• AutoTL;DRB
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    411 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    As the Ukrainian counter-offensive in Zaporizhia Oblast began the Russians transferred elements of the 7th airborne (VDV) division that had been holding the Dnipro River line in Kherson Oblast directly to Zaporizhia (taking advantage of the flooding of the Dnipro caused by the Russians’ demolition of the Nova Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant Dam, which temporarily precluded a Ukrainian cross-river assault and reduced Russia’s need for the VDV units to defend that sector of the front line), to the complaints of the division’s personnel.

    They can disrupt offensive or defensive operations in the sectors from which they are drawn and put great pressure on soldiers who must withdraw from combat in one area, move rapidly to another, and immediately launch into new fighting without time to rest men and repair or replace equipment.

    Exhaustion, losses, and demoralization can all undermine the willingness and ability of defenders to continue launching those counterattacks, especially when the same units and same soldiers have to keep doing it for weeks and months on end without relief, as is the case here because of the current Russian rotational policies.

    And the Russians have repeatedly adapted to Ukraine’s acquisition of longer-range precision weapons (though usually after suffering significant losses) to maintain a rickety and unreliable logistics system that nevertheless generally meets the minimum necessary levels of supply.

    They cripple Ukraine’s economy by severing it from access to international trade through the Black Sea and depriving it of the mineral wealth in the east that had been one of its major economic engines, as well as large areas of agricultural land.

    What a shame.” It will be more than a shame if Western support for Ukraine erodes to the point of compelling Kyiv to accept a peace (which Russia is still not offering, it is important to note) on lines that make the renewal of war on unfavorable terms more likely.


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