As of May:
Meanwhile, Moscow claimed victory in Mariupol after months of siege and the destruction of over 90% of the southern port city.
www.euronews.com
Some 700,000 Ukrainian soldiers are now actively participating in defending the country, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a televised interview on Saturday.
The Ukrainians are not "holding" ground. They are merely being allowed to stay by the Russians. Zelensky is desperate to hold on to as much of Donbas as possible. And he's doing it at an insanely high price. So the Russians are happily thinning out the crowd. Plus the Russians themselves are being overly cautious. They are pushing when they are sure the UAF will not mount a resistance, which is why when offensives are conducted, the UAF falls like a house of cards practically overnight.
Right now the Russians are in a very comfortable position. So they are using their advantage on the field to get an economic advantage over Europe by prolonging the war, making it impossible for the EU to negotiate with Russia. The more the war prolongs, the worse Europe's economy becomes., the greater is the chance for some type of sanctions relief. And demilitarising Ukraine will mean the future border of Russia will not be seriously active, so they need to kill as many UAF troops as possible. Plus they also need to make sure whatever's left of Ukraine in the future doesn't join the EU or NATO. All of these are not possible if the Russians mobilise and finish the war quickly.
Yeah, actively involved in defending. That includes waiting at the Northern border just in case, and the upper Eastern border and Odessa just in case, and spy hunting, mine clearing in North, which is still being demined. Less than half that number are actively involved in the South and East, where the bulk of the fighting is, and a lot of them are operating artillery and artillery support/logistics. Some are in the Kherson region where Russia is having its ars kicked.
They have repelled several attacks around Bakhmut and Soledar. We know this because Russia tried to claim it was already in these two places, which it always does when trying to attack. The line has not moved in that area for at least 5 days. Meanwhile, Russian forces in Kherson just lost 1 of only two bridges feeding them. The Ukrainians will give them time to consider withdrawal and then they will remove the other one if they fail to do so and starve them into surrender.
Yeah, if you call 200 dead, 600 wounded and losing a key supply bridge in Kherson yesterday comfortable, then they're real comfortable. Russia has had a huge economic advantage over Europe since forever. It has 10 time more natural resources than it could ever use, and yet it has still failed to have a better GDP per capita than the EU, PPP or nominal, because its leadership is economically ineffective. Any chance of a decent Russia economy was destroyed in the early 1990s by former Soviet officials selling off state assets and companies to friends and family and themselves for cents on the dollar, turning it into an oligarchy.
Russia made a huge mistake starting this war. It had already taken Crimea and secured its Black Sea fleet, as well as part of the Donbass and Ukraine wasn't joining NATO anytime soon. Now they stand to lose everything because Ukraine will want to fully remove Russia from Ukraine for security reasons, they won't want to be surrounded on 3 sides by Russia ever again, so they will take Crimea by cutting off the Kerch bridge and blocking supplies ships with Harpoon, Exocet and ATACMS missiles, and Russia will remain fully sanctioned until they do.
Back in 2013/14 Russia could have just negotiated continued use of Sevastopol and access peacefully and likely would have got it for the sake of continued peace. If Russia did this instead of what they did, Russia's economy would be ~2.5x as large as it is now and it would not be sanctioned at all. It could then have pumped some of that that extra money into defence to cover its security needs, whilst maintaining relations with Europe. This is why Russia will never capitalise on its tremendous economic advantage, its leadership is completely fvcking stupid.
rumble.com
