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To: Brumar89 who wrote (1450594)4/6/2024 12:34:13 PM
From: Broken_Clock1 Recommendation

Recommended By
Thomas M.

  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1578702
 
Biden Official Admits Russia Has Reconstituted Nearly All Military Losses In Ukraine

by Tyler Durden

Saturday, Apr 06, 2024 - 02:45 AM

A top level Biden administration official has issued surprising remarks assessing Russian resiliency in the face of two years of Washington sanctions, and after a grinding war which has likely resulted in at least tens of thousands of troop losses.

Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell spoke at a Wednesday event hosted by the notoriously hawkish Center for New American Security where he emphasized that Russia's military has almost fully reconstituted its military losses in Ukraine, even as sanctions have tried to dent its military supplies, funding, and capabilities.

[url=]Via Reuters[/url]"We have assessed over the course of the last couple of months that Russia has almost completely reconstituted militarily," Campbell told the audience.

Defense News underscored this is notable and surprising given that "Campbell’s assessment seems to contradict those of the Pentagon and America’s allies in Europe."

For example Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently claimed that Russian losses total well over 300,000 casualties since the invasion began, a staggering figure.

Further, this is from an interview with the chair of Lithuania’s national security committee, Laurynas Kasciunas:

Q: How long will it take for Russia to reconstitute its forces to prewar levels?

"If we consider in planning a real conventional, division-level war: five to seven years. If you imagine some semi-conventional, hybrid [war], they need maybe two to three years."

Meanwhile it has been confirmed that Russia has certainly been able to keep its military supplies and artillery flowing to the front lines.

In March Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said Russia’s artillery shell production increased by nearly 2.5 times over the past year. International reports at the time also acknowledged that Moscow continues to significantly out-producing the West.

The Ukrainian side too appears to have admitted this is the case, with an officer who served under former Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny describing that the front lines are at risk of collapse as "There’s nothing that can help Ukraine now because there are no serious technologies able to compensate Ukraine for the large mass of troops Russia is likely to hurl at us."

"We don’t have those technologies, and the West doesn’t have them as well in sufficient numbers," the officer added.

[url=]AFP/Getty Images[/url]In light of all of this, it's important to recall SecDef Austin's words in 2022 wherein he said a goal of US policy is to see Russia weakened militarily and unable to recover quickly.






To: Brumar89 who wrote (1450594)4/6/2024 12:42:06 PM
From: Broken_Clock1 Recommendation

Recommended By
longz

  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1578702
 
April 06, 2024
Ukraine - Faking News Still Does Not Help Winning I find it amusing how little western media have learned from their own reporting on the war in Ukraine.

Two years ago a mystic 'Ghost of Kiev' was allegedly shooting down Russian aircraft left and right. The ghost turned out to be a fake character. The Ukrainian air force had never had such successes.

Two years on it is still the same story. The Ukrainian government claims something and western media print it as if it had really happened.

When the claim is debunked, often sooner than later, its simply vanishes from the headlines.

Yesterday we had this media wave:

The Russia side confirmed the attacks but denied any significant damage:

Rybar Force @rybar_force - 9:58 UTC · Apr 5, 2024
During the night, the AFU launched drones into Russian territory. ??The primary target was the Morozovsk airfield in the Rostov region, where Ukrainian forces dispatched 44 drones. The exact type remains unknown and will be determined upon analyzing the debris. However, there is a high likelihood that these are the same UAVs that the enemy has been utilizing in recent weeks.

Out of these, 26 drones were intercepted by Pantsir-S1 air defense missile systems, and 18 by rifle squads. Based on the videos circulating online, it is evident that the drones were flying at an extremely low altitude, enhancing the level of stealth.

There was no significant damage to the infrastructure. The debris hit a few buildings. Additionally, the substation suffered damage, resulting in a temporary power outage.
...
?? Thanks to the swift response of the air defense crews, any severe repercussions from the attacks were averted - claims from Ukrainian sources about the alleged destruction of six aircraft are fakes coming from enemy propagandists.

The Russia claim of no significant damage has been confirmed by the anti-Russian Institute for the Study of War:

ISW has yet to find any visual evidence that Ukrainian forces have damaged or destroyed aircraft or infrastructure at any of the four Russian airbases targeted by drones on the night of 4-5 April.
Such news cycles of fake claims of alleged Ukrainian successes are a major reason why some in the western public still believe that the Ukraine can win the war.

That is however not the case. The situation requires a change of attitude:

Instead of a new approach, the old pattern continues: NATO mulls over how to help Ukraine without provoking open war with Russia and fails, in the end, to deliver the kind of decisive assistance needed to turn the course of the war.

Another established pattern is the repetition of moralistic binary language. The West “ cannot let Russia win.” The “rules-based order” could unravel. Then there is the new domino theory: if Ukraine falls, Russian hordes will flood further west. The personalization of the conflict onto one evil man, Vladimir Putin, continues with the death of Alexei Navalny. It is a Manichean struggle of good and evil, democracy and authoritarianism, civilization and darkness. There can be “ no peace until the tyrant falls.” The Western alliance must not waver in its commitment to Ukraine.
...
The lack of realism in Western discourse is clear. There is indeed a serious risk that, rather than the West teaching Russia a lesson and putting Putin in his place, the opposite may occur. Is Russia, in fact, educating the West on what it means to use hard power and wage interstate conflict in twenty-first-century conditions? Russia advertises its version of great power sovereignty, in which a united, resilient, and unwavering state can defeat the pooled sovereignty of the EU and NATO.

We have all heard the objection that Putin simply cannot be trusted and that he wants nothing less than the complete elimination of Ukraine as an independent state. Yet, does not the blind continuation of the West’s dysfunctional Plan A also threaten the total physical destruction of Ukraine? It is for this reason that Pope Francis has called on Western leaders not to be “ ashamed to negotiate before things get worse.”

A new approach to the war in Ukraine will not emerge from rhetorical and moralistic proclamations. Words alone will not prevent a Russian victory. What is needed is a clear accounting of what can be realistically achieved with the means available, as well as the cost, risks, and benefits of different scenarios. Trying what has failed before and expecting new results is, after all, not a recipe for success.

I see no appetite in any western nation to really intervene in the war and to experience the Russian wrath that any intervention force would be submitted to.

But the current crop of western 'leaders' is too committed to the failed case for Ukraine they now have made for more than two years. For now they are likely to try to just muddle through.

We will have to wait for some 'regime change' for a return to sanity and realism.

Posted by b on April 6, 2024 at 15:18 UTC | Permalink