- Ukrainian forces took out more than 100 Russian soldiers with an ATACMS missile, per OSINT analysts.
- Four ATACMS were used to target the group, one analyst said.
- The soldiers would have been out of reach of Ukraine’s shorter-range ATACMS missiles.
A Ukrainian ATACMS long-range missile strike killed more than 100 Russian soldiers in an occupied region 50 miles from the front line, according to OSINT and military analysts.
Ukrainian forces targeted a Russian military training area some 50 miles behind the front line in the occupied Luhansk Oblast in eastern Ukraine, per an assessment by The Institute for the Study of War.
According to two aerial geolocated videos posted on Wednesday by X user Osinttechnical, an account affiliated with the Centre for Naval Analyses, Ukraine appeared to strike the training area with three US-supplied M39 ATACMS tactical ballistic missiles.
Sure. And they’d be alive today if they were slightly to the left or right of the blast zone. But their deaths won’t bring us any closer to Putin not invading Ukraine.
We’re going to see a hundred dead Ukrainians in a retaliation strike. And then another hundred dead Russians in a retaliation for the retaliation. Etc, etc, etc.
All this death isn’t achieving its end goals. Its just piling up more and more corpses.
The only way for Ukraine to win this war is to destroy Russia’s ability to wage it. This means destroying Russia’s troops, destroying Russia’s vehicles, destroying Russia’s factories, and destroying Russia’s oil and refinery production.
Destroying the invader demonstrably brings Ukraine closer to ending Putin’s invasion.
The Ukrainian economy is utterly exhausted. Its operating entirely on the credit from its western allies (who are - incidentally - keen on carving up and selling off what’s left of Ukraine once the war is over). At best, Zelensky can stop the bleeding of territory to Russian creep. But unless they want to fight this war for the next 20 years (a la Vietnam / Afghanistan / Iraq) they’re not going to end a country 10x their size. Certainly not when the MIC they’re relying on demands giant profit margins for every rocket launched and bullet fired.
Not when Ukraine is cannibalizing itself in the effort.
As you note, Afghanistan beat the Soviet Union, there is no reason to believe Ukraine cannot beat Russia. It is also unlikely to take 20 years given how deeply Russia is expending their Soviet inheritance. We are actively watching Russia drain this one-time resource as their storage yards deplete every month. We have watched the Black Sea Fleet sink and the remnants relegated to the furthest coasts of Russia while Ukrainian grain shipments have recovered. This war is winnable, and Ukraine intends to do just that.
Afghan Taliban fighters had big mountain ranges to hide in and retaliate from. And the USSR had no real objective in Afghanistan. It wasn’t a frontline of conflict in the Cold War, just an expensive distraction.
Ukrainians have nowhere to hide. They’re defending cities not hiding in rural highlands. And they’re not fighting the USSR for religious reasons, they’re fighting a turf war for economic reasons.
They’re in the same position as Germany at the end of WW2, defending thousands of miles of flat muddy countryside against layers of mobile artillery.
Russia has the world’s second largest arms industry. They aren’t working off a one time resource, any more than America was in the South Pacific in the wake of Pearl Harbor.
Then tell us what Ukraine and the west should do.
If it is giving up and letting Russia seize control of the entire nation, then you I have fundamentally different world views.
If it is negotiating with Putin, we are again in disagreement. We don’t bow down to bullies. When we do, they end up taking our lunch money again and again.
So really: please tell us what the best alternative is.
Broker a ceasefire, to start, as that ends the immediate loss of life. Begin negotiations for a permanent peace settlement. Establish terms for repatriating land to displaced refugees and compensation for death and destruction of property.
Then hold elections in Ukraine to establish a new postwar government that can continue the peace process.
The only way to prevent Russia from furthering its march into Ukraine is to establish a ceasefire.
Ukrainians had that chance in 2022 and they choose counteroffensive. It failed and they lost territory.
In 2023, they tried again and failed, and lost more territory.
Now Kyiv is under regular bombardment from fortified Russian positions in the North and the entire Donetsk line is under unsustainable pressure.
Either Europe enters the war to bail out Ukraine, Russia accepts a ceasefire and begins a peace settlement, or you’re looking at another big line collapse and retreat, with commensurate territory loss all through the East and South.
Ukraine is willing to end the war today, unfortunately Russia actively rejects returning Ukrainian lands. Until Russia is prepared to accept peace, the only path forward is to destroy Russia’s ability to wage war.
??? In 2022, Ukraine pushed the invader away from Kiev, out of Kharkiv, and out of Kherson. Ukraine holds significantly more of their own land today than they did before their counteroffensives in 2022. The entirety of the green shaded area is land Russia once occupied that Ukraine liberated.
All the more reason to call for a cease-fire and prevent them from taking any more.
There is no end game for Ukraine that has them securing Vladivostok. They’ll be lucky if they can put boots back into Donetsk.
While giving up Khereon in the process.
They contest more land, thanks to longer range munitions.
And they never succeeded in ending bombardment of Kyiv or Western infrastructure. The Ukrainians power grid is poised to collapse and force millions more to flee westward.
Da, komrade. It will be sad day when
glorious ruzziaNATO breaks up and redistributes land once this war is over.Private Sector on the Frontlines of Land Reform to Unlock Ukraine’s Investment Potential
Not even a secret. USAID is advertising the land grab.