By David Sole
The reality on the Ukraine battlefield shows steady Russian advances. Unable to slow the Russian military, the Ukrainian government is resorting to media spectacle of deep strikes into Russia by Ukrainian drones. This is no different than the surprise invasion by Ukraine into the Kursk province of Russia last August. That gambit had no military impact and cost the Ukrainians tens of thousands of their best troops and the loss of a great deal of heavy armor.
Just as they proclaimed last year as a turning point for Ukraine when it carried out the Kursk incursion, the western media are giddy with the success of the Ukrainian drone attack on airbases well behind the front lines. On June 1 Russia’s Ministry of Defense announced that airfields in Murmansk, Irkutsk, Ivanovo, Ryazan and Amur had been the target of drone attacks. Ukraine said they had smuggled 117 drones deep into Russian territory before launching them. Estimates of the damage to Russia’s bomber fleets vary but were certainly significant.
What is not being discussed is that this entire operation must have been organized and coordinated by the U.S. military and the CIA, both of whom are fully integrated in the Ukrainian military apparatus. Certainly targeting such a complex operation required U.S. military satellite imaging which requires U.S. military personnel to operate.
U.S.A. Today compared the Ukrainian strike to “Pearl Harbor.” But the New York Times admitted “the attacks are unlikely to alter the political calculus of Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin.”
These dramatic Ukrainian actions are loved by western allies of Ukraine but have little or no effect on the battlefield. Only three days prior, The New York Times reported: “Russian forces are advancing on Ukrainian battlefields at the fastest pace this year. They are bombarding Ukrainian cities with some of the biggest drone and missile strikes of the war. They have opened up another front in northern Ukraine.” The Times assesses that this represents the start of “Kremlin’s summer offensive” and Russia is “capturing an average of 5.5 square miles each day” which is “more than double the area that they seized in April.”
This coincides with the opening of a new round of “peace talks” between the warring parties. But few observers see much hope of a settlement in the near future. Donald Trump had bragged about getting a peace deal in “24 hours” even before he was inaugurated. But with the military situation going well for the Russians, Putin is not likely to make concessions. Trump, frustrated as usual, has been sending Ukraine Patriot missile batteries, spare parts for F-16 fighter jets, and has escalated threats to widen economic sanctions against Russia.
Having defeated the Ukraine incursion into Kursk province and driven the last Ukrainian troops from Russian soil, the Russians are advancing into the adjacent Sumy region where Ukraine launched their forces last August. Latest reports put the Russian forces only about 12 miles from the major Ukrainian city of Sumy (population about 255,000 people).
Be the first to comment