areas secretly wanted to be a part of russia, nato is threatening russian territory while not being present, non affiliated soldiers with russian (but not russian) equipment occupy areas, a jewish president turns out to be in charge of a genocidial nazi regime that just has to be replaced with a peaceful one, and finally all of this is best achieved by a 3 day (actually 476) special military operation that has a goal of achieving something, but nobody actually knows what.
Occam’s razor cuts well on the two “possible” viewpoints of this war.
You really need to stop sniffing your own farts.
Every world leader and military strategist since the 1930s has understood Ukraine to be critical to the national security of Russia. That's why the Third Reich invaded Russia across the Ukrainian border. When the USSR was being dismantled, all world leaders understood Ukrainian neutrality to be a critical component of Russian national security. It was openly discussed. It's been a known component of international security for decades.
And yet, when we got access to leaks, we learned that simultaneously while NATO was telling Gorbie that Ukraine would remain neutral, Clinton was working internally to figure out to get NATO to establish presence in Ukraine. Despite Russia telling NATO and the world that Ukraine is critical to their national security, the war machine just kept on rolling. Despite Russia not reacting to all other border occupations by NATO in the Baltic states, this was the one red line that everyone knew about publicly that would tip Russia over the edge.
And that's exactly what happened. The idea that NATO wasn't threatening Russia because it wasn't physically installed yet is such a ridiculous point. Are you proposing that Russia would only have a casus belli after NATO finished installing nuclear capabilities? Are you proposing that Russia should wait until NATO is ready to fight before choosing to fight?
It's clear that you've only read analysis from the last year and only from Western sources. Just go read about this history from the 90s. Actually engage with the historical context here.
Ukraine hasn't even reached the first anti-tank trenches yet, which are at the first line of defense which is part of at least three lines of defense (depending on location). They've taken very heavy losses to this point too.
Ukraine is getting stomped, and that's why the NATO bosses are now talking about possibilities like a coalition of the willing or even giving Ukraine tactical nukes in one extreme case I read.
First it was communist propaganda now it's just propaganda lol
You've been proven wrong and you don't have anyting to say about the content so you simply claim it's propaganda. Such anti-intellectualism could be considered coping.
It's shit like this that makes this one of the hardest wars to follow. Before that, it was Syria.
The Russian commanders, who were wrong to invade, have learned a lot since the initial invasion. It's the same reason that Assads army was much better after they lost a lot of their soldiers. When you have a lot of your army die, on average, the ones remaining are the ones who managed to stay alive who, again on average, are now much more experienced combat troops.
The Russians did exactly what Ukraine did during the Russian offensive. They pulled back behind their minefields, and then used artillery to drop more mines on the assaulting force that was in the process of clearing mines. This was the same tactic that the Ukrainians used to great success that caused a bunch of Russian tanks to be blown up in columns in Vulhedar.
Remember, good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people. If the basis of your view of why you think a given side is losing is because you don't like them, then you aren't actually interested in the war. Just in cheerleading your team.
Honestly, I can't understand the strategic goal of how the Ukrainians are running this particular offensive. It truly seems to be to spend as much Ukrainian blood to secure western financial and logistical support. Not to actually gain territory they can hold. At least, that's my best guess with articles like this in the American media: Politico
Hopefully the exodus from Reddit will help drown out the authoritarian-worship here.
Yes, my Russian-sympathizing friends. You can certainly classify the actions of Russia and China as imperialist & bad too, and it will not detract from the imperialist & bad stuff the US or "the West" has done. Most humans can walk and chew gum at the same time, you can too!
Edit: My first downvote here! Looks like there are indeed some people who can't walk and chew gum at the same time :P
Imperialism is the practice, theory or attitude of maintaining or extending power over foreign nations, particularly through expansionism, employing not only hard power (economic and military power), but also soft power (cultural and diplomatic power). Imperialism focuses on establishing or maintaining hegemony and a more or less formal empire.
Russia (and the Soviet Union) has had multiple rounds of imperialism throughout its history. Slicing bits off Ukraine and its continued occupation of parts of Georgia in the modern era certain counts as expansionism. It also exercises cultural power by using state controlled Russian-language media to influence both domestic and foreign populations.
The only coping here is coming from people who think that the fact that Ukraine hasn't even reached the first line of defence in over a week is some kind of a stunning success. To give people some perspective, here's what western media said Ukraine would have to achieve in the first day in order to succeed https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/04/18/ukraine-russia-war-counteroffensive-attack-bakhmut-himars/
Today our troops captured a two-room apartment with kitchen, toilet, and bathroom. They have succeeded in retaining two-thirds of it despite fierce counterattacks by the enemy.
An area amounting to about 6 km by 6 km. Still an excuse for cheerleading and manufacturing consent for escalation. One of the villages is like 6 houses.
Yanukovich, while definitely corrupt, won in a fair democratic election that was judged free and fair by international observers.. The coup overthrew a democratically elected leader. He was not appointed by anyone.
Western liberals keep ignoring anything before 2022 in order to create a black-and-white narrative. This leads them to the conclusion that they're fighting absolute evil and so any means are justified no matter how many people will die, and how dangerous and even counter-productive their actions.
Nah. I don't see Russia as absolute evil. And there are plenty of means the west does not consider justified. Nobody I know falls into either of these categories.
I don't want Ukraine to kill poor Russian sods but as long as Russia kills poor Ukrainian sods I think it's only fair if they get to shoot back.
Most of us just want Russia to go home and let Ukraine be Ukraine.
Don't get me wrong. I'd be highly surprised if there weren't at least some American fighting in Ukraine on a more than just "personal capacity" but with the fixation the Republicans have with tying Biden to Ukraine it's highly likely that any sizeable involvment would have been been discovered and made public by now.
If you think the Russian Army is fighting the combined western might right now, then I have disappointing news for you.
weren’t at least some American fighting in Ukraine
Dude. They're literally running the war there. How can you be this uninformed?
tying Biden to Ukraine it’s highly likely that any sizeable involvment would have been been discovered and made public by now.
Haven't you seen the video of him in Ukraine bragging about bribing the leadership to get his son off of a prosecution? I'll root it out for you if you haven't.
If you think the Russian Army is fighting the combined western might right now, then I have disappointing news for you.
No they're just using the Ukrainians as cannon fodder.
This is such a simplistic view of the war. The civil war started because the country already had internal fault lines, and was pulled in different directions by Russian and Western meddling until it broke. The invasion was just the latest in a series of escalations. Nothing about this war is in the interest of the people living on the battlefield, they got duped or forced into fighting each other. Encouraging them to fight on is messed up.
Edit: I'd also like to add that Russia seemed quite willing, prior to the invasion, to have a compromise in which Ukraine would be neutral. The US especially clearly wasn't interested, insisting instead on its own supremacy, in which no opposing or neutral countries are to be tolerated. To this end they also supported the worst elements of Ukrainian society, ultra-nationalist Banderites, which they had been doing since the end of WW2.
I guarantee you it means something to the residents of those six houses.
It's easy to lose track of individual humanity at the scale of a war, but this victory is the one these people will always most remember when they think of the tide turning. Their lives are worth something.
The summer offensive that has been going on for what? One week? Looking at how fast Russia gained ground in bakhmut, vuhledar, and avdiivka, this offensive is going swimmingly
I would save this comment and get back to you when the offensive has crumbled, but something tells me you and all the other Reddit libs currently swarming this website will have long crawled back to daddy Reddit by then ;)
E: Uh oh, seems like I've angered le epic reddit army! Whatever shall I do?! I know, I'll just wait a month or two until 80% of the accounts in this thread are long dead :3
@DerPapa69 The fact that this instance often bans people for countering your imperialist world-view created a bubble where you might think it's the libs that you speak out against. In reality it's not only radicals that you write of but it's also our comrades, long time antifa, anarchist and communist militants that are dying fighting back against yet another imperialist incursion into CEE from Russia. No amount of western ignorance, privilege and lack of education will stop us from struggling for our right to self-determination, solidarity with the refugees from Ukraine and all victims of this invasion or the broader struggle against a centuries long oppression of our peoples. With regards, from admin of one of the first lemmy instances.
the thing you bloodthirsty redditors don't understand is, the only correct position on this war is hoping it ends as soon as possible. I hope peace talks can be established, and we can all move past this with as few people as possible being shoved into the woodchipper. I am not pro russia, and I'm certainly not pro ukraine. The only correct position is anti war, anything less is baying for blood.
I have little trust that an "end" that leaves Russia occupying a large portion of Ukraine will last. It's a message to Russia's leadership that invasions will be rewarded. First Georgia, then Crimea, then Ukraine more broadly. Make some allegations about a Russian minority being persecuted and it's time to roll in the tanks! That's probably a large reason why Europe has been willing to arm Ukraine to the teeth: to send a message that the West is serious this time after wimping out in the case of Georgia and Crimea.
That's literally how we got here. Russia has been appeasing NATO as it deploys nuclear capabilities on it's border in many countries. This most recent move by NATO, under US direction, to establish nuclear capabilities on the Ukraine border could no longer be managed through appeasement and diplomacy. It's not like Russia hasn't tried, it's not like the US didn't know Ukraine was a red line for Russian national security. Russia has been appeasing US nuclear expansion for decades, and slowly demonstrating their willingness to fight back. Now they're in a proxy conflict where the US is pumping Ukraine full of the equipment Ukraine needs to send out soldiers. If the US hadn't done that, Ukraine would have far more people still alive and would have capitulated far earlier and begun negotiations. This is the same pattern we see every time the US pumps up a proxy, the proxy suffers the most.
I understand this is a positive news in the first week of the counter offensive, but to me - it makes me feel depressed.
It makes me look at the size of Ukraine and the occupied areas. There are thousands or probably ten thousands of occupied settlements and villages. Reporting 5 of e.g. 18.000 liberated... it is positive, it is a news, it makes me depressed looking at the scaled of what lies ahead in this war to get Russia out of Ukraine.
The thing I am hoping for and expecting, that this is not a continuous speed. In the past, we have seen Russian lines disintegrate, troops flee in civilian clothing and the front lines moved tens of kilometers within a single day.
I think it's what you said, it is not continuous speed. The offensive may slow down, may accelerate - let's be honest, there is even the chance of failure. However, looking at the last 6-9 months, we should be optimistic. The recapture of a small village may not seem impactful, for people who were born there, lived there until the war or even still live there under Russian oppression - it means the world to them.
I understand we're you're coming from but I think that's a wrong way to look at it. The villages and towns rarely are equal in the face of front-line activities - some offer great defense opportunities and can be held for months. Most are strategically unimportant and their freedom is reclaimed by battles fought in other locations. History books are full of small town names that have witnessed grand battles and sometimes a victory over a small patch of land can translate to a much greater victory later on.
Just remember how Kharkiv oblast was liberated in September 2022. Ukraine made some progress in the weeks before, which put enough pressure on the Russian occupiers to make the continued occupation untenable, so they had to pull back into Luhansk.
Something similar could easily happen here, all it needs is a cirumvention of the defense fortifications to push far enough to disrupt e.g. the supply lines between Donetsk and Crimea, and significant parts of the occupation could crumble quickly.
The nazis used a salute one French painter imagined the Romans using. In the United states kids used to make the same salute to pledge allegiance to the flag. This doesn't make the american kids (nor the Romans) nazis. Becouse the context matters.
Context is important. The people in Ukraine who started making that a thing again now were, for the most part, all direct descendants of the Nazi collaborators in Ukraine, who are now erecting statues to their Nazi father/grandfathers.
I wish this war hadn't started. The Russians were wrong for invading, but the amount of white-washing of literal Nazis because the Ukrainians are reframing their national identity away from the USSR and Russia is absolute dogshit. The people who used that saying were bad. The people trying to make it a thing now are directly related to those bad people, and don't want them thought of as bad anymore.
All of the justifications people are using now are the same justifications used by assholes promoting the lost cause myth about the civil war.
all direct descendants of the Nazi collaborators in Ukraine
literal Nazis
That's the same sort of twisted interpretation of history that I see out of Republicans in the US. The Democratic Party used to be the party of slavery and the south, so they're practically all slavers today! Black people just laugh at them and continue voting Democrat in droves.
Bad analogy. Better one would be if the Democratic party started to put up statues to Jefferson Davis because the Democratic Party members who were children/grandchildren of Jefferson Davis wanted to re-rehabilitate the image of Jefferson Davis.
I promise you that if the Democratic party started trying to retroactively white wash the confederacy, or specific subsets of the confederacy, in the same exact way the Ukrainians are, that the people that were oppressed by the Democratic Party would no longer vote for them.
Point is, the guy's motivations were singularly around Ukrainian nationalism. Then when Hitler found him inconvenient, he was imprisoned. When judging people's actions, it's best to stay informed about their motives. Especially so when you're trying to cast people as Nazis by two degrees of separation.
No. I'm saying that in complex wars with many parties, it can be simplistic to label people as dedicated to a cause when they have merely made an alliance of convenience. What you're talking with Zelensky is different. Nazism is a direct threat to his ethnicity.
I'm not sure where Obama enters into it, though. Black people have been killing other Black people in Africa for a long time. When ethnicity is involved, it's usually tribal instead of racial.
The ones right now (not 70 years ago) defending their country (aka the Ukrainians) from imperialists (russians) who are shelling civilians, kidnapping children, castrating soldiers, raping women. YHave you been keeping up?
Funnily enough, the Ukrainian constitution does have a line in there like that, although thankfully it has to do with radiation and not… you know.
Providing ecological safety and maintenance of ecological equilibrium in the territory of Ukraine, overcoming consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophic crash - catastrophic crashes of planetary scale, preserving gene pool of the Ukrainian people are obligation of the state.
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