#KURSK CAMPAIGN

[mariacallous]

Just before the recent advance of Ukrainian forces into Russian territory, there were signs that Americans were becoming somewhat less confident about Ukraine’s prospects in the war with Russia. Add to this that the United States is in the middle of a heated election season where Republican politicians have been less supportive of backing Ukraine, one might have expected a drop in American public support for Kyiv.

Yet, our new University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll with SSRS shows robust, even increasing, support for Ukraine.

The poll was carried out by SSRS among a sample of 1,510 American adults from their probability-based online panel, in addition to oversamples of 202 Blacks and 200 Hispanics, July 26-August 1, just before the Ukrainian incursion into Russia’s Kursk region. The margin of error is +/- 3.0 %.  Here are some key takeaways.

Americans across the partisan divide are far more sympathetic to Ukraine than to Russia

A strong majority of Americans across the political spectrum sympathize more with Ukraine than Russia in the ongoing war: 62% of respondents express more sympathy with Ukraine than Russia, including 58% of Republicans and 76% of Democrats. At the same time, just 2% of respondents said they sympathized more with Russia in the conflict, including 4% of Republicans and 1% of Democrats. Republicans (20%) were more likely than Democrats (7%) to say they sympathized with neither side, while equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats (5%) said they sympathized with both sides equally.

More Americans want the United States to stay the course in supporting Ukraine as long as it takes

The percentage of respondents who said they want the United States to stay the course in supporting Ukraine grew from our October 2023 poll, reaching the highest level in our tracking since the spring of 2023. In our latest survey, 48% of all respondents said that the United States should support Ukraine as long as the conflict lasts, including 37% of Republicans and 63% of Democrats. All these numbers are new highs in our four polls since March-April 2023.

This shift among Republicans is especially striking considering recent campaign statements by the Republican candidates for president and vice president, Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. Both members of the Republican ticket have made statements opposing further U.S. military aid to Ukraine.

Fewer Americans say Ukraine is winning and Russia is losing

Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, our polls have tracked the American public assessment of Russia’s and Ukraine’s performance and prospects in the war, as we had reason to think that this assessment might influence the degree of public support for backing Ukraine. In the previous three polls, since March-April 2023, we found little change in that assessment. In the latest poll, there was a marked drop in the assessment that Ukraine is winning and Russia is losing.

Overall, 30% of respondents said Russia is failing in the latest poll, compared to 37% in October; and 21% said Ukraine is succeeding, compared to 26% in October. A plurality of about one-third said each side was neither winning nor losing. Democrats were more likely to think Ukraine (29%) is winning compared to those who said the same about Russia (9%). Republicans were more likely to express equal attitudes about the extent to which Russia (17%) and Ukraine (17%) are winning.

Fewer Americans view current levels of Ukraine funding as about right

American public attitudes on the level of funding for Ukraine remain highly partisan, with more Republicans saying the level is “too much” (52%) and more Democrats saying it’s about “the right level” (39%). Fewer respondents to the question about the level of U.S. support said, “they didn’t know” (26% compared to 33% last October). At the same time, there was an increase in the overall respondents who said the United States is spending too much (35% compared to 29% in October), and there was a simultaneous increase among those who said it is spending too little (15% compared to 10% in October).

The percentage of respondents saying that U.S. support for Ukraine is at the right level has dropped from 28% last October to 24% in July-August, with Republican support dropping from 18% to 15% and Democratic support dropping from 41% to 39%.

Americans support encouraging Ukraine to engage in conflict-ending diplomacy

We asked: “How much would you support or oppose the United States urging Ukraine to engage in diplomatic negotiations with Russia and the United States as soon as possible to end the war in Ukraine?”

We found strong bipartisan support for American urging of Ukraine to engage in diplomacy with Russia, though Republican support is more intense. Overall, 77% of respondents were supportive of diplomacy, with 40% saying they “strongly support” and 37% supporting “somewhat.” Republicans were more “strongly” supportive (53%) compared to Democrats (33%).

Conclusion

Before the recent advance of Ukrainian forces into Russian territory, the American public was growing less confident about Ukraine’s prospects in the war. Surprisingly, this has not undermined overall public support for Ukraine, especially the expressed commitment to stay the course for as long as it takes, which increased since last October. However, attitudes toward the level of support, while partisan, indicated some decline: A 6-point increase among those who say the support is too much, compared to only a one-point increase among those who say either that support is at the right level or too little (from 38% in October to 39% in July-August).

The most striking finding is the degree of bipartisan overall sympathy with Ukraine that encompasses majorities of Republicans and Democrats. The significant increase in the percentage of Republicans who want to see the United States stay the course in its support for Ukraine for as long as takes is especially notable as it occurs in the middle of a presidential campaign where the presidential candidates have taken contrasting views that might lead to a deeper partisan public divide. Early reports about the success of the Ukrainian advance into Russia may have impacted U.S. public support for Ukraine further, as in our previous studies, we found a positive correlation between the degree of perceived Ukrainian success on the battlefield and the degree of public willingness to support Ukraine.

[mercurygray]

HBOWW2 Rewatch: June-August 1943

Since Week 2's episodes really only take us through 3 months of 1943 there's not a lot of big picture stuff to get caught up on.

But man, oh man, are there some big things happening elsewhere.

June: The Zoot Suit Riots take place in Los Angeles when a group of sailors on leave get into a fight with Mexican American youth near the waterfront, leading to retaliatory action from many more sailors and soldiers in the following days. The riots last ten days, and are only stopped when the Army and Navy declare L.A. off limits to military personnel. (This is not the only race-related act of violence this month, but it is certainly the most well known.)

Charles de Gaulle and Henri Giraud are named co-presidents of the French Committee of National Liberation. This institution would challenge the legitimacy of the Vichy government and provide a unifying force for French forces abroad and at home. It will also function as a provisional government in Algeria, which has recently been liberated during the North Africa campaign.

The Tuskegee Airmen have their first encounter with the Luftwaffe as six P-40 Warhawks are attacked over the island of Pantelleria by 12 German Focke-Wulf 190 fighters. Pantelleria has recently surrendered and will serve as a jumping off point for the invasion of Sicily, which begins in July. (Lieutenant General Carl Spaatz is currently serving as the head of Mediterranean Air Force Command.)

The invasion of Sicily starts on July 9th as a combined US, British and Canadian force lands at points around the island, starting a month-long race by General Patton's forces to move from Licata in the south to Messina in the north in an effort to catch the Germans before they can evacuate to the mainland. (Sadly, most of the Germans do make it off the island.) Both this campaign, and the North Africa campaign that preceded it, are launched to redirect resources away from the Eastern Front - a move that largely succeeds.

Speaking of the Eastern Front, the battle of Kursk begins on July 9. It is the single largest battle in the history of warfare, and is a turning point for the entire European war. The use of air support in what is largely a tank battle leads to one of the single costliest days of aerial combat.

On July 19, Allied Air Forces bomb Rome, which leads, in some large part, to the resignation of Mussolini as Prime Minister on July 25th, ending a 17 year dictatorship.

On July 27th and 28th, the RAF bomb Hamburg. High winds and drought conditions lead to the greatest single-day loss of life in wartime as more than 30,000 city residents burn to death after bombs set the entire town aflame.

Also in June, the new town of Oak Ridge, Tennesee, which will house workers for the Manhattan Project, officially receives its first residents, and "Comin' in on a Wing and a Prayer" by The Song Spinners tops the Billboard singles chart.

Heading into August, Operation Tidal Wave, the bombing of Ploesti, Romania, begins as 177 B-24 bombers attack the oil plant. This will be the first of many, many bombing runs on this target, which is a sigificant source of fuel for the Axis. (And you can't outrun Patton in Sicily or fight tank wars in Russia if you don't have fuel)

The United States Women's Air Service Pilots, or WASPS, is officially formed under the auspices of Jackie Cochran and Nancy Love. The program consolidates 2 previous groups in an attempt to leverage civilian pilots for ferrying duties.

So. It's August of 1943. The Allies are eyeing mainland Italy for their next assault. The Russians are slugging away in Kursk. The 8th Air Force has just gotten through the Regensberg- Schweinfurt raid. September will probably hold much of the same. Or ...will it?

[petalsbleedingbeak666]

It's official - Zelenskij's Nazi regime is no longer defending and is now an aggressor

[stele3]

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/several-people-dead-stabbing-incident-western-germany-bild-reports-2024-08-23/

[darkmaga-retard]

Washington keeps getting caught in lies as the Western establishment pretends to not be backing Ukraine with its incursion into Russia.

A senior U.S. intelligence officer acknowledged this week that Kyiv had access to a consortium of satellite imagery that the Zelensky regime used to plan and execute their invasion into Russia's Kursk Region, a claim that Washington denies as false.

According to the powers that be here in the United States, nobody knew in advance that Ukraine was planning the invasion, even though it has already come out that both the U.S. and Great Britain "provided Ukraine with satellite imagery and other information," to quote a New York Times report.

The Times included a caveat claim that the satellite imagery and other intelligence was not meant "to help Ukraine push deeper into Russia, but to allow its commanders to better track Russian reinforcements that might attack them or cut off their eventual withdrawal back to Ukraine" because it was supposedly delivered after the start of the incursion.

Vice Admiral Frank Whitworth, who directs the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), commented that the Times may be confused. The paper's sources could have been referring to the commercial satellite imagery that the U.S. has been giving Ukraine access to for years through the Global Enhanced GEOINT Delivery (G-EGD) portal, operated by the space company Maxar.

"There were over 400,000 accounts in that particular portal," Whitworth said at a recent discussion panel hosted by the Intelligence and National Security Alliance. "And so, the availability of commercial imagery is sustained."

"If that is what they are using for purposes of this particular campaign, this limited campaign in Kursk, then I'll defer to them to confirm that. But the availability is always there."

[dzthenerd490]

News Post

Palestine

UAE says it will not back post-war Gaza plans without Palestinian state | Israel-Palestine conflict News | Al Jazeera

Names of 710 Palestinian newborns killed by Israeli forces in Gaza published | Middle East Eye

Jury discharged in Pro-Palestine rooftop protest trial (bbc.com)

Ukraine

Russia begins efforts to expel Ukraine from Kursk but counter-attack is yet to gain momentum | CNN

Inside the U.S. arms factory making weapons for Ukraine : NPR

How Ukraine Turned Putin’s Own Trick Against Him (thedailybeast.com)

Man accused of trying to kill Trump wrote a book urging Iran to assassinate the ex-president | AP News

Sudan

Sudan civil war: Who was behind one of the conflict's deadliest attacks? (bbc.com)

Sudan: Fighting breaks out in el-Fasher following RSF attack | Middle East Eye

Opinion: Why are United States’ peace efforts in Sudan failing? - The Africa Report.com

South Sudan postpones December election by two years | Elections News | Al Jazeera

Other

‘Please take us to mum’: Families torn apart by Israel's occupation of Rafah crossing | Middle East Eye

At least three killed as trains collide in Egypt | CNN

Congo court sentences 3 Americans, 34 others to death on coup charges | AP News

The Taliban have suspended polio vaccination campaigns in Afghanistan, the UN says | AP News

Typhoon Yagi leaves at least 74 dead in Myanmar after flooding and landslides | CNN

[argumate]

Russia’s withdrawal from Kherson City is igniting an ideological fracture between pro-war figures and Russian President Vladimir Putin, eroding confidence in Putin’s commitment and ability to deliver his war promises. A pro-war Russian ideologist, Alexander Dugin, openly criticized Putin—whom he referred to as the autocrat—for failing to uphold Russian ideology by surrendering Kherson City on November 12. Dugin said this Russian ideology defines Russia’s responsibility to defend “Russian cities” such as Kherson, Belgorod, Kursk, Donetsk, and Simferopol. Dugin noted that an autocrat has a responsibility to save his nation all by himself or face the fate of “king of the rains,” a reference to Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough in which a king was killed because he was unable to deliver rain amidst a drought. Dugin also downplayed the role of Putin’s advisors in failing to protect the Russian world and noted that the commander of Russian Forces in Ukraine, Army General Sergey Surovikin was not responsible for the political decision to withdraw from Kherson City. Dugin noted that the autocrat cannot repair this deviation from ideology merely with public appearances, noting that “the authorities in Russia cannot surrender anything else” and that “the limit has been reached.” He also accused the presidential administration of upholding a “fake” ideology because of its fear of committing to the “Russian Idea.” Dugin also made a reference to the use of tactical nuclear weapons, which he vaguely stated was “the end” and proceeded to note that overdue Russian changes to the military campaign have not generated any effect to change the course of the war.  He also suggested, however, that Russia must commit to the Russian Idea rather than pursuing the “stupid” use of nuclear weapons.

loving this fascist waffle

[head-post]

Zelensky rejects talks with Russia amid fall of key AFU defence hub in Donbas

During a speech at the UN Security Council, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called for more action against Russia while the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU) risk being defeated in the Dobnas.

The president said the war could only be ended through his victory plan and peace formula, as they were based on the UN Charter. He also called on Brazil, India, African and Latin American countries to step up pressure on Moscow.

Meanwhile, the Permanent Representative of Russia to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, claimed that Zelensky was “trying to persuade the West to raise the stakes in the conflict against Russia” and was bringing the world closer to World War III. Russian top officials also called peace talks based on Zelensky’s formula unacceptable.

Frontline reports

Ukrainian media are reporting a grave situation for the AFU in the Donbas (common name for Donetsk and Luhansk regions). Troops are reportedly losing positions south of Selydove, Pokrovsk area. Ukrainians are also slowly getting encircled in Vuhledar, a strategically important town. Meanwhile, Russian media shared footage of a Russian flag at the Pivdennodonbaska 3 coal mine near Vuhledar.

Military experts noted the advance of Russian troops along the road from the village of Prechystivka. Footage of Russia’s massive artillery preparation ahead of the Vuhledar assault also surfaced on social media.

Importance of Vuhledar

Russian forces intensified their offensive in southeastern Ukraine in early September. Vuhledar is the main stronghold of the AFU, located on a higher ground. Previous attempts by the Russians to storm the town’s positions have failed, but now the South and East groupings are trying to encircle it.

Since early autumn, Russia has taken control of the village of Vodiane and Kostiantynivka northeast of Vuhledar. West of the town, the Vostok group seized the village of Prechystivka. If Russian forces cut off access to the local road, the AFU will be left without ammunition, medical supplies and the possibility to rotate. Military experts believe that Ukrainian soldiers will soon be forced to abandon their positions or make a risky breakthrough.

However, the AFU can fight at Vuhledar to the last man, as it is the only logistical town controlled by Kyiv there. Its loss would allow Russian forces to push the Ukrainian army back from the capital of Donetsk region.

The Dutch NRC reported that the loss of Vuhledar would mean a strong strategic and moral blow to the Ukrainians. The outlet also said that the incursion into Russia’s Kursk region had not weakened the Russian offensive in Donbas.

Despite the threat, Ukrainian media launched a campaign to downplay the importance of Vuhledar. Media outlets report that the capture of the town would not provide any particular operational advantage for a further offensive in the western part of the region. The US Institute for the Study of War also claimed that Vuhledar was not a major strategic hub, while the Russians had already taken control of most of the main roads leading to the town.

Fragile support

Ahead of the US presidential election in November, Republican candidate Donald Trump signalled that his country would withdraw from the Russia-Ukraine conflict if he was elected.

Biden and Kamala got us into this war in Ukraine and now they can’t get us out. (…) But we are stuck in that war unless I am President. I’ll get it done. I’ll get it negotiated. (…) We gotta get out.

Meanwhile, Germany started preparing a meeting between Chancellor Olaf Scholz, incumbent US President Joe Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. The leaders are due to discuss the Ukrainian issue without the presence of their Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky.

Read more HERE

[blogcowboyron]

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 14, 2024

Latest fromISW Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 14, 2024 Sep 14, 2024 – ISW Press Ukrainian officials and sources indicated that Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk Oblast has prompted the Russian authorities to increase the size of the Russian force grouping in Kursk Oblast by upwards of a factor of three. Ukrainian Pivnich (Northern) Operational Command Spokesperson Vadym Mysnyk…

[williamchasterson]

Russia claims start of fightback in Kursk region

Moscow says it has recaptured 10 settlements seized by Ukrainian forces in a cross-border campaign. from BBC News https://ift.tt/rVkgpH0 via IFTTT

[mariacallous]

In the summer of 1941, the United States sought to leverage its economic dominance over Japan by imposing a full oil embargo on its increasingly threatening rival. The idea was to use overwhelming economic might to avoid a shooting war; in the end, of course, U.S. economic sanctions backed Tokyo into a corner whose only apparent escape was the attack on Pearl Harbor. Boomerangs aren’t the only weapons that can rebound.

Stephanie Baker, a veteran Bloomberg reporter who has spent decades covering Russia, has written a masterful account of recent U.S. and Western efforts to leverage their financial and technological dominance to bend a revanchist Russia to their will. It has not gone entirely to plan. Two and a half years into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, Russia’s energy revenues are still humming along, feeding a war machine that finds access to high-tech war materiel, including from the United States. Efforts to pry Putin’s oligarchs away from him have driven them closer. Moscow has faced plenty of setbacks, most recently by losing control of a chunk of its own territory near Kursk, but devastating sanctions have not been one of them.

Punishing Putin: Inside the Global Economic War to Bring Down Russia is first and foremost a flat-out rollicking read, the kind of book you press on friends and family with proselytizing zeal. Baker draws on decades of experience and shoe-leather reporting to craft the best account of the Western sanctions campaign yet. Her book is chock-full of larger-than-life characters, sanctioned superyachts, dodgy Cypriot enablers, shadow fleets, and pre-dawn raids.

More than a good tale, it is a clinical analysis of the very tricky balancing acts that lie behind deploying what has become Washington’s go-to weapon. The risky decision just after the invasion to freeze over $300 billion in central bank holdings and cut off the Russian banking system hurt Moscow, sure. But even Deputy National Security Advisor Daleep Singh, one of the architects of the Biden administration’s response, told National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan that he feared the sanctions’ “catastrophic success” could blow up global financial markets. And that was before the West decided to take aim at Russia’s massive oil and gas exports, which it did with a series of half-hearted measures beginning later that year.

The bigger reason to cherish Punishing Putin is that it offers a glimpse into the world to come as great-power competition resurges with a vengeance. The U.S. rivalry with China plays out, for now, in fights over duties, semiconductors, and antimony. As Singh tells Baker, “We don’t want that conflict to play out through military channels, so it’s more likely to play out through the weaponization of economic tools—sanctions, export controls, tariffs, price caps, investment restrictions.”

The weaponization of economic tools, as Baker writes, may have started more than a millennium ago when another economic empire was faced with problematic upstarts. In 432 B.C., Athens, the Greek power and trading state supreme, levied a strict trade embargo on the city-state of Megara, an ally of Sparta—a move that, according to some scholars, sparked the Peloponnesian War. (Athens couldn’t break the habit: Not long after, it again bigfooted a neighbor, telling Melos that the “strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”) The irony of course is that Athens, the naval superpower, eventually lost the war to its main rival thanks to a maritime embargo.

It can be tempting to leverage economic tools, but it is difficult to turn them into a precision weapon, or even avoid them becoming counterproductive. The British empire’s 19th-century naval stranglehold and love of blockades helped bring down Napoleon but started a small war with the United States in the process.

Britain was never shy about using its naval and financial might to throw its weight around, but even the pound sterling never acquired the centrality that the U.S. dollar has today in a much bigger, much more integrated system of global trade and finance. That “exorbitant privilege,” in the words of French statesman Giscard D’Estaing, enabled the post-World War II United States to take both charitable (the Marshall Plan, for starters) and punitive economic statecraft to new heights.

The embargoes on Communist Cuba or revolutionary Iran were just opening acts, it turned out, for a turbocharged U.S. approach to leveraging its financial hegemony that finally flourished with the so-called war on terror and rogue states, a story well-told in books such as Juan Zarate’s Treasury Goes to War or Richard Nephew’s The Art of Sanctions. 

Osama bin Laden is dead, Kabul is lost, Cuba’s still communist, and a Kim still runs North Korea, but the love of sanctions has never waned in Washington. If anything, given an aversion to casualties and a perennial quest for low-cost ways to impose its will, Washington has grown even fonder of using economic sticks with abandon. The use of sanctions rose under President Barack Obama, and again under Donald Trump; the Biden administration has not only orchestrated the unprecedented suite of sanctions on Putin’s Russia, but also taken Trump’s trade war with China even further.

Despite U.S. sanctions’ mixed record, the almighty dollar can certainly strike fear in countries that are forced to toe a punitive line they might otherwise try to skirt. Banks in third countries—say, a big French lender—could be forced to uphold Washington’s sanctions on Iran regardless of what French policy might dictate. Those so-called secondary sanctions raise hackles at times in places such as Paris and Berlin, prompting periodic calls for “financial sovereignty” from the tyranny of the greenback. But little has changed. Countries that want to continue having functioning banks have little choice but to act as the enforcers of Washington’s will.

What is genuinely surprising, as Baker chronicles, is that the growth of sanctions as the premier tool of U.S. foreign policy has not been matched by a commensurate growth in the corps of people charged with drafting and enforcing them. The Office of Foreign Assets Control, the Treasury Department’s main sanctions arm, is overworked and understaffed. A lesser-known but equally important branch, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, struggles to vet a vast array of export controls and restrictions with a stagnant staff and stillborn budget. Post-Brexit Britain has faced even steeper challenges in leaping onto the Western sanctions bandwagon, having to recreate in the past few years a new body almost from scratch to enforce novel economic punishments.

Punishing Putin is not, despite the book’s subtitle, about an effort to “bring down” Russia. The sanctions—ranging from individual travel and financial bans on Kremlin oligarchs to asset forfeiture to sweeping measures intended to kneecap the ruble and drain Moscow’s coffers—are ultimately meant to weaken Putin’s ability to continue terrorizing his neighbor. In that sense, they are not working.

One of the strengths of Punishing Putin is Baker’s seeming ability to have spoken with nearly everybody important on those economic frontlines. She details the spadework that took place in Washington, London, and Brussels even before Russian tanks and missiles flew across Ukraine’s borders in February 2022, and especially in the fraught days and weeks afterward. It takes a special gift to make technocrats into action heroes.

The bulk of Baker’s wonderful book centers on the fight to sanction and undermine the oligarchs loyal to Putin who have helped prop up his kleptocracy. Perhaps, as Baker suggests, Western thinking was that whacking the oligarchs would lead to a palace coup against Putin. There was a coup, but not from the oligarchs—and it ended first with a whimper and then a mid-air bang.

There are a couple of problems with that approach, as Baker lays out in entertaining chronicles of hunts for superyachts and Jersey Island holding companies. First, it’s tricky to actually seize much of the ill-gotten billions in oligarch hands; the U.S. government is spending millions of dollars on upkeep for frozen superyachts, for example, but can’t yet turn them into money for Ukraine. And second, the offensive has not split the oligarchs from Putin: To the contrary, a Kremlin source tells Baker, “his power is much stronger because now they’re in his hands.”

At any rate, while the hunt for $60 billion or so in gaudy loot is fun to read about, the real sanctions fight is over Russia’s frozen central bank reserves—two-thirds of which are in the European Union—and the ongoing efforts to strangle its energy revenues without killing the global economy. Baker is outstanding on these big issues, whether that’s with a Present at the Creation-esque story of the fight over Russia’s reserves and the ensuing battle to seize them, or an explanation of the fiendishly complicated details of the “oil price cap” that hasn’t managed to cap Russian oil revenues much at all. More on those bigger fights would have made a remarkable book a downright stunner.

The Western sanctions on Russia, as sweeping and unprecedented as they are, have not ended Putin’s ability to prosecute the war. They have made life more difficult for ordinary Russians and brought down Russia’s energy export revenues, but they have not yet severed the sinews of war. “But, in fact, the West didn’t hit Russia with the kitchen sink,” Baker writes. Greater enforcement of sanctions, especially on energy, will be crucial to ratchet up the pressure and start to actually punish Putin, she argues. The one thing that is unlikely is that the sanctions battle will end anytime soon—not with Putin’s Russia, and not with other revisionist great powers such as China, whose one potential weakness is the asymmetric might of U.S. money.

“As long as Putin is sitting in the Kremlin,” Baker concludes, “the economic war will continue.”

[xnewsinfo]

Moscow's troops have recaptured about 10 settlements, the foremost basic mentioned; there was no remark from Ukraine.A senior army commander says Russian forces have launched a significant counteroffensive in Kursk, claiming good points in a part of the territory seized by Ukrainian forces final month. Main Normal Apti Alaudinov, chatting with Russian information company TASS on Wednesday, mentioned the marketing campaign has efficiently pushed Ukrainian troops out of “about 10 settlements” that they had captured within the western area. "The state of affairs is nice for us," Alaudinov, who instructions Chechnya's Akhmat particular forces combating in Kursk, was quoted as saying by TASS. Alaudinov's claims had been echoed by a number of pro-war Russian bloggers reporting on the Russian counteroffensive at Kursk. Influential blogger Yuri Podolyaka mentioned Russian forces had captured a number of villages west of the strip of land Russia had seized from Ukraine, pushing Ukrainian forces east of the Malaya Loknya River, south of Snagost. The claims couldn't be independently verified and Ukraine had no remark. The battlefield grievances come a month after Ukrainian forces launched the most important international assault on Russia since World Battle II, breaching the border at Kursk with the assistance of swarms of drones, heavy weaponry and artillery, a few of it Western-made. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy mentioned the assault was an try to convey the warfare to Russia, drive Putin into peace and create a buffer zone to forestall Russian assaults on the neighbouring Sumy area. Final week, he mentioned, Ukrainian forces had been in charge of 100 settlements within the area, overlaying an space of ​​greater than 1,300 sq. kilometers (500 sq. miles). (Al Jazeera) Nevertheless, Ukraine's shock assault on western Russia did little to reverse Moscow's advances in jap Ukraine, with Russian forces steadily advancing within the war-torn Donbas area. Talking on state tv on Tuesday, Russian Safety Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu mentioned Russian forces had solely accelerated their offensive within the Donbass since August, taking possession of about 1,000 sq. kilometers (386 sq. miles) since then. Shoigu, who holds a central Kremlin policy-making seat on the Safety Council, added that Moscow wouldn't negotiate with kyiv so long as its forces had been on Russian soil, a place he mentioned can also be held by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

[joshuaboakley]

Putin forced to ‘degrade’ Russian military operations after Kursk incursion | George Barros

https://www.youtube.com/watch/zFwSQ5rEFnE Putin forced to ‘degrade’ Russian military operations after Kursk incursion | George Barros “It’s disrupting the Russian theatre level, operations at scale.” Ukraine’s incursion into the Kursk region is “throwing off” Putin’s future campaigns as it has “degraded” Russian operations, says The Study of War’s George Barros. Join this channel to get access to…

[stele3]

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/who-declares-mpox-global-public-health-emergency-second-time-two-years-2024-08-14/

[darkmaga-retard]

Simplicius

Sep 16, 2024

Talk continues to revolve around Zelensky’s big “victory plan”, or rather ‘peace’ plan, with Bild making claims as to what it consists of:https://www.bild.de/politik/ausland-und-internationales/selenskyjs-schicksalsrede-in-kiew-die-ukraine-hat-nur-noch-eine-chance-66e549a563176b30b5877c46

They outline the next several weeks’ worth of narrative for Ukraine, so you can fairly understand the next thematic stretch of the agenda. Zelensky is going on a long tour to the US to meet both Biden and Kamala, as well as Trump and present his big “plan” to them all.

Controversy erupted, however, when Bild reported that his plan included freezing the fighting on some of the territories currently under Russian control:

According to BILD, this includes both the demand to be allowed to deploy Western long-range weapons deep inside Russia and Ukraine's willingness to accept local ceasefires on certain sections of the front - and thus a temporary freeze of the situation.

Zelensky’s press office quickly shot back an angry refutation:

🏴‍☠ Only a few people know our "Victory Plan". Bild has not seen it. Ukraine does not agree to freeze the conflict , - Zelensky's adviser ▪️D. Litvin denied the information that Zelensky is ready to offer Russia a ceasefire in certain areas of the front, which was written about today by the German Bild. ▪️Bild spread a fake, he claims, noting that "of the few people who are currently involved with Zelensky in preparing the Victory Plan, none spoke to Bild."

But as Zelensky begins drumming up his tour with a pre-gaming press campaign, some very interesting revelations have begun shedding light on just how desperate Ukraine’s situation has become. In an interview with propagandist Fareed Zakaria, Zelensky made some eye-openingly frank admissions on the Kursk operation: