The War in the Ukraine

The Copium Zone tried to sugarcoat it with the title, implying Mariupol wasn't in russian hands already. Also, evacuating casualties to be treated in pro-russian areas apparently is a bad, evil thing; guess they should send them to Guantanamo or some other black site like the US usually did.

Mariupol was a special case that should not be considered for other cities that Russia might face.

Azov were a fierce fighting group, with a craze dogmatic cult behavior. But if Mariupol was in the middle of Ukraine somewhere and not locked in by a sea controlled by Russia, they would have escaped or flee before the siege had begun.

In this situation, locked by land and couldn't escape by air, they had no option but to flee to the tunnels with their backed to the sea. They would have given up a long time ago were it not for the Zelensky and the West egging them to stay put to divert in Russian resources.

These guys were there to simply buy time for Ukraine but I guess for some reason, the toll is too much and now they surrender.

Going forward, I don't think Russia will face this kind of resistance again. Just look at how they are approaching Severodonetsk. They've left a corridor while simultaneously cutting off all other axis. If they trap in UA troops they will face resistance but if they leave a corridor (in a way that allows them to target any reinforcements/supplies) those troops will retreat themselves and fall back to another position. They've captured many villages and small cities with this tactic already.

The battle for Severodonetsk is the one to watch for. It will determine in my view, the pace of this war. I predict by end of June, Russia will capture it, but I think if they leave a corridor, it will fall even faster. Where the Russians go afterwards, I don't know. They might pause to regroup. Again this is going to be long war and time is on the Russian's side.

Anyone thinking Ukraine has infinite supplies from NATO and US is fooling themselves. Elections is coming in the US and everyone here is worried about Baby Formula and gas prices. If people starts seeing more billions of aid being sent to Ukraine while they suffer from inflation and even from a recession, it's not going to be "Slava Ukrainian" anymore. Biden has 2 more years left; a year actually until campaigning for relections. Time is not on Ukraine's side.

Kich said:

This is why I believe Ukraine will never be able to mount any counter attacks on Russia seized territories. They need stop smoking whatever NATO is feeding them and realize that if they try to fight Russian in a non-guerala open fighting fashion, they will get annihilate. Reddit and Western MSM has been feeding them false hope for too long.

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@Kich bro I heard that Cannabis weeds are part of the EU aid packages to Ukraine. The one specially requested by Elensky himself.

Atomicfrog said:

Have been a couple of weeks that we didn't saw reinforcement moving to the front in Russia. Will be hard to continue like that.

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We've seen. Like those three BTGs destroyed near Bilhorovka. Those were Russian reinforcements mainly.

4Runner said:

Do you really think that, with less than 200K deployed troops, the Russian army can hold onto those land along the Dnieper River? Well, I could go with that if (1) the Russian army does not have comm issues as speculated; (2) the Russian army can get replenished with enough long-range precision weapons; (3) the Russian army get better situation awareness. Otherwise, If the Russians continued with everything else being equal and I was the commander on the Ukraine side, I would move all-in on cutting off one chunk of the Russian forward deployment with everything US/NATO have thrown at me.

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Long term is not going to be the Russian army is it.
We have all seen that despite starting with a very small piece of territory, that the break away Republics of DNR and LNR have produced a disproportionately high number of troops and done a great deal of the heavy lifting.
As more pro Russian territory is taken, the scope for training and raising ever greater number of local forces is only going to increase, hence why I see Kharkov as the next logical objective after the Donbas
I suspect that a large number are already being formed and trained in Kherson as we speak.

Captured ukranian gunboat being towed in Sevastopol

RT's video of the prisoners

From telegram:

Another group of the Ukrainian army is preparing to leave the territory of Azovstal. The "condition" was obtained not to take photos or record the story.
This was announced by the commander of the "Vostok" battalion of the NM DNR, Aleksandar Hodakovski.

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Aleksandar Hodakovski was also the one who broke the news about the initial group coming out.

Doesn't seem to me like there's any PoW exchange coming for these guys.

Broccoli said:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1525815162510446592

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Because so far in this conflict both sides have gone against precedent set by all previous wars and have taken zero trophies from fallen enemies.

Anlsvrthng said:

As they momve forward the line of contact will shrink, not increase.

Means as the frontline moving ahead the ammount of required troops decrease, not increase.

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They need to keep ground behind them safe too... the number of troops in hiding will be great. Supply line will be longer too. Until they reach good geographic barrier (like the Dnieper or other major rivers, they will need more and more troops. Maybe not frontline troops but a lot more military polices, bomb/mine disposal teams, equipment field repair teams, etc. Line of contact can still grow a lot just in the east and surface to control will grow a lot more.

Western media are doing overtime, pulling a "Mission Accomplished" with regards the Azovstal's fall.