Althouse: "Russian Telegram channels published video of triumphant troops waving the Russian tricolour flag over shattered buildings in Vuhledar."

October 2, 2024

"Russian Telegram channels published video of triumphant troops waving the Russian tricolour flag over shattered buildings in Vuhledar."

"In one clip, four soldiers stood inside a gutted highrise flat and placed a flag outside. 'Everything will be Russia. Victory will be ours,' an officer declared. The communist hammer and sickle was also raised. Vuhledar was originally built around a mine in the mid-1960s when it was within the Soviet Union. Before the war it had a population of about 14,000. It is now a sprawling ruin, with apartment buildings smashed apart and scarred...."

From "Ukraine says its forces have withdrawn from defensive bastion of Vuhledar/Eastern city had resisted repeated attacks but Russian troops are close to ‘encircling’ it in Donetsk advance" (The Guardian).

13 comments:

Kevin said...: No one at CBS thought to bring up Ukraine last night. But we did get the usual bullshit about national abortion laws, climate change, and the government's role in providing affordable childcare.; 10/2/24, 12:43 PM
RideSpaceMountain said...: Many Russian decisions at the operational level can be explained as transitioning from high-speed, mobile warfare to low-speed, positional war, and this is a situation that follows that rubric. In other words, the Russians will launch an offensive to rout the AFU after its back is broken in positional war, rather than an attack seeking to change the game and defeat the Ukrainians in mobile war. Like it or not, this game heavily favors the Russians. They’re not in any rush to change it.

This scenario can be seen by comparing two very successful offensives: Operation Bagration in 1944 and the 1975 Ho Chi Minh Offensive. Bagration routed the once-mighty Army Group Center – at the cost of 180,000 killed in action. I’m sure the Russians would much prefer the 8,000 man butcher’s bill of North Vietnam’s war-ending 1975 operation, and they have the insight to see that modern Ukraine - as a corrupt and deeply dysfunctional garrison state propped up by endless foreign aid - is far more akin to South Vietnam than Nazi Germany.

Vuhledar is what it looks like in practice. The Russians are going to keep poking and prodding in their usual methodical way until part of the line collapses “in depth,” and then all hell is going to break loose. The Ukrainian offensive to the North was a public relations stunt, because everyone knows that without massive further assistance, Ukraine has already lost the war.

You can expect more Vuhledars, but new Ukrainian PR offensives will be few, ineffectual, or none at all.; 10/2/24, 12:52 PM
Gusty Winds said...: I'm sure another $100 Billion check written to Zelensky will take care of the problem.; 10/2/24, 12:58 PM
Inga said...: It’s been smashed to smithereens, but it’s ours, all ours, says the Russian. Victory to Russia, eh Tim in Vermont?; 10/2/24, 1:09 PM
doctrev said...: Ugledar back under Russian control. Maybe it will go the same way as Lyman, but I doubt it. The bitterness of the NPC brigade comes from their knowledge that the end draws closer- and perhaps soon enough to devastate their pre-election narrative. It won't matter. When wars are lost, narratives are the first to die. Well, second, after the ideologues who made the war happen.; 10/2/24, 1:25 PM
Original Mike said...: "No one at CBS thought to bring up Ukraine last night."

I doubt it was an oversight. I wonder why they avoided it.; 10/2/24, 1:36 PM
RideSpaceMountain said...: The federal government is overwhelmingly populated with public affairs/public relations professionals - people who believe that if you say the right something enough times from the right mouthpieces it becomes true. Fleishman-Hillardians and Weber-Shandwickians are narrative hustlers and propagandists, and anybody can see how true it is when you see the fees they charge.

Believing something really really hard does not in fact make it true. This is why the PR profession is dominated by women.; 10/2/24, 1:43 PM
Josephbleau said...: The Russian celebration reminds me that some would rather rule in hell than serve in heaven. Russia is the destroyer of worlds and dreams, they glory in a field of waste as long as it is theirs. Will they get western investment to reopen the mine?

Like China v Taiwan they are angry that someone else has something they want. Ukraine leadership may be no better, but is no worse.; 10/2/24, 2:07 PM
narciso said...: it has been a perfect vizzini exercise 'inconceivable'; 10/2/24, 2:24 PM
The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...: It was always going to end this way. The marvel is it took so long. But perhaps that was so the Democrats could keep hoovering that defense industry graft. Adult international leadership would have negotiated a cease-fire within a month of the war beginning.; 10/2/24, 2:37 PM
doctrev said...: It never would have started with anyone else. Even Bill Clinton would have yanked the leash hard, concerned that idiot policy was going to end the Yelstin era with nuclear brinkmanship instead of a peace dividend. And yet Russia would have done much worse in a war set in 1998 or 2014. Vicki Nuland would be hailed as a genius stateswoman instead of a peon for whom dual loyalty would be an improvement.

Now Russia and China have serious reason to maintain unrestricted warfare against NATO at vulnerable points, including and especially Israel.; 10/2/24, 2:48 PM
Dr Weevil said...: In what sense is Ukraine a "garrison state"? The volunteers of the International Legion are a tiny proportion of the military forces defending Ukraine. That phrase looks like a bald-faced lie.

In what sense is Ukraine propped up by "endless foreign aid"? The US has provided 31 M-1 tanks for a war with a 600-mile-long front line. One tank for every 20 miles! Not exactly "endless". We could easily provide hundreds more, but haven't. More than half of all the armored vehicles Ukraine has acquired since the second Russian invasion were not provided by NATO countries, but captured from the Russians. The US has provided zero F-16s, our NATO allies 10 F-16s so far, with 20-30 on the way, delayed two years by US foot-dragging. Again, we have hundreds that could be sent to Ukraine for less than the cost of recycling them to EPA standards. It would literally save money to send them to Ukraine, but Jake Sullivan won't allow it.

As for the comparison to South Vietnam, Russia lost tens of thousands of soldiers capturing Vuhledar, and hundreds of armored vehicles. The comparison is idiotic.

Finally, it is utterly false that "everyone knows . . . Ukraine has already lost the war". Everyone who's actually paying attention knows that Russia is in fact losing. They haven't even been able to meet Putin's October 1st deadline to recapture Kursk, and he's had to reschedule it for the 15th. They won't make that one either. And they can only capture territory by throwing away tens of thousands of lives in 'meat assaults' and destroying every building with artillery first. What they capture is utterly worthless, and they're runnning out of troops.; 10/2/24, 4:40 PM
Dr Weevil said...: Any cease-fire negotiated with Putin would have been violated by Putin by sunset on the day it was signed.; 10/2/24, 4:43 PM