Outgunned and outnumbered, Ukraine’s military is struggling with low morale and desertion

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Outgunned and outnumbered, Ukraine’s military is struggling with low morale and desertion

Serhiy Tsehotskiy, an officer with the 59th Separate Motorized Infantry Brigade, told CNN the unit tries to rotate soldiers in and out every three to four days. But drones, which have only increased in number over the course of the war, can make that too dangerous, forcing soldiers to stay put for longer. “The record is 20 days,” he said.

Related:

Ukraine’s Gamble

Ukraine’s Kursk incursion has raised flagging morale among its troops and restored its initiative along a patch of the front. 

59th Motorized Brigade (Ukraine):

“Chosen Company”, a group of volunteers from the United States, Australia, and several other countries, is attached to the 59th Brigade as an assault detachment within the brigade’s reconnaissance company. The unit, which was formerly a part of the International Legion, conducted reconnaissance and assault operations during the 2023 counteroffensive. In 2024, a New York Times article reported three incidents where members of Chosen Company killed Russian POWs, based on statements made by former members of the company.

‘Kill-Crazy’ Foreign Mercs in Ukraine Bragged About Murdering Russian PoWs – Report

Victoria Nuland Admits US Discouraged Ukraine From Signing Peace Deal With Russia in 2022

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Former US State Department official Victoria Nuland has acknowledged that the US discouraged Ukraine from signing a peace deal with Russia during the early days of the Russian invasion.

Victoria Nuland Admits US Discouraged Ukraine From Signing Peace Deal With Russia in 2022

Previously:

Ex-Pentagon Analyst: West Nixed Ukraine-Russia Peace Deal, Now Seeking Way Out

Journalist to American publication: Ukrainian media antagonize the UOC

A common theme in journalist Flavius Mihăies’s investigation into the religious situation in Ukraine was the role of the media and social networks in fostering antagonism toward the UOC. This is discussed in an article on The American Conservative’s website.

Journalist to American publication: Ukrainian media antagonize the UOC

Related:

The US has a long history of interfering in the Orthodox Church

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

Ukraine: Dysfunctional Politics

Dysfunction Sidelines Ukraine’s Parliament as Governing Force,” is the title of an article published this week by The New York Times in one of the few political critiques that has appeared in the Western press recently. It took two years after the Russian invasion for the grace period of absence of political comments on the Ukrainian authorities to be broken, although always partially and only temporarily. It was the news that included Vitali Klitschko’s words against what he perceived as authoritarian drift that opened the door. Like the current information, that news also lacked the contextualization that politics requires, and it was left unmentioned that the criticism of the mayor of Kiev and the measures by which the protesters were part of a confrontation that went back almost to the beginnings of the presidency of Zelensky. The origin of the rivalry lies in the struggle for power and control of the resources of the State between the two protagonists. What is more, the attempt to Zelensky snatch administratively, the mayor of Kiev Klitschko, a man with powerful connections and political contacts, especially in Germany, is one of the examples that show that the authoritarian drift of Volodymyr Zelensky is not justified in the wartime situation today, but that precedes it in several years to the military intervention of Russia.

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Civil War in Donbass 10 Years On

By Kit Klarenberg | Global Delinquents | July 8, 2024

July 1st marked the 10th anniversary of a brutal resumption of hostilities in the Donbass civil war. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it passed without comment in the Western media. On June 20th 2014, far-right Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called a ceasefire in Kiev’s “anti-terrorist operation”. Launched two months prior following vast protests, and violent clashes between Russian-speaking pro-federal activists and authorities throughout eastern Ukraine, the intended lightning strike routing of internal opposition to the Maidan government quickly became an unwinnable quagmire.

Civil War in Donbass 10 Years On

Related:

Euromaidan 2014 – Orange Revolution – War in Donbass