The quote from CIA Director William Burns was
“Fog of war” time. Ukraine’s claim of 38,000 killed is a fair bit higher, and extrapolating the Russian numbers of about 1350/month in the first month would be ~7000. The Ukraine Center for Countering Disinformation found 22,200 Russian job vacancies for contract soldiers. What does “Russian forces” mean? Does it include voluntolds from occupied territories? Whomever the Wagner Group rounded up from the prisons?
(Now we know which is worse, though: a Russian prison or the front line of a shooting war…)
Russia ‘about to run out of steam’ offering Ukraine chance to strike back, head of UK intelligence says
Russia’s military is likely to start an operational pause of some kind in Ukraine in the coming weeks, giving Kyiv a key opportunity to strike back, Britain’s spy chief said on Thursday, addressing the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado.
“I think they’re about to run out of steam. I think our assessment is that the Russians will increasingly find it difficult to supply manpower material over the next few weeks,” said Richard Moore, chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) known as MI6.
“They will have to pause in some way, and that will give the Ukrainians opportunities to strike back.”
The one thing we know, for 100% sure, is that the Russian numbers on anything – their own losses, their equipment losses, the losses they’ve caused on Ukraine – are lies. Nothing from official Russian sources is to be believed, unless and until it’s corroborated by independent evidence from trustworthy sources.
There’s no such thing as a missed opportunity for some people:
Grain deal might be signed soon.
Oleksiy Honcharenko, a Ukrainian MP close to the talks, voiced caution over the deal, telling BBC Radio 4’s World Tonight programme: “We don’t have [an] agreement yet.”
He continued:
“We don’t trust Russians at all. So let us wait till tomorrow for a final decision and that there will not be some pushbacks from Russians and last-minute changes. I keep fingers crossed tomorrow we’ll have a deal and Russia will really respect it.”
And while watching the other hand
Not exactly advanced léger de main
Thread:
tl;dr Putin aims to use gas to blackmail European countries into forcing Ukraine to accept a cease-fire along the current front line, which will become the de facto border between Ukraine and Russia. After a few years Putin will invade again.
True for the Ukrainians as well.
Thread:
The EU countries, especially Germany, seem to be preparing their citizens for one bad winter while they build what reserves they can now and find alternate suppliers and energy sources.
They all know what Putin is up to. No leader there wants to be forced into becoming the 21st century’s equivalent of Neville Chamberlain (although Orban seems determined to become the equivalent of Admiral Horthy).
Putin, meanwhile, edges closer to emulating another figure from the 1930s.
For how many days?
Let’s see how/if this works
Hungary’s nationalist prime minister Viktor Orban Saturday called for US-Russian peace talks to end the war in Ukraine, lashing out at the European Union’s strategy on the conflict.
Agence France-Presse reports:
In a speech in Romania, the 59-year-old ultra-conservative leader also defended his vision of an “unmixed Hungarian race” as he criticised mixing with “non-Europeans.” Orban has condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, but maintains an ambiguous position on the conflict.
Before Moscow sent in troops, he had sought close ties with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. And last week, he said Europe had “shot itself in the lungs” by imposing sanctions against Moscow over the military operation.
“We’re sitting in a car with four flat tyres”, he said on Saturday, of efforts to stem the bloodshed. He went on to add, “A new strategy is needed, which should focus on peace negotiations instead of trying to win the war.”
Orban said “only Russian-US talks can put an end to the conflict because Russia wants security guarantees” only Washington can give. The EU, he added, “should not side with the Ukrainians, but position itself” between both sides.
The sanctions “will not change the situation” and “the Ukrainians will not come out victorious”, he said, adding, “The more the West sends powerful weapons, the more the war drags on.”
Orban claimed the “war would never have broken out if Donald Trump were still head of the United States and Angela Merkel were the German Chancellor.”
