Zelenskiy aide says ‘root cause of any escalation’, including into Kursk, is Moscow’s ‘unequivocal aggression’
Ukraine has publicly justified its attack into Russian territory for the first time, amid reports that its forces are advancing towards a village 13 miles (20km) inside the Kursk region on the third day of its incursion.
Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to the president’s office, said “the root cause of any escalation”, including into Kursk, was “unequivocal aggression” on the part of Russia in believing it could invade Ukraine with impunity.
The statement is the first acknowledgment by any leading Ukrainian official of the ongoing offensive amid silence from the country’s military on events in the Russian region. “War is war, with its own rules, where the aggressor inevitably reaps corresponding outcomes,” Podolyak added.
Russia has proven that under the current leadership they will not stop their invasion. It is in Ukraine’s best interest to destroy all Russian weapons that can be used against them, even the ones in Russia.
Especially those.
The only way forward to a peaceful international order is a disarmed Russia under the governance of an international coalition of states with the goal of finally creating a post-Soviet free and self-governing society.
Fuck russia.
Be quick about it otherwise it’ll be necrophilia.
It’s been zombie-ish for a while now!
So essentially a special military operation aimed at striking down Nazis. But for real this this time…
US republicans must be nearly as angry as Putin about this development.
I heard one analysis of this attack has to do with the ebb and flow of offensives/counter-offensives and also about Russia’s volunteer vs conscript troops.
Militaries can usually only support big offensive operations for so long before they need to go back on the defensive, build up reserves, and equipment again, while the other side goes on the offensive. And it goes back and forth like this, almost cyclical. Russia has recently been on the offensive for weeks/months now, but they’re coming close to reaching the end of this “offensive cycle”, they’re about to transition back to being on the defensive and waiting out Ukraine’s counter-offensive. So what this attack seems like it may have been designed to do is to keep Russia on the offensive, since taking territory inside of Russia is NOT something Russia will back down on. Ukraine taking their own territory back is whatever, but taking Russian territory? Putin can’t lose territory and will have to respond. All this basically keeps Russia on the offensive, which gives Ukraine a slight advantage as a defender while Russia throws more troops against them. The idea is to wear down and split Russia’s forces.
The other thing is the idea that Russia’s military is basically a two-tiered military, with Volunteer troops coming from the poorer, outer regions of Russia, they’re joining for money and it’s not as big of a deal when they die in droves in Ukraine, whatever. Conscripts, on the other hand, are drawn from the inner, more middle-class areas of Russia, but those aren’t the troops that typically go out to Ukraine. Those are the troops that most Russians in the more well-to-do regions know and they’re not typically put in the line of fire, they get the “safe” jobs defending Russian territory. So they’re probably not as battle-hardened, and if Russia has to start using Conscript troops in the fighting, it starts getting felt by the average Russian. War is no longer this far-off thing that doesn’t affect them, it’s their family members that start dying now and potentially pushes the Russian public more to start caring about the war.
Still early though, so maybe it doesn’t do much to push the needle, but it’ll be interesting to see how it all pans out.
Been watching Anders Puck Nielsens youtube channel? https://youtu.be/A4mg1ZUb-7s?si=QBhIRgGwwdqKtnI_
Yep, I really enjoy his viewpoint on the Ukraine war, it seems a bit more balanced than alot of the other channels out there. Youtube commenters seem to run the gamut of either Russia is on the brink of collapse and the Ukrainians are achieving victory at every turn, or the opposite, that Ukraine is on the edge of collapse any day now. I just want something closer to the truth, I don’t want cheer-leading or hype, just an assessment based on what we know. I get the sense from Nielsens that that’s what I’m getting. He’s a military analyst at the Royal Danish Defense College, which seems to suggest that he has at least some knowledge about how these things work.
Anyone else notice that we’re not living in a post-nuclear hellscape?
Not yet.
Edit: I don’t mean that as a tankie stance. I mean ‘drowning man will clutch at a straw’ kind of thing.
All we can hope for is that we get another Vasily Arkhipov.
It’s important to move the battle into Russia, so the Russian population gets to see what is actually going on.
I mentioned to my wife about a month or 2 ago, that Ukraine should totally do something like this.
Russia possibly out of arrogance, seemed to believe that Ukraine would not attack them across the border. So their border defenses seemed pretty thin from what I heard.We also saw with the Russian resistance cross border action earlier, that they achieved a lot with almost nothing, so an actual military attack would have a very high chance of success.
This is a very good move strategically by Zelenskyj and the Ukrainian generals IMO. It finally puts an end to much of the Russian retorik, and it forces Russia to divert resources on the Russian border, to uncontested areas. And it gives Ukraine something to negotiate with.
If the stories are true, that much of Russian gas exports to Europe are controlled from there, that’s a huge reason to hit Russia there too.
Finally it brings the Ukraine front a little bit closer to Moscow.
EDIT:
It seems to be confirmed that Ukraine now have control of the meter station for gas exports to EU. Allegedly controlling the last remaining pipeline with export to EU.
I’ve been seeing a few details coming out from this about gas pipelines being a big reason for a push into this particular region of Russia. But things I haven’t seen talked about are things like this will cause Russia to have to spread troops thinner from the eastern fronts to handle this incursion. It’s also far enough away from Belarus that they don’t need to worry about any collateral damage. And most importantly, it’s in the general direction of Moscow so it cranks things up a notch in terms of proximity to the general population.
this will cause Russia to have to spread troops thinner
Yes, I think this is a very crucial point, Russia has pretty much been able to control which points are hot spots, so they could concentrate forces there.
But now Ukraine has been able to push through, because they chose a poorly defended area into Russia, instead of trying to push Russians back on the front lines in Ukraine.They have made an offensive that wasn’t costly, but they can still make costly for Russia to take back. So now part of the war is on Russian ground, and destroying Russia instead of Ukraine. Literally taking the war to Russia.
Was it just them repeating, “The Russians started this war and we’re going to end it.” over and over?
