Europe Hatches Plans for Ukraine Peacekeepers Without U.S.

Europe Hatches Plans for Ukraine Peacekeepers Without U.S.

Western allies are trying to hash out a bold European idea: sending 10,000 to 30,000 troops to Ukraine to help enforce any eventual peace deal with Russia.

As things stand, the chance of this force ever heading to Ukraine is a long shot, says Bence Németh, a defense expert at King’s College London. European leaders say they will only send troops if there is a lasting peace in Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin has so far ruled out signing a peace deal that includes Western forces in Ukraine. 

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Leaks expose secret British military cell plotting to ‘keep Ukraine fighting’

Leaked files show top UK military figures conspired to carry out the Kerch bridge bombing, covertly train “Gladio”-style stay-behind forces in Ukraine, and groom the British public for a drop in living standards caused by the proxy war against Russia.

Project Alchemy’s proposed schemes spanned every conceivable field of warfare, from cyber attacks to “discreet operations” to outright terrorism. The secret cell even put forward a plan to “aggressively pursue” and “dismantle” independent media outlets – including The Grayzone – through an aggressive campaign of legal harassment and online censorship, so they “would be forced to close.” The incendiary blueprints were fed to the highest levels of the British state and national security structure, where they were apparently well-received.

Leaks expose secret British military cell plotting to ‘keep Ukraine fighting’

Russia’s Swift March Forward in Donbass [Pokrovsk is the prize]


Source: The Institute for the Study of War with American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project
 Note: As of Oct. 29
 By The New York Times

Russia’s Swift March Forward in Ukraine’s East

In October, Russia made its largest territorial gains since the summer of 2022, as Ukrainian lines buckled under sustained pressure.

Over the past month, Russian forces have seized more than 160 square miles of land in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, the main theater of the war today. That has allowed them to take control of strategic towns that anchored Ukrainian defenses in the area, beginning with Vuhledar in early October. This past week, battle has raged in Selydove, which now appears lost.

Ultimately, experts say, these gains, among the swiftest of the war, will help the Russian army secure its flanks before launching an assault on the city of Pokrovsk, a key logistics hub for Ukrainian forces in the Donbas.


Source: New York Times analysis of data from the Institute for the Study of War with American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project
 Note: As of Oct. 29
By The New York Times

H/T: Flash : [The New York Times] Russia’s Swift March Forward in Ukraine’s East [Donbass]

Previously:

Ukraine Faces a Double Threat if Russia Takes Pokrovsk

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Poorly trained recruits contribute to loss of Ukrainian territory on eastern front + The US Is Sending $125 Million in New Military Aid to Ukraine

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Some new Ukrainian soldiers refuse to fire at the enemy. Others, according to commanders and fellow fighters, struggle to assemble weapons or to coordinate basic combat movements. A few have even walked away from their posts, abandoning the battlefield altogether.

While Ukraine presses on with its incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, its troops are still losing precious ground along the country’s eastern front — a grim erosion that military commanders blame in part on poorly trained recruits drawn from a recent mobilization drive, as well as Russia’s clear superiority in ammunition and air power.

Poorly trained recruits contribute to loss of Ukrainian territory on eastern front, commanders say

Related:

Reuters: Russia and Ukraine report gains as some Ukrainians flee strategic city

But although the incursion is an embarrassment for Russia, Moscow’s forces have continued their gradual advances of the past few months against tired Ukrainian troops in eastern Ukraine worn down by 2-1/2 years of heavy fighting.

Moscow said its troops had taken control of the village of Mezhove in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, and that they had beaten back an attempt by a Ukrainian force to infiltrate its border in a different region to Kyiv’s Aug. 6 incursion.

Ukrainian authorities say Russian troops are now just 10 km (six miles) outside Pokrovsk, an important transport hub in eastern Ukraine, and this week started evacuating elderly residents and children.

Moscow’s capture of Pokrovsk, which lies at an intersection of roads and a railway line, would give Russia options to advance in new directions and also cut supply routes used by the Ukrainian military in the Donetsk region.

WSJ: Ukraine Moves to Encircle Russian Troops in Kursk and Digs In for Long Fight

The incursion hasn’t, so far, shifted the dynamic on the war’s main battlefields in eastern Ukraine, where Russia is advancing in toward Pokrovsk, a key Ukrainian logistical hub, and Toretsk, a city on strategically important high ground.

The US Is Sending $125 Million in New Military Aid to Ukraine, Officials Say

Kosovo War at 25: Blair’s secret invasion plot to ‘topple Milosevic’ revealed

Source

Top secret papers reviewed by The Grayzone reveal Tony Blair demanded strikes on civilian targets in Yugoslavia days before NATO attacked them. While the UK military acknowledged a NATO strike on Hotel Jugoslavia would mean inflicting “some civilian casualties,” it insisted the deaths were “worth the cost.”

Kosovo War at 25: Blair’s secret invasion plot to ‘topple Milosevic’ revealed

Related:

Breakup of Yugoslavia