“Ukraine – Russia”

Ukraine’s grinding counteroffensive is struggling to break through entrenched Russian defenses in large part because it has too many troops, including some of its best combat units, in the wrong places, American and other Western officials say.

The main goal of the counteroffensive is to cut off Russian supply lines in southern Ukraine by severing the so-called land bridge between Russia and the occupied Crimean Peninsula. But instead of focusing on that, Ukrainian commanders have divided troops and firepower roughly equally between the east and the south, the U.S. officials said.

#Ukraine: Two Russian MT-LB armoured vehicles were destroyed by the Ukrainian 44th Artillery Brigade after the targets were discovered by a recon unit of the 65th Mechanized Brigade in the vicinity of Robotyne, #Zaporizhzhia Oblast. pic.twitter.com/hF76lh7CtC

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) August 22, 2023

This is one area in which the West is still struggling to get its act together

When personal sanctions on Russian oligarchs and officials were imposed by the US, EU and UK after Putin’s invasion, the rationale was that this would undermine the Kremlin. In the main, this has failed — and there is still no coherent strategy to encourage those Russians willing to turn against the regime.

No end in sight.

Ukraine war: The men who don’t want to fight

Ukraine is struggling to meet its demand for soldiers.

Volunteers aren’t enough. The country constantly needs to replace the tens of thousands who’ve been killed or injured. Many more are just exhausted, after 18 months fighting off Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Some men though don’t want to fight. Thousands have left the country, sometimes after bribing officials, and others are finding ways of dodging recruitment officers, who in turn have been accused of increasingly heavy-handed tactics.

“The system is very outdated,” says Yehor. He watched his father suffer from mental health issues after fighting with the Soviet Army in Afghanistan.

While both sides have made good use of drones, they will likely not become the weapon that wins the Ukraine war.

Politicians and pundits want to declaim the lessons we should learn from Russia’s war against Ukraine despite the fact that the war — now eighteen months old — may not yet have reached its halfway point.

Russian President Putin, as I have written before, wants to keep the war going at least until 2025 when U.S. support for Ukraine will diminish whether or not we have a new president. If the Republicans keep the House, they will seek a significant decrease and if a Republican is elected president, all bets are off.

#Ukraine: A Russian UR-77 mine clearing charge launcher was destroyed by the 79th Air Assault Brigade near Marinka, #Donetsk Oblast- using a 40mm HEDP grenade adapted to be dropped from a drone.

The outcome for a vehicle carrying no less than 725kg of explosives is as expected. pic.twitter.com/A5QUDfIAVQ

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) August 14, 2023

Russian journalist Elena Kostyuchenko was most likely poisoned in Munich in October 2022. That is the conclusion of a joint investigation carried out by Latvia-based Russian publication The Insider and the investigative journalism group Bellingcat, reports Novaya Gazeta, a Russian opposition newspaper that moved its offices to Latvia last year following a crackdown by Russian authorities.

A flagship Russian long-range bomber has been destroyed in a Ukrainian drone strike, according to reports.

Images posted on social media and analysed by BBC Verify show a Tupolev Tu-22 on fire at Soltsy-2 airbase, south of St Petersburg.

Moscow said that a drone was hit by small-arms fire but managed to “damage” a plane. Ukraine has not commented.

The Tu-22 can travel at twice the speed of sound and has been used extensively by Russia to attack cities in Ukraine.

At the Army 2023 expo of Russian military technology last week, it was not the vast Yars intercontinental missile or the captured western armoured vehicles that stole the show but an inflatable church.

The mobile chapel, or military field temple, is meant to serve the spiritual needs of Russian soldiers in the red zone at the front in Ukraine. It includes hanging space for icons, the sacred pictures used for devotional purposes in the Orthodox tradition.

#Ukraine: A Russian 2S4 Tyulpan 240mm self-propelled mortar was destroyed by counter-battery fire of the Ukrainian 45th Artillery Brigade after being spotted by the 100th TDF Brigade and National Police forces in the vicinity of Kreminna, #Luhansk Oblast. pic.twitter.com/8dCCrwBVIV

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) August 20, 2023

In 18 months of war, Ukrainian land has mostly changed hands in sudden bursts, with Russia snatching a mass of territory at the start and Ukraine recapturing chunks in dramatic counterattacks. Now 10 weeks into its most ambitious counteroffensive, with heavy casualties and equipment losses, questions have been growing about whether Ukraine can punch through Russian lines.

Despite grueling fighting, Ukrainian forces along much of the 600-mile front are moving forward, and commanders and veteran soldiers say they are in better shape now than six or 12 months ago.

#Ukraine: A Russian 2S7[M] Pion 203mm self-propelled howitzer was destroyed by a GMLRS strike of the Ukrainian forces in #Donetsk Oblast. pic.twitter.com/yRh8hPqQNp

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) August 20, 2023

It has been called Russia’s “ghost”, “shadow”, or “dark” fleet. Nearly 500 ships, many of them old tankers with murky ownership and obscure insurers, could be playing an integral role in moving Russian crude to China and other ports in Asia, because of a G7 price cap meant to keep foreign-currency oil revenues out of the Kremlin’s hands.

Often the ships use tactics designed to hide their location or the origin of the crude carried from Russian ports, which may later be refined in India and other countries and even re-exported to the western countries sanctioning the Kremlin.

Denmark and the Netherlands have said the US has cleared the way to allow F-16 fighters to be re-exported to Ukraine after some of its pilots are trained to fly them, helping restore momentum to a process that appeared to be stalling.

Ministers from both countries, the leaders of an international coalition to help Ukraine obtain the jets, thanked Washington for the green light, although it remains unclear when any F-16 transfers could take place.

Kajsa Ollongren, the Dutch defence minister, said she welcomed the US decision “to clear the way for delivery of F-16 jets to Ukraine”, which would allow the coalition “to follow through on the training of Ukrainian pilots”.

Russia is building thousands of Iranian-designed attack drones in a massive secret military base, according to leaked documents.

Engineers at the Alabuga facility in Tatarstan, some 500 miles east of Moscow, are attempting to produce around 6,000 upgraded drones by 2025, The Washington Post reported.

Although production is behind schedule, experts believe it could mean hundreds of “Shahed” drones being directed toward Ukrainian targets at a time, rather than the dozens currently used in attacks.

#Ukraine: A rare Russian S-300V4 air defense battery was targeted by Ukrainian forces in the South- as a result a 9A83M2 TELAR and 9A84-2 TEL were destroyed by GMLRS strikes, along with 9S32M1 and 9S19M2 radars suffering damage. pic.twitter.com/qQZ8pjt9hU

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) August 15, 2023

In a city plagued by disunity, raw power reigns

Lockdown reportedly returned to Bexleyheath on Saturday. As rumours about an impending wave of “TikTok-fuelled looting” circulated on social media, shopkeepers debated whether it was safe to unlock their doors. Eventually they did, but only after a dispersal order was issued, handing the police additional powers to snuff out antisocial behaviour. No doubt the Met’s officers hoped to avoid a repeat of the carnage that had unfolded earlier in the week, when gangs of children ran amok on Oxford Street, allegedly in the hope of ransacking a JD Sports.

Teens formed a mob in London, storming stores in Regent Street after police ordered dispersal at Oxford Street. Social media trend urged riots and looting, targeting JD Sports. Urgent warning: “Don’t come if you can’t run. Don’t bring weapons.” pic.twitter.com/7hAFEJ0oPG

— True News (@TrueNewsCo) August 16, 2023

President Zelensky has announced that he is dismissing the heads of all Ukraine’s regional military recruitment offices and replacing them with veterans who had served on the front line. He used a video address to say that a state investigation had turned up widespread corruption, including bribe-taking and help for draft dodgers to flee abroad.

Ukraine’s counteroffensive began two months ago, but in many ways its forces have been preparing for it for years by learning how to fight like NATO militaries, with a mix of infantry, artillery, armored vehicles and air power.

But the Biden administration waited more than a year before letting NATO countries send F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine. By the time pilots are trained on the advanced aircraft, it will be too late for them to assist and protect ground forces slogging through this phase of fighting.

#Ukraine: A Russian BMPT "Terminator" tank support fighting vehicle was taken out of action and T-80BV was damaged by the Ukrainian SBU "Alpha" using several FPV loitering munitions and indirect fire near Spartak, #Donetsk Oblast. pic.twitter.com/IcYLcxbDAJ

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) August 12, 2023

We are putting on a collective spectacle of self-destruction, degeneracy and spiritual vapidity

In an outstanding article in the New York Times, Roger Cohen recounted his experience of traveling across Russia for a full month, and hats off to the veteran journalist for risking a shared cell with the Wall Street Journal “spy” Evan Gershkovich.

Cohen explains that Vladimir Putin is successfully flogging his war in Ukraine to the Russian people as a battle against the whole spiritually depraved West, no longer the home of ruthless capitalism but of “sex changes, the rampages of drag queens, barbaric gender debates and an LGBTQ takeover.” In a tirade last November, Putin lambasted the US and “other unfriendly foreign states” for “selfishness, permissiveness, immorality, the denial of the ideals of patriotism” and “destruction of the traditional family through the promotion of nontraditional sexual relations.”

You must admit, he’s got a point.