Original: Colonel Cassad / Translated by @PalinkaTown
Ukraine Summary for March 8, 2022
1. Mariupol. The evacuation of civilians through humanitarian corridors has still not taken place. Only a few individuals have managed to escape the city. Mopping up continues in several parts of the city. There has been no mass evacuation from Volnovakha either.
2. There were no significant evacuations in the other cities where a “silence regime” had been declared today. Those who could tried to make their way out by train from Kharkov. Only foreign hostages were leased by the terrorists in Sumy. They are trying to prevent anyone from going out in the direction of the Russian Federation. The Russian Ministry of Defense estimates more than 4 million people are being held hostage by Ukrainian terrorists.
3. Kharkov. Fighting continues in the outskirts of the city. The Ukrainian military is operating directly out of residential districts. Ukrainian forces are also establishing positions near Chuguyev, which they heroically captured from themselves two days ago.
4. Izyum. The situation remains unclear. Local residents claim Russian forces have taken the town, but this is still not officially confirmed. The town center has suffered significant damage.
5. Kiev. Russian forces have extended their zone of control to the west of the city and are concentrating their forces on the outskirts of Brovary. Ukrainian authorities claim forces are gathering here for a rapid assault.
6. Nikolayev. The governor has urged citizens to prepare for imminent street fighting. Russian forces continue to accumulate near Nikolayev and fighting has been observed north of the city.
7. Odessa. No significant changes. The Nazis in Odessa are preparing for all-round defense, knowing they will be next after Nikolayev. The Romanian Mig-21 that was recently shot down was apparently taken out by a Ukrainian air defense system operating in the Odessa area.
8. LNR. Fighting continues around Rubezhnoe and Zolotoe. There are also reports of ongoing fighting in Popasna.
9. DNR. No significant changes in the Donetsk-Gorlovka sector. The enemy continues to subject civilian targets with artillery fire.
10. Zaporozhe sector. There are reports of fighting near Gulyai Pole. There has still been no advance towards Zaporozhe itself via Kamenskoe. Pacification measures similar to those conducted in the Caucasus are being carried in Kherson and Zaporozhe provinces – collecting arms, identifying demonstration organizers, and arresting Ukrainian military and intelligence officials and agents.
Original article: Dmitry Stefanovich / Translated by @GBabeuf
Researcher at the Center for International Security at the National Research Institute of World Economy and International Relations named after E.M. Primakov
The year has been difficult – it’s a corny line, but it’s true. Let’s start with the main thing: the “new (non)normal” has finally taken shape, and they are trying to adapt to it with varying degrees of success. Although, of course, in some areas, some actors retain the desire to live as their grandparents lived. But alas, no, if you just ignore current events and changes, that won’t make them go away.
On the military-political track, there is a continuation of the collapse of the framework of traditional arms control (suspension of the 2010 START Treaty, de-ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, final withdrawal from the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe). However, relative restraint is demonstrated both in terms of political signals and the preservation of individual elements (for example, notifications of ICBM launches), and in the military-technical field: the activity of testing new strategic weapons systems is routine in nature (and for some “new products”, for example, the promising heavy ICBM “Sarmat” is completely too leisurely). Even the traditional autumn exercises of the Russian strategic deterrence forces looked deliberately modest and were conducted with an emphatically retaliatory scenario.
Continue readingOriginally posted on SLG Analytica
Original Article: Alexey Volinets / Translated by @GBabeuf
There is a common and long-standing notion that Russia and the Russian government are comparable to “Byzantium” and “Byzantine ways.” Meaning: bureaucracy, intrigue, everything behind-the-scenes and all that. Such comparisons arise here and there quite often. Both inside Russia and outside of it—in the West. The West, the heir to the Crusaders who once plundered Constantinople, actually originated the idea of Byzantium, the former “Second Rome”, as something rather dark, bureaucratic, despotic and steeped in intrigues.
But here we aren’t talking about the West and its phobias and Russophobia, but about the constant comparison of Russia with this imagined “Byzantium”. “The Byzantine tradition is to weave intrigues, not to work,” the home-grown liberal Remchukov [Konstantin Remchukov, Editor-in-Chief and CEO of Nezavisimaya Gazeta –ed.] tells us in regard to Russian reality on the pages of the American political magazine The National Interest. Well, it is quite understandable what interests the Remchukovs and their Western patrons have… I cite this sentence only as another example of the long-stereotyped comparison of modern Russia with ancient Byzantium.
Continue readingOriginally posted on SLG Analytica
The following is offered here as a reflection of the thinking of circles close to the Kremlin, and not necessarily as reflecting positions of which this channel “approves”. One thing that emerges, though, is that these circles are fully aware a) that the current forms of warfare at the front will not lead to any kind of “victory” over Ukraine and that b) those forms of warfare are a deliberate choice based on an unwillingness to achieve a decisive outcome—unlike the apostles of “attritional warfare” who have convinced themselves that it will take them all the way to Kiev and are busy reviving discredited military strategists to defend such a position.
Original Article: Global Affairs / Translated by: @Gbabeuf
The military conflict with Ukraine caused an emotional wave of rare strength in our society, and throughout the world. Dashing cavalry advances, which gave either side hopes of a quick victory, gave way to immobile positional confrontations. The elation of many was replaced by resignation and burnout—it seems that there is a hopeless dead end ahead, and that the Special Military Operation (SMO) has become aimless and has been reduced to storming useless Ukrainian villages and nameless forest plantations. It appears, however, that this is not the case.
In a previous note we talked about why we cannot advance in Ukraine on a broad front, occupy Kharkov, the Russian city of Odessa, and so on. And here’s another reason: we don’t really want to. Or rather, President Putin doesn’t want to.
Continue readingWritten by Luis of Slayangad. Originally posted on SLG Analytica
Many people are waiting for the moment Russia will win the war against the entire collective West by WO: when this bloc with 30+ of the richest countries in the world will give up or be unable to continually waste money and material in Ukraine. This would be the case if the financial system wasn’t a rigged game and those countries were actually forced to live within their means and bound to the resources they have, like Russia does. Instead, they can just keep printing their endless dollars and euros, dump them across the globe, and force the countries they enslave to hand in their resources.
There is though one self-imposed limitation that might bring their ability to wage war to an end, which is the same neoliberal system they implemented across the globe. While the bad aspects of their economy are simplistically dismissed as “bureaucracy”, they are structural, intentional and an unchangeable dogma, trusted at a religious level. After decades of treating industry and technical professions literally as a burden, Western countries are facing difficulty to scale up their military industry as their army of web programmers and market analysts isn’t quite useful for that.
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