Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

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Ukraine war: Military intelligence chief 'optimistic' of Russian defeat saying war 'will be over by end of year'
Major General Kyrylo Budanov spoke exclusively to Sky News and predicted the war will reach a turning point in August. He correctly predicted when Russia would invade earlier this year.

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https://mobile.twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1530886503760646144

Yes, this is definitely the 21st century version of the battle of the Kursk salient.  That was the last battle the Wehrmacht held the initiative on the eastern front before it departed forever after to the Red Army. 

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Russian military suffers ‘eroding professionalism’ as Ukraine fighting continues

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France, Germany, and Italy most notably are the weakest links in the Western alliance:

Cracks Appear in Western Front Against Russia's War in Ukraine

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Those precious few Russians with a conscience:

Documents Reveal Hundreds of Russian Troops Broke Ranks Over Ukraine Orders

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According to US intelligence sources inside the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin is sick with advanced cancer and survived an assassination attempt back in March apparently:

Exclusive: Putin Treated for Cancer in April, U.S. Intelligence Report Says

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Yesterday: https://twitter.com/Biz_Ukraine_Mag/status/1533382115336790016?s=20&t=S3BlZr...
Today: https://twitter.com/DAlperovitch/status/1533499270711713795?s=20&t=S3BlZrish...
Russian media claims "NATO weapons" were being stored at the grain port facility and Ukrainian tanks were stored at the railway repair depot. Sure, Jan.

I join my fellow forumites in calling for Russian reparation payments to rebuild Ukraine once this is all over.  And for those Ukrainians who were sent to the far reaches of Siberia to be returned to their homes.   

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I guess I missed the news that America was at war with Russia.

https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1550873976540479489?s=20&t=HLaVU0...

More like Orban is making the point that everyone knows this is a proxy war between Russia and the United States.  Ukraine wouldn't continue to exist as an independent entity without the support of the United States.  Aka, we are the ones who are really in charge, and that we are the ones whom Russia should be negotiating with. 

Looked at from that perspective, it makes sense. 

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https://twitter.com/KremlinTrolls/status/1552717066112798723?t=z7dErQyHa2Vho9NvL...
https://twitter.com/KremlinTrolls/status/1552720586870251525?t=6mzhloy7Ncyeo5GIk...
These Russian animals must be caught and killed

Andriy, great to read from you although that's terrible content.

Unfortunately, such barbaric Russian war crimes are nothing new and have been "tradition" for a very long time dating back to World War II. I hope they will be brought to justice, but since the rule of law doesn't exist in Russia, it won't happen through a military tribunal. More than anything, I wish to see the day Putin and his comrades are at some sort of Nuremberg tribunal for their war crimes and crimes against humanity.

That may be so, but that was before the age of social media.  Now those crimes will be documented and circulated all over the world -and it will not be to Russia's benefit.  They can fully expect Ukrainian forces to (first) retaliate in kind, and (second) be more inclined to fight to the death to prevent themselves from suffering a similar fate.  Which means more Russians coming home in body bags (or emasculated) because of this one soldier...  

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It looks it is the beginning of the end for Russia's occupation of Kherson:

https://twitter.com/Aviation_Intel/status/1558563995451133952

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If (and when) Ukraine liberates Kherson and reclaims all the territory west of the Dneiper, they can then concentrate their forces almost exclusively on retaking the rest of eastern Ukraine that they had lost since the beginning of the Russian invasion.  And I am not just talking lost territory:

Russia now controls at least $12.4 trillion worth of Ukraine's energy, metal and mineral deposits, report says

Those resources are going to be crucial in rebuilding Ukraine after Russia's defeat and the end of the war.

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https://mobile.twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1564341780769824768

If Ukraine liberates Kherson, they should move into Melitopol and the Zaporizhzhia Oblast afterwards. Russia wants to illegally annex these regions, so they should be the first to be liberated.

https://twitter.com/mhmck/status/1559923712174051328

I mean the dream that many Military analysts are suggesting right now is that Ukrainian forces move fast and try to trap the Kherson forces between the Dnieper and their hammer, and in doing so try to use geography and destruction of infrastructure to create a pocket. Even if the men can get out severing the bridges would mean that all equipment would need to be abandoned. This is the type of speedy action that could start a panic spiral and mass route if performed effectively, but we won't know what will happen for a while if secrecy  is maintained.

A 21st century version of Operation Uranus, with Kherson as Stalingrad, and the occupying Russian forces there as von Paulus' Sixth Field and Fourth Panzer armies?  If only the Ukrainian military were capable of an offensive of that size, magnitude, and complexity.    

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If Russia loses in Ukraine, this will be one of the major reasons why:

https://twitter.com/usnews/status/1565138584956444672

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https://mobile.twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1566113531606466561

The objective of this counteroffensive presumably is to trap the Russians in Kherson, not push them out.  The fact they have been reinforced in prior weeks is good news -that means when they are eventually forced to surrender en masse when their supplies inevitably run out, that's more soldiers Putin is going to find hard to replace. With the Russian army so decimated and weakened, that in turn will make the retaking of Ukrainian territory east of the river that much easier.

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I read there are up to 20,000 Russian soldiers currently west of the Dneiper posted in and around Kherson.  If Ukraine succeeds in trapping them in a mini-Operation Uranus, and eventually forces them to surrender, how would that impact the rest of the war in Ukraine?  I see it personally as a turning point.  Even with the bottom-of-the-barrel reinforcements Putin is sending to Ukraine, he still won't have enough to maintain Russia's conquests in the east, and will be lucky to retain Crimea when this is all over.  

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Could Ukraine even get back Crimea at this point

Maybe not in the coming weeks, but there's an opening in the longer run, as I understand it. Zelenskyy definitely stated that getting back Crimea is what he intends to get done, especially after Putin rejected an earlier offer to negotiate a settlement and a potential backoff from seeking NATO membership (which again proves that this whole "NATO is a threat to Russia" and "encirclement" is total nonsense, and always has been). There's also a reason Ukraine did some sabotage operation in Crimea lately, which they just recently admitted. It's all designed to weaken Russia's military capabilities here.

The only question is how far Putin is ready to go here, because losing Crimea would extremely hurt his standing in Russia, no matter how his propaganda show on the news tries to frame it.

When this is all over, we should reopen the offer of NATO membership to Ukraine. 

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With all the combat experience Belarussian opponents of Lukashenko are getting fighting for Ukraine, the time may soon come for an insurgency to be launched (from Ukrainian soil) against his regime, perhaps eventually overthrowing him:

‘LUKASHENKO IS EASIER TO UNSEAT THAN PUTIN’
A band of Belarusians is resisting the threat of a neo-Soviet empire by taking up arms in Ukraine.

The members of the Kalinouski Regiment are motivated by a belief that the Belarusian regime is both much weaker and much more dangerous than many assume. Lukashenko, they argue, is deeply unpopular. They reckon that no more than 10 to 20 percent of the population supports him—mostly pensioners, bureaucrats, and security-service employees who depend on the state for jobs in a failing economy—and he knows this. Lukashenko has no ideology, but he will do anything to stay in power. That means that when Russian President Vladimir Putin threatens, as he did at the end of June, to transfer nuclear missiles to Belarus, the world should pay attention. Putin might want to avoid the geopolitical consequences of using nuclear weapons for the first time since 1945—but Lukashenko might not care.

Putin could also force Lukashenko to send Belarusian troops to fight in Ukraine, but that kind of decision could have unintended consequences. Kukhta, Rokosh, and the others all say their regiment has been contacted directly by soldiers and officers now serving in the Belarusian army who want instructions on how to surrender if they are ordered to cross the border into Ukraine. Kukhta, the man of few words, gave them blunt advice: “Put your hands up and your weapons down.” He predicts that the majority of the Belarusian army’s tanks and trucks would wind up in the control of the Ukrainian army. Although there is no way to verify that claim, at least one Belarusian border guard has successfully escaped to the Ukrainian side already, declaring that he wanted to join the fight against Russia. Sakhashchik, who also predicts that the majority of ordinary soldiers would not fight, made a video appeal back in February, calling on Belarusian soldiers not to join the invasion: “This is not our war. You will not defend your homeland, home, or family and will not receive glory—only shame, humiliation, and death.”

The Kalinouski fighters think Belarus has another kind of significance too. After all, if the Russian leader wants to reunite Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine into some kind of neo-Soviet empire, Lukashenko’s loyalty is a necessary ingredient. But what if the Belarusian pillar disappears? Then everything else—the empire, the war with Ukraine, Putinism itself—might crumble as well. This, they want the world to know, is an opportunity that should be taken, not least because, as one of them put it, “Lukashenko is easier to unseat than Putin.” Right now nobody other than the Poles and of course the Ukrainians is assisting the Kalinouski fighters. But maybe someday others will. Rokosh tells me that he wants the fighters eventually to get access to better Western and NATO intelligence about what goes on inside their country so that they can plan their next steps better. The Biden administration’s warnings last autumn about the coming war in Ukraine convinced many people across Eastern Europe, Belarus included, that the Americans know a lot more than they let on. Alongside Gene Sharp, the fighters have also read Charlie Wilson’s War, the book that describes how, in the 1980s, a single congressman persuaded Washington to help the Afghans overthrow their Soviet occupiers. If it happened once, maybe it could happen again?

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Addendum: Here is an almost 5 month old article on the matter of Crimea (I surmise that it has been put up before here). The author goes to close to the gates of the place of the ripe hanging fruit in characterizing it. Things didn't progress according to his schedule obviously, but it perhaps offers up some insight as to why Russia took the bait or whatever it was and redeployed military assets to Kherson. Perhaps it is true that what lies beyond is the soft underbelly of the peninsula itself.

https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/why-and-how-russian-occupied-crimea-can-fall-ukraine

Given how badly things are going for Russia, and how hard up for troops they are short of full wartime mobilization, they are going to have to decide whether it is more important to hold on to Transnistria with Russian units that aren't doing anything at the moment, or to transfer that manpower to Crimea to assist in its defense, giving Moldova its territory back after thirty years of occupation.  And they better make that decision soon...  

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Let's be honest. It is a question of Time now that Russia fully loses the War.

How would the peace treaty between Russia and Ukraine would look like ? Huge reparations ? Or maybe annexing some russian territories?

Substantial war reparations should definitely be on the table, at least until Ukraine has fully recovered from the war back to where it was before the invasion, which Russia should be able to easily afford given its vast energy resources.  As to territorial concessions, while I would like to see Russia give up Transnistria, Crimea, and Kaliningrad in particular, it may be better if they give them up of their own accord (especially the latter, now that the Baltic Sea is about to become a NATO lake) as opposed to a peace treaty mandating they do so.  With NATO countries closing sea, land, and air space to Russian use around Kaliningrad, the Russian military may decide to simply transfer to St. Petersburg and leave Kaliningrad to fend for itself.

All of the above are negotiable.  What isn't is driving home to Russia that it can no longer reclaim its Soviet-era empire -eastern Europe and the Caucasus are now off-limits to Russian intervention. 

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As if losing its status as a world superpower after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact wasn't enough, Russia is done as a Great Power too -its unmitigated failure in Ukraine has merely sealed the deal:

The Russian Army Is Losing A Battalion Every Day As Ukrainian Counterattacks Accelerate

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With Ukraine on the verge of winning its war of independence from Russia on the battlefield, now is a good time to contemplate a post-war landscape:

It’s Time to Prepare for a Ukrainian Victory

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Ukraine Military Chief Says Crimea Will Be Target for Next Year's Offensive

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It looks like Putin is going to have to decide whether to put his country on a war footing, which means disrupting the lives of those living in the metropolises of St. Petersburg and Moscow:

https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1569517242273906689

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Putin really does not want to knock the hornets' nest, does he? 

https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1569715072376651777

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I am hearing rumors Melitopol has been evacuated by the Russians.