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September 2, 2024 - 4:00pm
Things are starting to heat up on the Ukrainian front line once more. After a long period of attrition warfare and static front lines, we are starting to see movement that could bring the war to its next phase. The Russians are now advancing on Pokrovsk, a key transport and logistics hub in Donetsk. Some analysts think that if Pokrovsk falls, the entire Ukrainian front line in the Donbas will start to collapse.
Pokrovsk lies at the heart of a network of roads that spread out in all directions together with a key railway station. Ukrainian military expert Mykhaylo Zhyrokhov told the BBC: “If we lose Pokrovsk, the entire front line will crumble.” Losing a transport artery like Pokrovsk would make it impossible to resupply troops across the defensive line in the Donbas — and since each point of the line relies on every other, a collapse of a few key nodes would cause the whole thing to crumble.
There is no doubt that the Russians are advancing toward the town – and quickly. Both Russian and Ukrainian sources show the same advance, which has accelerated in the past week. This is part of a more general advance of the Russian army over the past few weeks. Newsweek reports that Moscow captured 93 square miles of territory in August, five times higher than the 21-square-mile average its army took in the first seven months of the year.
The situation in the Donbas is not helped by what now seems like a serious miscalculation in Kursk. Pro-Ukrainian analysts are now saying that the incursion of the Ukrainian army into enemy territory was designed to force Moscow to pull troops back from the Donbas front line to counter the Ukrainian army on Russian soil. But this has not happened. The Russians are allowing elite Ukrainian units to sit in Kursk doing nothing while they hammer away at the Donbas front.
What happens if the Donbas front line crumbles? Many people in the West have been convinced that the slow, grinding warfare in Ukraine is indicative of a stalemate. But this has never been true. The Russo-Ukraine war is, like the First World War, a war of attrition. The goal on either side is to wear the other side out. When this happens and the front lines collapse, the conflict reverts to movement warfare with armies traversing large swathes of land.
If the front line in Donbas collapses in the coming weeks, there is no clear obstacle to the Russian army until it reaches the Dnieper River. Meanwhile, there are reports that the Belarussian army is gathering on the border with Ukraine. This may be a feint to force Ukraine to hold troops back from the front line in Donbas, but it could also be part of a broader Russian plan: Belarus is the perfect staging ground from which to encircle Kiev.
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SubscribeSounds about right. The Kursk
incursion has done Russia’s work for it. Massive waste of men and machines for no obvious military objective that will hasten Ukraine’s collapse..
It’s hard not to wonder if wiping out Ukraine’s military-aged male population wasn’t the goal, because it was pretty obvious from the outset to anyone who objectively compared the various experts’ differing predictions that this was the most likely outcome.
As Mearsheimer predicted: we are leading Ukraine down the primrose path, and in the end they will be wrecked.
The Ukrainians have been used by the West as the proverbial “cannon fodder”. It is a total disgrace in which the UK via Boris Johnson played a large part.
The terrible truth is that negotiations now or in the near future are likely to give Ukraine less than what they may have got a year ago.
Yes, but our MIC, Zelenskiy and the Ukrainian “Elite” have made out like bandits. So there’s that.
Hundreds of thousands of dead/maimed Ukrainians and Russians, and the Western taxpayer a few hundred billion out of pocket? Small price to pay for a chance to expand the Anglo-American empire.
Next up: Georgia?
No. I doubt anyone in Georgia wants to be as foolish as the Ukrainians
Next up will be Iran or Hezbollah
Who, motherf…ker, started this war?
That’s fighting talk.
Good article, not afraid to face the likely reality.
“There is nothing that Ukraine can do to stop the inevitable from taking place.”
Indeed. For anyone who has bothered to follow the developments on the ground, this has been obvious for some time now. It’s like a game of chess and the Ukrainians are watching their king get pushed back into the corner of the chessboard, one check at a time.
The real question is what the many, many Western cheerleaders of this foolhardy adventure thought was going to happen. Will they take the time now, to think back on their previous ‘Stand with Ukraine’ commitments and question the wisdom of their policy stance?
Because if not, the American Empire will continue to make the same mistakes, losing one crumbling vassal state at a time, until all that we cherish and love in Western culture is no more.
“Will they take the time now, to think back on their previous ‘Stand with Ukraine’ commitments and question the wisdom of their policy stance?”
No, they will say the world betrayed Ukraine.
Like Vietnam… “we would have won if the politicians hadn’t held us back!”
I anticipate Ukraine will be as topical in 5 years as our past war & occupation of Afghanistan is now.
Resisting invasion is a “foolhardy adventure”?
I’m not going to bandy buzzwords with you. This war could have been brought to an end years ago, with a few adults in the room.
Hundreds of thousands of young men, Russian and Ukrainian, would still be alive. EU would be back to positive growth, and Honeywell & Raytheon would be looking at a dip in their stock valuation.
Sounds a lot like WW1 Allied Generals: “No, no you don’t understand, the NEXT offensive is going to breakthrough.” Repeat for 4 years.
Which favours Russia. Attrition is what they do.
War crimes are what they do.
‘war crime’ is a redundancy.
All armies have soldiers who commit war crimes.
Compare the civilian:combatant death ratios in NATO wars, or the current slaughter in Gaza, and Russia armed forces may well deserve the title of “most moral army in the world” (for what it’s worth)
It is a shame that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have done nothing, and still are doing nothing, to bring this war to an end on terms that Ukraine can accept. That’s not acceptable. The president of the United States should be engaged in both Ukraine and Israel to wind these wars down. More war is not going to help anyone in either case.
When you look at the track records of these two action figures “GI Joe” Biden and Kamala “Barbie” Harris it is obvious why they could not make any foreign policy progress. As former defense secretary Robert Gates who worked with Joe Biden said of him a decade ago, he had four decades of failure on foreign policy. Make that five decades now.
And Kamala Harris has zero experience in foreign policy. Absolutely none. Her track record on domestic issues is weak. On foreign policy it’s nonexistent, apart from her pathetic, failed efforts as vice president to address the root causes of people fleeing central America.
There’s no reason why efforts to end these wars should take a pause while Joe Biden plays out his dead duck routine and Kamala Harris hits the campaign trail. The world still turns. People still die in these wars. Take a tip from Donald Trump and use the awesome power of the US presidency to do some good in the world, while you still can.
I don’t think Zombie Joe or Cackling Kamala have much say over domestic let alone foreign policy. That’s why they were selected; they’ll do anythng for their Deep State handlers.
Much as I dislike Trump, he does seem – to some small extent – more his own man. That’s why the Establishment hate and fear him so much.
Biden and Kamala are just pathetic dolls. The war in Ukraine started during Obama’s presidency, and Iran got money for terror at the same time.
“The Russians are allowing elite Ukrainian units to sit in Kursk doing nothing while they hammer away at the Donbas front.”
Good point. It does seem like the Ukrainians did not think the Kursk incursion through. Capturing and holding Russian territory that has no tactical or strategic value is more trouble than it is worth. Holding territory may help in propaganda or in negotiations to end the war. But those benefits are hard to value. As time goes on, more and more, they don’t seem worth it.