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Ukraine Invasion Day 131: 70 days of Donbas fighting continues, and still no red button [1]
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Date: 2022-07-03
Belgorod and Kursk seems to have been hit with explosions as Lysychansk has been surrounded.
A map of the approximate situation on the ground in Ukraine as of 00:00 UTC 04/07/22. pic.twitter.com/lyBndaSq75 #Ukraine #UkraineRussiaWar #UkraineWar #UkraineUnderAttaсk
x THREAD:
Regarding the ‘escalation’ some Putin fans are trying to scare people with.
Long story short - utter bullshit. The reality is that Russia is already reaching the very limits of its military might and is throwing almost everything it can against Ukraine. — Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) July 3, 2022
It is already using pretty much all conventional weaponry it can deploy, including ballistic missiles and strategic bombers. It has committed pretty much all of its combat-capable manpower available for foreign operations.
And it runs low on reserves and manpower in general as operations in Ukraine are extremely slow and costly.
The shock of the cringe-krieg of February and March is over. Much of its most combat-capable formations, including airborne and naval infantry, have been…
…severely depleted in the failed February offensive.
The Battle of Donbas goes on for over 70 days now. And Severodonetsk and Lysychansk are what Russia has managed to achieve amid immense effort, losses, and the commitment of nearly 45% of its forces in Ukraine…
…including collaborationist forces in occupied Donbas, which is subject to relentless general mobilization due to a severe lack of manpower. In Russia, they continuously have problems generating high-quality forces with its “covert mobilization.”
That’s why their advances are so extremely slow, costly, and painful. +0.3% to occupied Ukrainian territories through June should tell you a lot about Russia’s military might in 2022. And that’s at expense of other axes in the south.
Even in Donbas, they have failed to achieve their main objective and had to set much more narrow goals. They celebrated the taking of Toshkivka as if they had seized Dnipro. In some aspects, such as the use of UAVs, they run far behind the Ukrainian military.
They’d defeat the Ukrainian military and occupy most of Ukraine if they could, but all they can is to be smashing their faces against Severodonetsk for three months until they raze it to the ground and occupy the dead ashes.
It’s been the 5th month, but Russia has not even managed to impose full supremacy in the air, and its sustains losses in the sea. It has lost at least 800 tanks — which corresponds to the armored force of the UK, France, Germany, and Italy combined.
It is unlikely to be able to take the whole of Donbas, let alone the whole of Ukraine, given the weak battle performance Russia is demonstrating. In the present condition, it has zero chances in a conventional war with NATO. Lots of myths have been busted here.
We’ve been hearing this “let’s not provoke Putin” for months. But then the West started sending Ukraine tank killers, then advanced artillery, then MLRSs, then air defense. Guess what — no “escalation” followed. What followed…
…was Ukrainian military getting stronger and more capable of putting a real end to this war end sooner. The only sort of “escalation” Russia is capable of is firing hordes of missiles against Ukrainian civilians as Ukraine’s military smashes Russian ammo depots with new M142s.
And don’t get me started on scary nukes and the global holocaust — those guys in the Kremlin are very much in love with luxury, money, and being alive. And they are afraid of declaring official mobilization and calling this a war, let alone hitting the red button.
• • •
Corruption in Ukraine A week after the E.U. formally named Ukraine as a candidate, the head of the bloc’s executive arm, Ursula von der Leyen, told the Ukrainian parliament today that anti-corruption reforms were a key requirement for joining the bloc.
“You have created an impressive anti-corruption machine,” she said. “But now these institutions need teeth, and the right people in senior posts.” Von der Leyen also told Ukraine to name new heads for two anti-corruption agencies, the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office and the National Anti-Corruption Bureau.
, who focused on the issue when she served as the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 2016 to 2019. A career diplomat, she became a target of a smear campaign by allies of former President Donald Trump that eventually resulted in her being recalled from the post. She was a central witness in Trump’s impeachment trial. To get some insight on Ukraine’s struggles with corruption, I turned to Marie Yovanovitch , who focused on the issue when she served as the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 2016 to 2019. A career diplomat, she becameby allies of former President Donald Trump that eventually resulted in her being recalled from the post. She was a
Our conversation has been lightly edited and condensed. What are some of the challenges Ukraine faces in eradicating corruption? Corruption in Ukraine and in other countries of the former Soviet Union, and especially in Russia, is the malign legacy of the Soviet Union, where government did not work. The leadership were stealing and padding their own nests, and the people were left to figure out how they were going to get medical services for a family member, how they were going to get telephones hooked up in their apartment, etc.
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