The biggest international news of the week hands down is the Ukrainian military’s route of the Russian military in northeastern Ukraine. It’s now believed Ukraine just got the biggest arms gain since the war began in February direct from Russia this past weekend.
I’ll put it like this: When the U.S. withdraws, they either take everything they can with them or destroy what they can’t take. Russian forces did neither of these things and we’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars worth of weapons, equipment, tanks and armored vehicles now in the hands of the Ukrainian Military.
You know it’s a big deal when Russian officials call for Putin to resign. That’s how serious a blow this was to Russia. Even Putin’s usual Yes-Men in state media are basically saying it’s over for their military. From what I’m reading online, Russian officials on the other side of their boarder with Ukraine are starting to issue evacuation orders to residents who live on the boarder. They are concerned the Ukrainian Military may look to cross into Russia soon.
All that said, the Russian Military has been exposed to the world as basically being a Paper Tiger: Big and scary only in appearance. As a reminder, no one including the United States could have imagined Ukraine had any hope of resisting the Russian military for any more than 72 hours max back in February. Fast forward 9 months to September and Ukraine prettymuch broke the Russian military.
Putin has no answer for this and everyone knows it. Now the world is watching and waiting to see if Putin will be looking for an off ramp because if Ukraine was able to do this to the Russian military in 9 months, now a lot more countries–most of them much smaller than Ukraine–know they no longer need to live in fear of the Russian military.
Moldova, which is southwest of Ukraine believed they would be targeted next if Russia succeeded in cutting Ukraine in half. Now that the Ukrainian military cut Russian supply lines in the east, they will likely pivot south and move to break the Russian military’s hold on Kherson and Kharkiv. Russia failed to take Kyiv early on, ensuring Ukraine’s infrastructure stayed intact and functioning. Zelensky refused to leave the country and that prevented morale in Ukraine from being broken early on.
Make no mistake the Ukrainian Military has been averaging hundreds of losses a week. The difference is the Russian military has been taking thousands of losses a week. Some military experts now believe Russia lost about 20% of its military forces in Ukraine. They lost 20,000 soldiers within the first 10 days. That was a sign of more bad things to come.
As a reminder, Putin is also lying to his own people about the fact it is even a war. Because of this, they do not discuss Russian casualties in state-controlled media outlets. Well, that only works for so long. I covered this a while back but for those who don’t know, the Russian military has been sending their injured to Belarus–under the cover of night–not back to Russia because they don’t want their people to know how bad things are going for them in Ukraine.
After visiting a recently liberated town this week, Ukraine’s president Volodomir Zelensky indicated he would like to see the Crimean Penninsula liberated “soon”. Even before he said that, Russian forces in and around the penninsula started repositioning assets. Clearly they are expecting Ukraine to head their way as well.
All that said, the conflict is far from over. Putin is clearly still riding on winter coming in a few months when Western Europe is likely to really miss Russian oil. The U.S. has been working with the European Union since the conflict began to find solutions to that so we’ll see.
Ukraine is clearly looking to go on offense and more so given Russia has gone back to targeting civilian infrastructure. U.S. officials have said “not right now” to requests for long-range weapons systems. Not only has the U.S. been supplying Ukraine with weapons but they have also been training Ukranian soldiers on a rolling basis since April. Those who get trained can then in turn train others when they return to Ukraine.
Ukraine’s tenacity has also notably given not just Belarus but more importantly China pause. China wants to take Taiwan but after seeing what happened to Russia with Ukraine, clearly they’re having second thoughts about launching an unprovoked invasion of their own. The next big test for Ukraine is set to start in the coming weeks. It will also test the resolve of Ukraine’s allies so we’ll see.
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