{"id":254247,"date":"2022-05-30T07:20:07","date_gmt":"2022-05-30T07:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=254247"},"modified":"2022-06-01T07:40:57","modified_gmt":"2022-06-01T07:40:57","slug":"russias-cauldron-tactic-may-be-tipping-donbas-battle-in-its-favour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=254247","title":{"rendered":"Russia\u2019s \u2018cauldron\u2019 tactic may be tipping Donbas battle in its favour"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction \u2013 May 29, 2022<\/strong><\/h1>\n

The tide of war is running in Russia\u2019s favour now.<\/p>\n

This has been reflected in the western MSM coverage of the conflict, although not explicitly so and despite their best efforts to portray things as otherwise.<\/p>\n

Initially, stories about a defiant Ukraine bravely fending off far superior Russian forces were a front-page news staple<\/a>. Over the past two months that\u2019s changed, however; as reports about the conflict are given far less prominence and those that do appear no longer feature speculation that Ukraine might even prevail against Russia.<\/p>\n

Yet only a short while back such reports appeared regularly. In March, for example, the NPR carried a report<\/a> in which “experts” openly speculated about a Ukrainian victory over Russia.<\/p>\n

The BBC<\/a> and other MSM news outlets echoed similar speculation. As did U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken who affirmed that Ukraine \u201cabsolutely can” succeed against Russia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

All those quotes were made in March and now things look very different. At the time however, they encouraged President Zelensky and stopped him from moving toward a peace agreement, which was the last thing those orchestrating this war wanted.<\/p>\n

So on the elite\u2019s orders, the Western politicians and MSM have helped prolong the war, with this objective later confirmed<\/a> by Secretary of State Blinken in April.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the West hasn\u2019t really weakened Russia, no matter what the Western MSM may say. Instead it is in the process of making implacable enemies in Moscow, in both the short and long term. In fact we would suggest that the West is sowing the seeds for a much wider, more destructive war involving Russia, and probably China too.<\/p>\n

For make no mistake, Beijing\u2019s absence from the international chorus of criticism directed against Putin \u2013 with some other notable exceptions like India and Iran \u2013 is significant and doesn’t bode well for a much more serious potential conflict that we suspect is brewing. Ed.<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s \u2018cauldron\u2019 tactic may be tipping Donbas battle in its favour<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Dan Sabbagh and Peter Beaumont \u2013 The Guardian May 28, 2022<\/strong><\/h3>\n

After several weeks of deadlock, Russia\u2019s military appears to have found a way to advance in the Donbas \u2013 pounding it with such intense, unsophisticated artillery that Ukraine\u2019s exhausted defenders are having to yield.<\/p>\n

Volodymyr Zelenskiy rarely gives casualty figures but Ukraine\u2019s president said last Sunday that \u201c50 to 100 Ukrainian troops die<\/a> on Donbas frontlines each day\u201d, meaning perhaps 3,000 a month in the grisly war of attrition.<\/p>\n

Wounded will typically be three or perhaps four times as much, a serious loss for a Donbas defence force estimated at 30,000 before the war began, although the numbers increased following Ukraine\u2019s mass mobilisation.<\/p>\n

\u201cRussian forces have secured more terrain in the past week than efforts earlier in May,\u201d reported the Institute for the Study of War on Tuesday, in particular approaching the frontline city of Sievierodonetsk and in villages nearby.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe shelling of Sievierodonetsk is growing exponentially,\u201d said Serhiy Haidai, the governor of Ukraine\u2019s Luhansk region, which is now 95% controlled by the Russians. He estimated 10,000 Russian troops and an extra 2,500 pieces of equipment<\/a> had been committed to the attack.<\/p>\n

The Russian advances are not dramatic but they reflect a new strategy. Gone for now are the attempts at wider encirclements of Ukrainian forces in the Donbas, which included a failed river crossing<\/a> in early May. Instead units are focused on smaller encirclements \u2013 or \u201ccauldrons\u201d \u2013 and a sheer concentration at Sievierodonetsk.<\/p>\n

That was confirmed by the militia head of the self-proclaimed pro-Russian republic in Donetsk, Eduard Basurin, who said Russian forces had adopted an approach of creating smaller encirclements to deprive Ukrainian troops of logistics and reinforcements, rather than pursuing a single large one.<\/p>\n

Russian efforts in the Donbas have also been aided by shorter supply lines over the border into Russia as well as a dense network of railway lines in the parts of Luhansk occupied by pro-Russian forces since 2014. And forces previously thrown into the failed attempt to take Kyiv continue to arrive.<\/p>\n

It follows the appointment by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, of Gen Aleksandr Dvornikov<\/a> to lead the fight. Infamous as the \u201cButcher of Syria\u201d he also commanded a motor rifle division that devastated Grozny in the late 1990s. Dvornikov has brought the same tactics to Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Nick Reynolds, a land warfare expert at the Royal United Services Institute thinktank, said the Russians had engaged in \u201cprogressive reorientation of their operations towards increasingly modest objectives\u201d allowing them to take villages such as Popasna and Rubizhne, although he argued \u201ctheir ground forces are still performing badly\u201d as demonstrated by the reliance on artillery.<\/p>\n

Others are not so sure. An anxious Kyiv continues to plead with the west for more powerful weapons<\/a>. The latest demand is for M270 long-range multiple rocket launchers. On Friday, after a to and fro lasting several weeks, it appears the US now appears to be willing to provide some, after previously refusing.<\/p>\n

The M270 comes in many versions but it can use missiles with a range of over 100 miles (165km), while the British version has a limit of 52 miles<\/a>. Both are well beyond anything Ukraine has and would be a significant addition to Kyiv\u2019s arsenal at a time when the country continues to have a pressing requirement for western arms.<\/p>\n

When asked what Ukraine needed at present, Kira Rudik, a Ukrainian MP visiting the UK, said \u201cthe first and the foremost is weapons always\u201d, arguing her country and the west \u201cshould not underestimate Russia right now\u201d just because Moscow\u2019s forces had, until earlier this week at least, made limited progress in the Donbas.<\/p>\n

Rudik said she spoke to Ukrainian soldiers on the frontline every day. But an ongoing problem, she acknowledged, was that it can take two months or more for promised western weaponry to arrive, another reason why Russia may be enjoying a tactical advantage.<\/p>\n

Ukraine\u2019s fundamental problem is that while it may have fought off the attacks on Kyiv and Kharkiv in the first phase of the three month-long war, it has not been able to reverse Russia\u2019s territorial gains in the south and east.<\/p>\n

That means it has incurred human and economic losses far greater than Russia. Nearly 13 million people have been displaced by the fighting, the UN estimates<\/a>. Its economy is set to fall 45% this year, according to the World Bank, and the country cannot balance its books. Its strategic exports of grain \u2013 99% of which used to travel by ports blockaded or held by Russia \u2013 lie in silos where 22m tonnes are at risk of rotting.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, it may have taken three months for Russia to take the port of Mariupol, ruining and depopulating the city<\/a> in the process, but this week minesweepers were clearing the beaches and the port, which Moscow hopes to reopen to create a fresh supply line from Russia to the occupied south.<\/p>\n

A threat for Ukraine remains western fatigue, or a loss of unity, particularly if a largely stalemated war drags on towards next year. Countries traditionally less hostile to Russia may follow the suggestion of the veteran diplomat Henry Kissinger at the Davos summit this week, to consider pressing Ukraine to agree to a partition.<\/p>\n

There are signs Russia is happy with the current pace. The defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, claimed on Tuesday<\/a> the offensive was being slowed \u201cdeliberately in order to avoid civilian casualties\u201d \u2013 and while there is plenty of evidence to the contrary about harm to ordinary Ukrainians from Russian shelling, it also suggests a country being prepared for a longer war.<\/p>\n

Phil Osborn, a former head of UK defence intelligence, said the military situation was such that Ukraine needed as much help as it could get.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe west must focus unremittingly on Ukraine and be prepared for pain. Putin calculates that we will be increasingly distracted (just look at the news cycle moving on and the \u2018reasonable\u2019 voices nudging Zelenskiy to settle) and that he has more patience than the west.\u201d<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the start of the conflict the Western MSM portrayed a defiant Ukraine as bravely fighting against the odds. Little more than two months later and that’s all changed as Russian forces inexorably grind down resistance. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":252279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[91,116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-254247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-russia","category-ukraine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=254247"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":254250,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254247\/revisions\/254250"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/252279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=254247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=254247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=254247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}