TheOldGuy @TheOldGuy@qoto.org
I am a Democrat who supports Ukraine in their battle against The Russian Z fascist invaders.
I am a 73 year old Covid hermit who
lives on 10 acres in a sparsely populated area of the Ozarks. I heat with wood that is leftover by the lumber industry. When cutting oak for lumber only the trunk is used.
The largest town is population 2992. The county is 13k people scattered over 713 square miles.
Joined Dec 2022
He will be convicted. The evidence is there.
https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/it-doesnt-look-good/55636/
Let's hope they struck a deal.
https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/bon-voyage-mike-johnson-2/55627/
Remember, with Republicans, every accusation is a confession
The fecal is about to hit the fan.
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The United States and its Western allies must provide Ukraine with regular and consistent aid and deliver new critical systems to Ukrainian forces in a timely and effective manner for Western security assistance to have operationally significant effects.
ISW has been considering a very wide forecast cone from the most advantageous to the most dangerous possible outcomes in recent months due to the uncertainty about the resumption of US aid to Ukraine.
ISW will likely be narrowing the forecast cone in the coming months as the impacts of Western security assistance become clearer in Ukraine and as the Kremlin decides how to respond.
Key Points from April 20th, 2024’s Update:
1.) The US House of Representatives passed a supplemental appropriations bill on April 20th, which is intended to provide $60 billion of assistance to Ukraine. The bill must now be passed by the Senate and signed by the president before any aid may head to Ukraine.
2.) These two requirements coupled with the logistics of transporting US material to Ukraine’s frontlines will mean the US assistance most likely won’t produce a noticeable effect for several weeks. The situation at the front will remain precarious in the meantime.
3.) Ukrainian forces may suffer additional setbacks in the coming weeks, but they should be able to blunt the overall Russian offensive once the US aid arrives.
4.) The US overcoming its political differences, at least momentarily, is a critical turning point in the war in Ukraine. However, all players involved will have to make critical decisions in the near- and long-term future.
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(2/3)
ISW continues to assess that material shortages are forcing Ukraine to conserve ammunition and prioritize limited resources to critical sectors of the front, increasing the risk of a Russian breakthrough in other less well-provisioned sectors and making the overall frontline more fragile than the current relatively slow rate of Russian advances suggests.
Ukraine will likely be in a significantly improved operation position by June 2024 and Russian military command will most likely reconsider several aspects of their anticipated 2024 offensive in the Kharkiv region.
Ukrainian forces will likely leverage sufficient US security assistance to blunt Russian offensive operations in June 2024, which Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Head Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov recently highlighted as the likely month that Russian forces will launch their expected large-scale summer offensive effort.
The Russian military has likely been assessing that Ukrainian forces would be unable to defend against current and future Russian offensive operations due to delays in or the permanent end of US military assistance. This assumption was likely an integral part of Russia’s operational planning for this summer.
Russian forces have been establishing operational- and strategic-level reserves to support their expected summer offensive effort, but likely have been doing so based on the assumption that even badly-trained and poorly-equipped Russian forces could make advances against Ukrainian forces that lack essential artillery and air defense munitions.
Ukraine is also addressing its own manpower challenges and will likely continue to conduct rotations to rest and replenish degraded units, although it will take time for these efforts to generate large-scale effects.
Ukrainian officials have previously indicated that Russian forces will likely continue to conduct offensive operations this summer focused on seizing the remainder of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts but may also launch an offensive operation to seize Kharkiv City.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov notably signaled on April 19 Russia’s intent to seize Kharkiv City.
The Russian military command may have envisioned that simultaneous offensive efforts towards Kharkiv City and along the current frontline in eastern Ukraine would stretch and overwhelm poorly-provisioned and undermanned Ukrainian forces and allow Russian forces to achieve a major breakthrough in at least one sector of the frontline.
The Ukrainian forces with improving material and manpower supplies that will likely hold the frontline in June 2024 will undermine this operational intent of simultaneous Russian offensive operations across a wider front.
The Russian military command will likely have to consider if the intended areas and objectives of its summer offensive effort are now feasible and if the current means that Russian forces have been concentrating and preparing are sufficient to conduct planned offensive operations considering the expected resumption of US security assistance to Ukraine.
*ISW offers no forecast of the decisions the Russians will make at this time.*
The anticipated resumption of US military aid to Kyiv is a significant turning point in this war, but the Kremlin, the collective West, and Ukraine still have many difficult decisions to make. All of which will help determine the nature and outcome of the fighting.
The Kremlin still retains the ability to further mobilize its economy and population to support its campaign to destroy Ukrainian statehood and identity and may determine to pursue domestically unpopular decisions should it deem them necessary.
Ukraine still faces persisting force generation, sustainment, and defense industrial challenges that will heavily affect the capabilities that it can bring to bear.
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Institute for the Study of War’s (ISW) Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, April 20, 2024 (A few highlights regarding US aid)
(1/3)
• Because the aid passed in the House of Representatives of the US must also pass the Senate and be signed by President Joe Biden, weapons and ammo from this aid package will probably take several weeks to find their way to the frontlines. The frontline will, therefore, remain in a precarious state. Prompt arrival of aid from the Americans should allow Ukraine to blunt the overall Russian offensive efforts.
• Ukraine will likely be in a significantly improved operation position by June 2024 and Russian military command will most likely reconsider several aspects of their anticipated 2024 offensive in the Kharkiv region.
• The anticipated resumption of US military aid to Kyiv is a significant turning point in this war, but the Kremlin, the collective West, and Ukraine still have many difficult decisions to make. All of which will help determine the nature and outcome of the fighting.
Because the aid passed in the House of Representatives of the US must also pass the Senate and be signed by President Joe Biden, weapons and ammo from this aid package will probably take several weeks to find their way to the frontlines. The frontline will, therefore, remain in a precarious state. Prompt arrival of aid from the Americans should allow Ukraine to blunt the overall Russian offensive efforts.
The US Senate will reportedly vote on the bill sometime in the coming week. Pentagon Spokesperson Brigadier General Patrick Ryder stated on April 19 that the Pentagon’s robust logistics system will allow the United States to move security assistance within a matter of “days” and that he believes that the United States will be able to “rush the security assistance in volumes” that the United States believes Ukraine will need to be successful.
US Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Celeste Wallander reportedly told US lawmakers that the Pentagon would begin moving ammunition, artillery shells, and air defense assets quickly once Congress approves the aid.
US media reported that US officials stated that the US Department of Defense (DoD) has been assembling the first tranche of resumed US security assistance for Ukraine ahead of the vote in the US House of Representatives but noted that the Biden administration has yet to make a final decision on how large the first tranche of aid will be or what it will include.
US officials reportedly stated that the United States will be able to “almost immediately” send certain munitions to Ukraine from US storage facilities in Europe, particularly critically needed 155mm artillery shells and air defense missiles.
The US officials noted that other security assistance will likely take weeks to arrive in Ukraine depending on where it is currently stored.
Ukraine has systematically improved its military logistics operations in recent months, but this new system has not yet accommodated a sudden and large influx of materiel, and no system would be able to immediately distribute large quantities of material throughout the frontline.
Ukrainian forces will therefore likely continue to face ongoing shortages of artillery ammunition and air defense interceptors in the coming weeks and the corresponding constraints that these shortages are placing on Ukraine’s ability to conduct effective defensive operations.
Ukrainian artillery shortages are letting Russian mechanized forces make marginal tactical gains, and Ukraine’s degraded air defense capabilities are permitting Russian aviation to heavily degrade Ukrainian defenses along the front with glide bomb strikes.
Russian forces could continue to leverage these operational advantages in the coming weeks to make further tactical gains and destabilize the Ukrainian defensive line in hopes of achieving operationally significant advances.
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Russia is hysterical over US aid to Ukraine and asset confiscation
Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the US aid to Ukraine approved by the House of Representatives will "make more dead Ukrainians" and enrich the United States, and threatened that the US will have to answer for the confiscation of frozen Russian assets.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called the support of Ukraine "direct sponsorship of terrorist activities.
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⚡️The police detained two suspects in the attack on the police officers - they face life imprisonment.
🔹Two servicemen involved in the shooting of police officers in the Vinnytsia region were detained in the village of Lipetske, Podilsky District, Odesa Region.
🔹Currently, the detainees are being investigated. A notification of suspicion is prepared for them and the question of choosing preventive measures is decided.
🔹The detainees are two military men, a father and a son, aged 52 and 26. They are natives of Vinnytsia region. The policeman, who died in the line of duty, managed to injure them.
🔹 The attack on police officers took place on April 20 around two in the morning. The patrolmen stopped the car to check the documents of the two men, but they started shooting. One patrolman was killed, another was wounded.
Photo: National Police
Elon Musk expressed concern about the lack of an exit strategy from the war in Ukraine
"What worries me the most is that there is no exit strategy, just an eternal war in which children die in the trenches from artillery or machine guns and snipers, in minefields," Musk said on the social network X.
- Exit strategy? That is easy: Russia is free to leave Ukraine at any time! Who else could possibly exit??
Mykhailo Podolyak, Advisor to the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, emphasized the strategy: The withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukrainian territory.
Podolyak, further commenting on Musk's post, said that after such posts by global influencers, "one has to wonder once again about the lack of basic logic in the modern world."
From "The Analyst":
HOW WILL AID GET TO UKRAINE?
The $60.8 billion in aid is a little more complex than it sounds. It isn’t all aid to Ukraine in strict terms. $20 billion is to replace what the US Army has taken and already donated. However that can when it comes to items like ammunition for artillery, tanks and bullets for guns, quickly be sent to Ukraine if deemed necessary, under presidential draw down authority.
The remaining $40 billion includes aid for some humanitarian purposes, troop training and payment - just as important as physical aid.
Around $35 billion is available for drawdown of existing military equipment, including M2 Bradley (which has proven to be a pain in Russia’s side), more M-1’s, more M777 artillery, more Palladins, and as many anti-aircraft missiles as the US can supply.
One of the upsides in the delay of providing aid is that there’s already a stock of missiles ready to go. One thing we do know is that ATACMS is now a legal requirement in the bill and more will flow. That could prove to be very significant.
In terms of logistics the US just announced it is sending more advisors to its Embassy in Kyiv to coordinate the secure delivery of new equipment.
Physical transfer can be very quick when it comes to ammunition. For example, the McAlester Army Ammunition Plant in Oklahoma sprawls across 45,000 acres (70 square miles) connected by rail and has a mission to surge as many as 435 shipping containers — each able to carry 15 tons (30,000 pounds) worth of munitions — if ordered by the president in a day.
Much of this will be moved by sea but a great deal will be ferried in by air using the vast military cargo fleet and contracted civilian air freight where needed.
That means ammo can be in Ukrainian hands on the front inside 24-36 hours if it’s necessary.
Allowing for the Senate to pass the bill Tuesday, the President will sign it within an hour and after that, it’s entirely down to how fast aid gets there. My understanding is priorities have been long established and there’s a preferred order for what gets delivered first and what comes later. It just needs the Senate to pass it and a presidential signature.
Finally the tide will start to turn.
Thank you to every American who made this happen.
Slava Ukraini 🇺🇦!
Ignorant horse, can you tell me why then the Russians destroyed 1000+ churches in Ukraine, including those of the Moscow Patriarchate?
I answer, because they don't care, they simply pursue their goal which is not connected to religion. And even if 100 churches line up in their path, they’ll bomb them and move on
As the Cheka-OGPU learned, Z-security forces detained... and released Armenian citizen A.K. Tokhyan, suspected of participation in an organized criminal community in France and wanted by the Interpol NCB.
In March, he was detained in Vnukovo by employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The crimes charged against Tokhyan by French law enforcement officers correspond to Part 2 of Art. 210 of the Criminal Code of the ruZZian Fakeration.
In court, the prosecutor filed a motion to postpone the hearing to provide additional evidence to substantiate the request for detention; a motion was also filed to extend the time of detention of the suspect by 72 hours. The petitions were granted, but at the specified time Tokhyan was not brought to court to select a preventive measure.
As a result, the court, at the request of the prosecutor, simply terminated the proceedings, since “the failure of the specified person to appear in court is a circumstance that prevents the consideration of the investigator’s petition on the merits, and entails the termination of the proceedings on this petition.”
Funny that, isn't it? Failure to appear in court results in termination of proceedings. That's a new one, I think.
@freerussia_report
Several Z-schools celebrated the anniversary of the formation of SMERSH (Yes, they were real, not only in James Bond Films, Stalin invented the name SMERSH.) -
A number of Russian schools held lessons dedicated to the anniversary of the formation of the SMERSH structure, known for extrajudicial killings during the Second World War, the Agency noted. In Novosibirsk, children with disabilities were taken through a “dense forest” and “several checkpoints” to a closed military unit with Yars missile systems. There they were shown an operation to “neutralize mock terrorists and the weapons of SMERSH fighters,” the local TV channel GTRK said. Then the children were taken to an weapons exhibition of the “legendary SMERSH detachment - the counterintelligence elite.”
At Samara school No. 49, 7th-graders were sent on an excursion to the museum in memory of SMERSH fighter Konstantin Stychkov, and at Altai school No. 4, for the “significant date,” schoolchildren were given a “Lesson in Courage.”
@freerussia_report
I am a Democrat who supports Ukraine in their battle against The Russian Z fascist invaders.
I am a 73 year old Covid hermit who
lives on 10 acres in a sparsely populated area of the Ozarks. I heat with wood that is leftover by the lumber industry. When cutting oak for lumber only the trunk is used.
The largest town is population 2992. The county is 13k people scattered over 713 square miles.
Joined Dec 2022
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