Thread:
I really don’t get why Ukraine didn’t pull its forces back from Severedonetsk earlier. We’re going to have another Mariupol on our hands here.
Grim.As.Fuck.
I think that is precisely the point. Mariupol held up a large percentage of Russian forces for two months, and the Russian attackers took significant losses. Ukraine doesn’t have an attacking end game here, they need time for sanctions to build internal pressures in Russia, and they need dead Russians to wear down Russian offensive capacity.
In a war of attrition though there is only one winner and Ukranian casualties are unsustainable. They should have got the fuck out of there to live to fight another day.
Problem lies, in that whilst Russia is laying waste to the city that is holding out they are also reinforcing their positions along the other 1000km of battlefront. They’re digging in, fully prepared to play the long game against the west. this has been building since 2014 and they’re ready to wait much longer to secure those regions for future oil exploration.
the other former Soviet states are next in line to fall as Russia starts to centralize the commodities market. Kazakstan’s uprising/coup a in 2021 has secured trillions of dollars in mining.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Kazakhstan-natural-resources_tbl2_277137464
We don’t know with the current situation, but Mariupol’s defenders exchanged their lives at a rate unsustainable to the Russians. I don’t think Ukraine has any other options but to play for time as long as Europe keeps propping up the Russian economy, preventing complete economic shutdown.
forgive if I duplicate anything. as the last post was 6hr ago, I’m starting with that timeline
Macron is a fool.
assholes
Germany complains that Russia’s providing less gas.
Russia’s more effective at sanctioning Russia than Germany is.
BBC live page
We reported earlier on a phone conversation between Russia’s President Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
According to the Kremlin, they agreed to increase economic co-operation in the face of Western sanctions against Russia.
Now, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova has made further comments on the issue, speaking about Western countries’ attempts to reduce their reliance on Russian oil and gas.
“China knows what it wants and doesn’t shoot itself in the foot. While to the west of Moscow, they shoot themselves in the head,” Zakharova told reporters, according to Reuters.
“The West isolated itself from us,” Zakharova added.
She said Russia had previously held a “stable” attitude to “Western so-called partners”, but said the West had “turned down this partnership and co-operation of mutual interest”.
“All fundamental principles on which strategic stability and security were based have been undermined. Everything was destroyed single-handedly by the West,” she said.
Clearest sign I’ve seen so far that China is helping Russia
And now this
China risks being on wrong side of history, US says
Ever since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China has sought to remain neutral on the conflict, calling for a peaceful solution.
And in a call today, China’s President Xi Jinping assured Russian President Putin of Beijing’s support for Moscow’s “sovereignty and security”, according to news agency AFP.
But the US has expressed concern, warning that nations which side with Putin over his invasion of Ukraine will be “on the wrong side of history”.
“China claims to be neutral, but its behaviour makes clear that it is still investing in close ties to Russia,” AFP quotes a US State Department spokesperson as saying.
China’s bilateral trade with Russia surged in the first quarter of the year, rising by 28% from the previous year, according to Chinese customs data.
