Russia Rapid Advance Marinka, Avdeyevka, Kupyansk; US Military Trainers Describe Dire State Ukr Army

good day big news in Ukraine over the last 24 hours is of much more many more Russian missile and drone attacks across Ukraine Russian cruise missiles launch of strategic bombers Russian drones operating across Ukraine more and more attacks taking place in various parts of Ukraine there are conflicting reports about whether Kiev itself was attacked over the last 24 hours my sense is that the main or at least the most heavily attacked place in Ukraine was the town of niepro on the NEPA River niepro being to a great extent a logistical Center created by Ukraine in preparation both for this offensive which it is supposed to launch in the south of Ukraine but also perhaps a logistical center for the resupply of Ukrainian troops who are still trying to hold the Russians back in donbass anyway it's not entirely easy to get clear information about the scale or effect of these attacks the Russian authorities routinely publish a rundown of what the attacks um of what places that they've attacked but it doesn't offer a great many details and one suspects that the Russians know a great deal more than they're even saying one example a few weeks ago about two weeks ago there was a big Russian missile strike on a massive Ukrainian Ammunition Depot milnitsky there was a colossal explosion uh explosion the size of mushroom cloud the Russians simply said that an ammunition dump had been attacked in hamelnitsky and said little else not confirming or denying some of the reports for example that depleted uranium shells had been involved it had been struck in this particular attack so big Russian we saw the Drone attacks across Ukraine not a huge amount of information about what exactly the Russians are striking are hitting but certainly the tempo of the air campaign the air and missile campaign that the Russians are conducting continues unabated and incidentally there's also reports that the Russian Air Force now routinely drops 2500 kilo Glide bombs on various parts of Ukraine every day that doesn't sound like an awful lot but these are Big bombs and the explosive charge in any one of these bombs is significantly greater than that which could be found in most of the missiles at least that the Russians are launching so the cumulative effect of 20 bombs a day is substantial if it is continued over a long period I'm going to say that earlier a few about a week ago there was a report that only around five percent of the Russian Air Force tactical Air Force is engaged in operations in Ukraine at any one time that and this is supposedly information provided to Ukraine by the British Ministry of Defense there's hundreds of fighter bombers held in reserve back in Russia the suhoi bureau the has rather the factories in it khabarus that build these suhoi planes and the United aircraft corporation which is the Umbrella Corporation for the Russian Aerospace industry has just announced that a further batch of suhoi 34s have been delivered to the Russian Air Force we don't know how big a batch is you know how many aircraft are involved the Russians never give us this information but anyway one way all the other the Russians are engaged in some levels of bombing in Ukraine but it does seem that the bulk of their tactical Aviation is being held back in reserve and my suspicion is that it's waiting either for Ukraine to launch its famous offensive or in the alternative waiting to support whatever offensive the Russians themselves launch launch and we've been hearing lots of reports about Russia upgrading more and more of its 500 and 1500 kilo bombs with um wings and guidance systems that convert them quickly and easily into Precision guided Glide bombs we also hear that the Russians have developed um a similar kit for their 250 kilo of bombs which are also being converted in large numbers and these two apparently will be deployed on their Russian on their air on their fighter bombers and probably as I said a larger air offensive at some point involving all these aircraft will take place now I would add in addition that there are some reports that suggest that the Russian missile and drone strikes aren't near Pro were effectively unopposed that Russia that Ukrainian air defense assets such as they are are now almost entirely concentrated in protecting Kiev and that there is this has left the Russians in a position where they're much more free to launch strikes elsewhere in Ukraine the information from the Russian defense Ministry that they destroyed Ukraine's largest remaining surface ship and amphibious Warfare ship in Odessa for example seems to be confirmed there's been photographs of this um of what looks like remains of this ship which has clearly been sunk and apparently there's complaints from people in Odessa that there's a large oil slick which appears to be on the sea which appears to be associated with the sinking of this vessel and Odessa until fairly recently was one of the most heavily defended cities in terms of Ukrainian air defense largely because the Odessa is a he port for Ukraine it's where it's grain exports are sent from it's also a major Transit point for for American and Western weapon systems moving into Ukraine as they get dispersed across the country on that point Scott Ritter um former U.S marine major former U.S intelligence officer member of the veterans intelligence Professionals for sanity guests at various times on many many channels including on the Duran by the way and somebody I know well and have great respect for is discussed the latest launches by the Russians of various reconnaissance satellites including a reconnaissance satellite which apparently has some kind of radar system somebody suggested that this is something called the synthetic aperture radar I'm not at all sure what that is if anybody wishes to enlighten me they are very welcome and I'm not entirely sure whether this is the sort of radar that this satellite has but anyway apparently it can detect and map location objects um that are about a meter in scale and Scott Ritter makes the point that this satellite together with an additional satellite array which Russia is creating over Ukraine is now giving the Russians basically complete reconnaissance complete information about everything that's happening in Ukraine about all the movements of troops and Equipment that's taking place obviously this isn't just the satellites that are doing this there's also drones intercepted Communications as I said the rusi Forum that Russi the Royal United Services Institute has confirmed that the Russians have decrypted some levels of Ukrainian military Communications and of course the Russians will have lots of other means of reconnaissance and surveillance far greater than I know about and any of us can know about and by the way this essentially is similar to the information previously provided Scott Richard's rather comments are essentially similar to the kind of information that simply here's the Thinker has previously provided one gets the sense that once more the Russians when they went to war in February 2022 they hadn't yet prepared fully for this war in that in that way they hadn't yet got all their satellites and all their surveillance equipment operating they were at that stage still looking for a political settlement that as I've said many times now was partly what the whole Advance on Kiev was all about and there were negotiations and a political settlement was almost achieved and on the 29th of March an outline proposal was from Ukraine was um agreed and apparently even initialed by the Russians who shortly after made their own counter proposal and it looked as if the initial Russian plan to force Ukraine into negotiations was about to pay off until of course the Western Powers principally the United States and Britain with the then British prime minister Boris Johnson playing the leading role came in and brought it all to a stop anyway at that time the Russians weren't apparently thinking about an all-out War they didn't have all their satellites operating they had yet sorted out and launched all their satellites they hadn't mobilized the large forces that they needed they hadn't brought to bear the entirety of their military power increasingly it seems they are doing so and this array of satellites that Scott Ritter is talking about is just one further example of this as is the steady concentration and build up of Russian Aviation that I was talking about previously and in the meantime even as all of this is going on we're getting further reports of significant Russian advances and the focus at the moment appears to be marinka this is this town Southwest of Donette City heavily fortified by Ukraine used by Ukraine as one of its key bases to try to press its Siege of donut City in the long years since the 2014 War the Russians made a sustained attempt to capture marinka in the autumn and um in October they actually or rather the authorities in the donets region actually claimed that malinka had indeed been captured except that it turned out that this was not true it turned out that the ukrainians were dogging into the western part of marinka and the whole fight for marinka degenerated into a stalemate every couple of weeks Dennis bushilin the acting head of the dot Nets People's Republic would be interviewed on Russian television about the situation in malinka he would repeatedly say that the situation there is improving from a Russian point of view but that Improvement never seemed to result in the outright capture of the town and as I've discussed in recent videos I've gone to the view that this is probably intentional on the Russian side it seems that Ukraine in trying to hold on to this Westward Fringe Western Fringe of marinka that was still under its control was experiencing heavy losses it was having to rotate troops continuously to try to cling onto this area under heavy Russian fire and I suspect that in marinka the Russians basically pulled off a mini bakmud in other words they used the fighting in marinka again to draw Ukrainian forces and to inflict attrition upon them but as I've also discussed in recent programs it seems that now a decision has been made to finally resolve this problem of marinka once and for all and it does seem as if things are now accelerating um yesterday I got there were more reports that still more areas of marinka have been captured and the leading role in the fighting in marinka has been played by the churchian forces led by their Commander up the alaudinous and again I would repeat the comment that I made in previous videos I'm not going to give a timeline here I'm not in any position to but I suspect that at some point over the next couple of days weeks maybe we'll be here either the hold of mud Inca has finally and conclusively passed under Russian control there's also reports that there are further advances by Russian troops in the um of devka area abdeg is a much bigger place than marinka before the warrior had a population of around 30 to 35 000 each two is located close to Donut City it's somewhere it's north of marinka and it was the main Ukrainian military position near to donate City and Ukrainian artillery routinely shells continues by the way to show donut City from um well over the last few weeks really started in March the Russian forces have been steadily incrementally pressing on avd Africa they've been strongly backed by the Russian Air Force this is where a lot of these 20 kilo bombs that I was talking about for um this heat have succeeded in Breaking quite a lot of Ukraine's defenses in the area I think it was in March that they captured the important Village of krasnogorovka which had become a major fortified position of Ukraine protecting um advances by the Russian army from the north and over the last few days there's been more reports that the Russians have been pressing forward faster in the avdevka area they're now absolutely on the outskirts of of devkin and again it looks as if Church enforces are involved uh now I should stress again there's much less information about either of these battles about marinka or of defca that we've ever had about the fighting embankment if that makes it extremely difficult to reconstruct events in either of these two battle areas um it's in fact we were perhaps privileged if I can put it like this in terms of bhagmat and the fighting there we got a very clear view of what was going on on a day-to-day basis because well you have the only precaution was providing us with detailed updates all of the time Wagner the force that the Russian spearhead force that was um aiming to capture Bachman um has an active telegram Channel which is also providing an abundance of information there was a high concentration of Russian military journalists also in Bachman and the result is that we were kept very fully informed about what was going on in that particular battle the same I'm afraid is not true to anything like the same degree about the fighting in marinka and avdafka but as I said I do get the sense that in both places there's been an acceleration of Russian advances and doubtless that will continue over the next couple of days and weeks anyway that's what I want to say about fighting in those places yesterday I talked a great deal about the fighting near copansk the fact that the Russian forces appear to be making Headway in the kupiansk area there's been some information about this now from um is one of these people who um is um one of these Russian military commentators who discusses the war at Great length and as I said he writes under the pen name of Colonel cassad is a very reliable reporter of events and commentator about events that of course he does bring to them to do his reporting and his commentary his own perspective which is um staunch your position to Ukraine basically a strong support for the Russian war effort and all of these opinions all of this commentary is informed by his open and entirely unabashed communist views anyway is this to say about the fighting near kupiansk and he says that um reports about The Liberation of the novel linsk Village by Russian groups This is Nico pianzk there is no photo video verification of these statements at the moment the main battles to the north west of kupiansk are taking place in the area of the world's the enemy that's to say the Ukrainian forces failed to return the positions lost by the Armed Forces of Ukraine near Matthew as I understand it is located west of the Oscar River so he then goes on to say that um information about the location of our troops let's say the Russian troops one and a half kilometers um from the outskirts of cookansk is also a ahead of events a real advance to the north west outskirts of kupians will be possible with the liberation of sinkovka and Pedro pavlovka as well as the Forest Area west of sinkofka and he's provided a rather interesting map which shows all of these places and gives a fairly interesting idea of where the fighting is and shows the front line there's a blue line which appears to show uh where the front where the front line where the front line currently is and I should say straight away that the front line does indeed appear to be judging from this map very close indeed to kupians so I'm not going to repeat what I said in yesterday's program about the importance of kupiansk both its strategic significance and its psychological and politically significance to the effect it will have on Ukraine if kukiansk is recaptured by the Russians after Ukraine Rick itself recaptured from the Russians during the fighting last autumn so that's what buddies Russian has to say about the fighting in kupiansk it's still clearly ongoing the Russians are still pressing here and there does seem to be a concerted push towards umsk and as I said the front line does indeed appear to be getting very close to kupiansk indeed that the ukrainians are putting up a fierce resistance now has something else to say about some other events that are also taking place in other areas he says for example that Ukraine did make a successful advance in the zaporosia area um and um he speaks about this principally as a kind of reconnaissance in force but anyway it does appear to be that the ukrainians made some kind of an advance in the zaparosi area this is the area where many people expect Ukraine to conduct its offensive I will come back to that shortly and here's some rather interesting things to say about the situation in bahamutions perhaps we should call it now yesterday the deputy defense minister of Ukraine issued a statement she said that the situation in Bachman she continued to call it remains a complex tense but she said that Ukraine continues to control the Southwest outskirts of Bachman implying that Ahmed parts of Bahamut are still under Ukrainian control now this repeats the pattern that Ukraine has Fallout over many of the places that it has lost control of especially in the last few weeks it took Ukraine roughly two weeks to admit for example that the town of solidar north of Bachman had been fully captured by the Russians and in the case of Bachman the ukrainians have never admitted that the Russians control Bahamut in its entirety but um here we have the Ukrainian Deputy defense minister going a step further than that implying that Ukraine is still in control is actually in physical control of parts of the Southwest and outskirts of Batman well Colonel casad or buddies Roger Baptist I should more probably call him has provided an explanation for this frankly somewhat bizarre claim he said that um Ukraine doesn't control any part of archionov's the former Bergman but there are Fields Open Fields to the South West and from time to time small groups of Ukrainian infantry and do enter these fields which are within the metropolitan area of Ahmed archionus before um they quickly leave and he said that once the rotation is completed once the Wagner forces have been fully replaced by the Russian regular Army and the church in force that is also being located in Bachman then the Russians will have the job of finally tidying up this mess of capture the chromoval and ivanishka which he of course calls krasnoye and in other words securing fully this entire area under the control of the Russians it is indeed the case that the Russians have made attacks towards ivanishka and he again provides a map he shows um the area of Open Fields where from time to time Ukrainian troop Center and he shows how close it is in fact to ivanishka even and um krasnoy as he calls it and it also he also shows by the way how close the Russian troops now are to ivanishka now I've seen Maps that existed from previously um which was circulating at the time of Ukraine's counter-attack in the backwood area back in May and as far as I can see the Russians have been have successfully pushed the ukrainians back from many of the places which they captured over the course of that counter-attack and they're once again very close indeed to ivanishka anyway that's my reading of various explanations and things now notice one important fact the churchians are now involved in three locations they're fighting in marinka they're the spearhead of the Russian attacking force in marinka they're attacking in um of death and they're also attacking or or at least they're also being redeployed to Bachman now alaudinev has said that his horse his Brigade consists of three regiments and we see how these regiments are being deployed one regiment the veteran regiment the one that's been in the battle area the longest is being deployed to malinka another regiment is being deployed to the avadevka area and the third is taking positions in Bachmann now this is to be clear these are smaller forces than the Wagner organization forces that fought and captured Bachmann a regiment we're talking about perhaps two three thousand men I'm guessing now I'm not absolutely sure but the point is that these regiments do not work alone if it's been a pains to say they are heavily supported by troops of the Russian regular army with whom they work as a team now this return of the churchians to the battlefronts has provoked some kind of a to be frank rather jealous reaction from some members of the Wagner organization I suspect put up to do it to some extent by precaution and there's been some rather nasty exchanges between the Wagner forces and the churchians I'm not going to waste time detailing what's been said suffice to say it's the Wagner forces who seem to be the Wagner people who seem to be leading this and the churchians have responded in a rather more dignified and measured way but they've made their own annoyance with is clear and I gather that there's been some attempt by someone presumably someone from the Russian military to mediate and the Wagner forces have backed off and they've issued a statement which rather grudgingly appears to pull back a little on some of the things that they've been saying about the church ends now again I can't help but think that the hand of precautions behind all of this until a few weeks ago were his political allies in the fight in his uh in in Ukraine in both his comrades in fighting the ukrainians and also from time to time they worked alongside him in supporting some of his criticisms of the Russian defense Ministry and some of the officials in the Russian defense Ministry anyway it seems that that friendship has become increasingly strained something which by the way I find entirely unsurprising and well here we see the evidence of it now I come back to the point which I have made before in my previous video there are some people who believe the precaution at some point is going to mount some kind of Big Challenge against Putin the actual reality is that he neither controls the Wagner organization he doesn't decide where and how it's deployed and what it does so he neither controls the Wagner organization nor does he have a critical mass of support on the contrary he is becoming more isolated his attacks on the leadership of the Russian Ministry of Defense which may have included observations which were grounded in fact were so extreme and so far off um any factual or logical limit that they have steadily um lost in support to the point where it seems that the church and leaders are now washing their hands of him and we see this in this somewhat prickly exchange which I suspect as I said that he has instigated um with some of the church in command between some between the churchians and some of the Wagner commanders again I think people are overstating precautions importance in this conflict and there's certainly exaggerating his political role I think that before long one way or the other we will see him shunted to one side and when Wagner is indeed fully reconstituted as a rather more shall we say um conventional Force um he's rolling it will decline anyway having said that I've had a very interesting discussion explanation from my source who's close to the Wagner organization about the Battle of Bachman and this person points out that um this idea of Bachman having been of little strategic significance is completely wrong he's um sources in the Wagner organizations say that Not only was um Bachman part of the uh at the center of this Hub of communications Transportation Hub which linked together the Ukrainian forces in donbass put it for a long time served function as a primary headquarters or command posts for the Ukrainian military defending um Don bass in other words it's some kind of forward headquarters and by the way um I can remember that myself I remember at the time of the fighting in severo Donetsk and Lizzy chance the the Ukrainian headquarters that seem to be in overall uh which was which was supervising overall Ukrainian defense of severeign was actually at that time located in Batman and I remember that at the time of the severo donuts Lizzy chance battles no less a person than president zielinsky of Ukraine actually came and visited the um that particular headquarters and consulted with the Ukrainian commanders there so he's absolutely right when he says the source is absolutely right when he says that he did it was for a time a location of important headquarters of the Ukrainian Army group in donbass but he says that Ukraine also had certain plans for Bachman it was supposed to be a place where High Mars missile systems were going to be forward based in support of possible Ukrainian offensive action in donbass and Ukraine was also looking to establish sophisticated air defenses embarkment as well which would have turned Batman into some sort of a Fortress forward Fortress for Ukraine perhaps in connection with some sort of possible offensive in the donbass area and what happened was that the Russian attack on Batman preempted all of these plants it means that high mass can't be located there it means these air defense systems couldn't be established there and of course Ukraine lost his headquarters there but this was why Ukraine defended Batman so intensely it was important to them strategically and perhaps because of the role it played in their future plans and they weren't prepared to give it up lightly and in fact in the end they made the mistake of over investing in its defense anyway that's what this particular Source has told me and as I said he's proved reliable and accurate about many other things that concerned the Wagner organization up to this point so anyway that's it seems to me where we are on the battlefields major Russian missile and bomb strikes all over Ukraine the Russians continue their air and missile defensive and in addition the Russians are pushing hard on marinka and probably of defca as well and they are now encroaching on coming very close to kupiansk as well and as I said the map I've seen which Boris Russian has provided shows quite how close the Russians now are to kupiansk so that's the state of the war rather the battle not perhaps so much the walk now I've discussed previously how the offensive that Ukraine is supposed to Launch the zaporology offensive is it sometimes called the Spring offensive it's it was for a very long time called appears to be continuously postponed it's been postponed for various reasons weather reasons training needs to organize prepare various things it's always about to happen and it never exactly happens and today in the London times we have a long report and it's suggests that this offensive is going to be postponed again and the um commentary the the title is we still don't have enough weapons for counter-offensive against Russia Ukraine says we need more Firepower and the EU isn't doing enough on sanctions so it's key zelenski advisor and then there's a long discussion about a interview um with one of President zelenski's aides Dr Igor Deputy headed zelenski's office and he's Chief Foreign Affairs advisor and he said that the military need did more reinforcements to begin the long-awaited operation and then the times the Sunday time you tell the Sunday Times I'm not a military man well that's said by someone else not me this time I'm not a military man I'm working on the Diplomatic front and my task is more weapons more support more ammunition but if you want to start a successful counter-offensive you need everything at your dispose disposal including artillery armored vehicles and tanks so probably we don't have enough all right um there's lots of criticism about sanctions he criticizes the EU for the fact that these sanctions have proved largely ineffectual we'll come to that shortly and um anyway the point is the times goes on to say um javka's admission reflects a reality that has been extensively discussed in Western in Kiev and Western capitals Ukraine needs all the Firepower it can muster to have a chance of driving the Russians of its land the short falling weapons was why zelenski has been on the move so much jovka said from May 3rd to June 2nd you can calculate the number of countries he visited it's huge which is absolutely true more weapons is the number one Topic in each and every conversation every visit my president makes is about military help further delivery of weapons every country knows what kinds of weapons we need for them from them to protect our country stop the Rockets and then he talks about the state of Ukraine's air defense system he says that Ukraine's air defense has become more sophisticated but the pressure is affecting people if you can't sleep for seven days day by day you feel tired and have low morale and then he goes on to say the assaults are also depleting Ukraine's air defenses notably its stock of Patriots the U.S air defense system of surface-to-air missiles obviously we don't have enough Ukraine is huge and they're hitting each and every corner there is not a single safe place left even the far west is being targeted so here you have an admission from a very senior Ukrainian official that Ukraine's air defense system has essentially broken down there's nowhere near enough missiles now to cover the whole of Ukraine that in fact Russian missiles are increasingly getting through even the ukrainians are now admitting this and he talks about lowered morale especially presumably in Kiev because people can't sleep under the constant pressure of these Russian missile and drone strikes that go on day after day night after night unabated and of course in saying all of this he Echoes the words of his chief president zielinski and president zielinski has indeed been demanding weapons he wants fighter jets f-16s he wants them in a staggering quantities he originally asked apparently for 24 that grew to a 48 I believe the number now stands at 140. I might be wrong about that but you get a sense of the voracious demand Ukraine makes for more and more aircraft more and more weapons and the latest demands for Patriot missile systems amounts to 50 50 batteries 50 batteries eight launchers per battery you can work it out for yourself that would be some people have worked out 50 billion dollars worth of kit to be supplied by the United States presumably except of course doing that would strip the United States of all its Patriot missile batteries which we know are needed by the United States because they are a centerpiece for countering China in the Pacific region it's a huge build up of period missiles is what zelenski says Ukraine needs a huge buildup of fighter jets more than can possibly be provided by the Western powers and you see increasingly the anger and resentments of officials in the west you see people like Ben Wallace and Jen stoltenberg grudgingly saying we've run out our arsenals are depleted you see the rather stiff comments repeatedly coming from the White House and the U.S government that in fact and in reality Ukraine has been provided with all the weapons it needs for its offensive that this this demands for weapons I'm pretty sure the Americans have concluded that these demands of weapons what they really are are excuses by Ukraine to delay launching this offensive which Ukraine basically doesn't want to launch because it knows in advance that it is most likely to fail so we could see the push from one end to the other the ukrainians say we can't start this offensive because we don't have enough weapons the West now increasingly saying we don't have any more weapons to give you you must start this offensive now if you delay much longer the Russians will simply get stronger and political support for you in the west will flag and that the fact that there is this tension acrimony perhaps explains this very strange Summit meeting that has just taken place in kishinoff in Moldova all the European leaders were there including zelenski president vulcich of Serbia prime minister Orban of Hungary all the Western leaders all the West European leaders were there and they met and so far as one can see no actual conclusions or announcements or declarations have come forth they've been some really rather odd incidents there's been apparently there's a there's pictures of zelenski trying to speak to president of Serbia president not particularly wanting to talk to zelenski it's a rather bizarre episode and zelenski having to walk off in the ending what looks like a half it it is a little bit like the disastrous meeting between zelenski and Prime Minister Modi of India in Hiroshima at the G7 Summit but anyway there's been incidents like that there's also um pictures of zelenski in some kind of heated debate with one of his advisors I think it was prodoliak I'm afraid I haven't been able to I can't recognize the pictures very well with my eyes but anyway he does seem to have been a rather argumentative mood even with some of his own officials he and as I said the fundamental thing to take away from all of this is that no real progress of any kind appears to have been made at this meeting in Moldova in fact it's not entirely clear what the purpose of this meeting in Moldova actually was except possibly to provide another opportunity for zelenski to leave Kiev I'm half joking this meeting will have been prepared long in advance but also obviously to provide the Western Powers with an opportunity to give support to moldova's president Maria Sandu who is herself coming under increasing pressure from people within Moldova because of the declining living standards in that country and the fears that the country could be sucked into the war the war in Ukraine so we can see the tensions that are being that are rising around this offensive and as I said these words um reported to the Times by um Dr jovka and also by the way air code in this very very downbeat interview that zielinski himself recently gave to the Wall Street Journal all of this strongly suggests over the moment at least Ukraine has no intent has no plan to carry out this offensive immediately it's constantly looking for reasons to postpone it and the result is this standoff between Ukraine and its Western allies well there is an article which I should say I learned about from the mood of Alabama from Bernard at the middle of Alabama but it's in one of these um American um magazines wore on the Rocks which is very much one that I suspect is mainly read by people in the military and security um community of the United States war on the rocks by the way um comes across to me as being one of the more um near con-minded of these Publications anyway it it has a long piece by two um by two people Eric Kramer and Paul Schneider obviously ex-us military I get the sense that they are part of one of these multiplicity of entities that exist in the United States that provide what you might call Security Services anyway whatever they are whoever they are it it talks about what the Ukrainian Armed Forces need to do to win and it describes a chaotic situation within the bulk of the Ukrainian Army he speaks of lack of mission command effective training and combined Arts operations ad hoc Logistics and maintenance and improper use of Special Operations forces and it says that um the Ukrainian military has become it is extremely rigid and centralized in just in its decision making it reproduces by the way the old myth that the Ukrainian military continues to be imbued with a Soviet mentality which apparently discourages uh low-level initiative and insists and harps on centralized control I have to say I think that is extremely unlikely by the way in itself it's always convenient to blame the Soviet Union for all of these kind of problems the real reason I think why um commanders low level low-level commanders in the Ukrainian military are increasingly lacking in initiative is because the best of them by now will already have been killed the reports speak of the wall having already inflicted enormous damage on Junior officers and above all the essential the vitally important non-commissioned officer Cada that is the call of any military anyway um he talks about how the situation as I said is uh poor that certainly says that a large-scale battalion Level Training is orchestrated emporiographed during several in exercises we went this company commanders overseeing the exercise from afar and only occasionally interjecting they were acting more as observers than direct participants that's completely different by the way from Russian and indeed Soviet practice but I'm not going to get diverted into all of this and it says that younger officers are more open to Western Star military-style leadership whilst older officers have clung to Soviet Doctrine we have yet to see any true combined arms training involving infantry artillery and armor working together synchronizing all these different elements to achieve maximum military effect avoid Freight recite and confuse the enemy takes repeated trading at all levels of command which allows leaders to make mistakes and work through processes and in fact this isn't um this isn't um apparently what happens in Ukraine and it also discusses the nature of training that has been provided to Ukraine by NATO it says training is disjointed and haphazard and the quality of instruction varies NATO is training selected units and soldiers outside of this of Ukraine whilst this training can be effective and necessary for certain specialty skills such as Town Crews and high Mars themes it takes units and soldiers away from the front line for weeks if not months at a time commanders cannot afford to lose units and soldiers for extended periods according to our field research there is evidence of this immediate need because most of the units we train go we train go to the front the day after we finish a training session and we also believe that the trading efforts outside of YouTube crane are not consistent and do not use common programs of instruction and by the way simplica is the Thinker and Larry Johnson have made the same point that each NATO country that is undertaken to train Ukrainian soldiers is training them to follow its own methods of combat with the result that the Ukrainian Army is becoming increasingly diversive diverse or rather I should say fragmented with different units trained according to different criteria and in different styles and perhaps not able to achieve the necessary synergies that a force needs to achieve on the battlefield he said they said um foreign training efforts adhere to the host country's Doctrine was they do attempt to incorporate the realities in Ukraine many many of them do not fully adapt their training regimes to the way the ukrainians fight especially with the Ukrainian doctrinal and legal restraints on our operations um and they also make other um complaints by the way as I said simply is the Thinker Larry Johnson have already as I said discussed all of this and they say that um the lack of synchronized combining synchronized operations results in Greater losses of life and Equipment has failed as well as failed operations uh uh tanks are used more as mobile artillery and not in Combined operations with infantry where the armor goes into action just as ahead of the Infantry we have seen firsthand the shot out barrels of tanks and artillery from constantly being fired at maximum Rage or overused without maintenance or replacement the armor infantry relationship is supposed to be symbiotic but it is not the result is that infantry will conduct frontal assaults or operate in urban areas without the protection and Firepower of Tanks also the artillery fires are not synchronized with maneuver most units do not talk directly to supporting artillery so there is a delay in court for fire emissions we have been told that units will use Runners to send fire missions to artillery batteries because of issues with Communications in fact as I said the Royal United Services Institute tell us that one tells us that the Russians are able to listen in to Ukrainian Communications because they have broken they have decrypted many of these communications and that may explain why Ukrainian Ukrainian officers units on the ground rather than Reliant Communications through Radio Systems radio sets are now increasingly resorting to the use of runners like happened for example in the first World War um and then it goes on to say most of the military's operations are not phased and are sequential fire and maneuver are planned separately through infantry units and infantry units planned separately from supporting artillery the mentality also carries over to adjacent unit coordination which is neither which is either non-existent or rare and causes high rates of freight recite in other words Ukrainian soldiers kill each other by mistake because they're not coordinated properly it says unit commanders and concerns about collaborators and that's how hesitant about some critical information that can be used against them to Sister units now that is an extremely interesting admission indeed Union commanders have concerns about collaborators so officers don't trust the soldiers they suspect that some of the soldiers might be sympathetic to the Russians and might be passing on information to the Russians that's the only explanation I can provide uh provide for that particular sentence and then it goes on to say these issues are compounded by unreliable Communications between units and with senior leadership and I've already explained one of the reasons why for the problems the Russians might be listening in and it says the Ukrainian armed forces have a hodgepodge of radios that are vulnerable to jamming and um it says armed forces do not combine effects so operations are piecemeal and disjointed I have noticed this and have been talking about it ever since the Hearthstone counter-offensive noticing that Ukrainian attacks are carried out in Penny packet forms small groups of Ukrainian soldiers attacking um against Russian positions sometimes when Russian positions themselves are lightly defended as was the case in the harkerf region and to a lesser extent in her song region that does allow Ukrainian forces to sort of break through but mostly it causes very heavy casualties and it says the separate missions are not supporting each other nor are the missions of lower level units nested under the higher level mission sustainment is not synchronized with operations either and then it says that the variety of equipment now Ukraine now uses which is Western Equipment has led a significant Logistics and maintenance challenges in our experience the Ukrainian military cannibalizes new equipment arriving in Ukraine to service equipment deployed in the field as a result Frontline units only receive a small percentage of what is sent to the country for example a 50 caliber machine gun arrives in Ukraine with extra barrels Parts manuals and accessories but by the time it gets to donbass All That Remains is the gun again this article doesn't talk about corruption but this is known to be a problem in Ukraine and of course we've had multiple reports now about the sale of weapon systems supplied to Ukraine rather dark net web and in fact there's been pictures of Mexican drug um gangsters walking around with American equipment which was apparently intended to be supplied to Ukraine and then we or rather which was supplied to Ukraine but which is obviously um obviously been sold on and then we go on to read Ukrainian forces of leans on YouTube videos to learn how to use new and unfamiliar equipment and the mentality of supply distribution in Ukraine's husband resources um and there is not a steady state maintenance is based on cannibalization horse trading between units and Battlefield recovery there is not a steady stream of repair parts or a system of Maintenance at the unit Battalion Brigade and depot level the skill of maintainers is based more on personal aptitude and less on school trained mechanics all the services of Maintenance courses but that does not translate into a ready pool of mechanics and then it says that this attitude towards maintenance translates into how armor mechanized vehicles and artillery are used in combat units protect these assets and use tanks more as artillery than in Combined arms operations with infantry mechanized Vehicles will transport soldiers to the front but many will pull back when they come under Fire we have also seen the barrels of the 155 millimeter houses provided by Western countries shot out due to being used at maximum range using maximum powder charges to keep them out of range of counter battery fires with the upcoming Ukrainian counter-offensive effective use of these assets will be a key to success and during the during offensive operations the attacker usually loses more tanks vehicles and artillery than the defender noticed this article by the way is written on the 2nd of June so where is the time to achieve this enormous Revolution and um and it then goes on to say lack of coordinated maintenance and Logistics also translates into Medical Care medical evacuation and Care is haphazard experienced combat Medics have repeatedly stated that many of the evacuees would have survived if they had reached a definitive care in timely manner and then there's a long piece about how um Ukraine plunks the holes by using Special Forces um and as conventional infantry and this and this this negates the skills that make these units specialized um during the due to the high intensity combat operations and the ongoing Russian counter-offensive Special Operations to Special Operations Force type missions of units are often put in the trenches are not to sign traditional Special Operation Force type missions of raids reconnaissance and ambushes well a lot of this I have to say is completely unsurprising and it is the product of the sturdy attrition that the Ukrainian military has experienced they've lost many of their best trained men I've discussed how they lost their many of their junior officers many of their non-commissioned officers and they're having to make do and patch things together there's problems with corruption the problem of this hodgepodge of weapons that they're getting from the West has been discussed by many people myself included that this is all a logistical nightmare it is unsurprising that under the pressure of War a degrading and depleting Army is gradually running into the kind of problems that are being described here and of course if you add to all of that the fact that weapon systems are being lost it's unsurprising that Ukraine is husbanding what it has left so it's all very well saying you know that the ukrainians aren't using their tanks aggressively that they're keeping their artillery back in the rear and firing at maximum range but if you are worried that if you bring your forces too close to the front line your tanks and artillery will be destroyed if you are worried also that you lack ammunition if you feel that if you lose your tanks and artillery your chances of getting Replacements is limited of course it is understandable that you are going to husband your resources and I'm going to suggest that this emphasis on this country offensive that we've been hearing so much about for months is probably aggravating all of these problems we have three we have 12 brigades that are supposed to be equipped and trained to carry out the this counter-offensive and it is these 12 brigades that are getting all the new equipment the Bradleys the strikers the guns the tanks the leopard twos the Challenger twos whereas the rest of the army is having to make do with what it has and in the meantime those 12 brigades 30 to 40 000 men in total are being kept far in the rear and they're doing nothing and not only are they being doing nothing important on the battlefields but on the contrary far away as they are to the rear they're being struck by Russian missiles by Russian drones they're seeing their ammunition also depleted because of course this offensive is always postponed because the equipment to conduct it is never there so I don't think that this can all be blamed to some sort of residual Soviet mentality as I said this is always as I said the kind of thing that westerners come up with the Royal United Services Institute has provided a whole series of detail studies about the condition of the Russian military and I'm not going to spend time on that because we're talking about dozens of pages of analysis but even as the Ukrainian Army is degrading many of these issues the the ukrainians are suffering from have been resolved or are in the process of being resolved in the Russian military their Communications are improving their coordination with their artillery is getting better they have these strelitz systems consoles which enable soldiers on the front lines to communicate directly with fire units they're improving their reconnaissance they're using their tanks in a completely different way from the way that the ukrainians are using their tanks there's been much discussion about the t-62s and t-55s that the Russians have been deploying to the battlefronts in fact it's become clear that to the extent that the Russians do use these old tanks they are using them not as tanks but as self-propelled guns to support the Infantry the really modern tax the t90ms and the more advanced versions of the t-72 and the refurbished t80s are being held back for operation in Combined arms combat and this article I've just read for example spoke about the fact that ukrainians don't really use their tanks to support their troops in urban Wolfie both in the fighting in valuable and in Bachman the Russians did use their tanks to support their infantry assaults or um within the within the cities um and in fact they increasingly did so as the battle for bakmut evolved and as P previously discussed how the tanks that were deployed in Bachman were t90ms and they were apparently operated by Russian Marine units Naval Naval infantry units so there we go that is the state of the Ukrainian Army it seems to me that this constant harping on this counter-offensive means that Ukraine now has in effect two armies one is the bulk of the Ukrainian Army whose condition has been described here degrading running down short of competent leadership at tactical level short of equipment improvising constantly suffering horrendous losses on the battlefields discussed by in the various articles that I've discussed previously and the other is this Elite Force of 12 brigades held back in the rear for an offensive That Never Comes and which in the meantime is experiencing the loss of its precious supplies as a result of missile strikes and shelling and all the rest meanwhile the Specter of corruption hangs over the whole thing with as these two writers pointing out the fact that the equipment when it's arrives in Ukraine or mag might mean one form by the time it reaches the front line it is in a completely different form most of the accessories and components and other parts of God they put it down to cannibalization which perhaps is true corruption I'm sure plays a significant role as well so here we have it we have these are American observers writing a report about the state of the Ukrainian Army the bulk of the Ukrainian Army now I have to say reading all of this it makes me feel deeply depressed and of course it also I would have thought should make Western leaders think very hard about what they're doing in Ukraine they are pushing Ukraine into an offensive which will not only lose Ukraine the best part of its military but in fact probably the only part of its military that still works the only part that's getting training the only part that's getting some Modern weapons and of course that military also has its problems it's made up of units trained in different countries to different levels no shared Doctrine it has to make deal with a hodgepodge of different equipment from different countries doesn't always work together the differences in ammunition used by different leopards two tanks for example the leopard twos used completely different ammunition from the Challenger twos the 105 millimeter guns on the AMX 10 RC Wheels tanks as they're called that the French is supplied is completely different from the 105 millimeter guns used by the leopard ones that the Germans are going to try and supply all of this really is an army horridly cobbled together and which is gradually incrementally coming apart now it's understandable in the circumstances why the ukrainians might be unwilling to conduct an offensive and I think that we can get distracted by this endless dance that Ukraine wanting more and more weapons more and more machines more and more ammunition and miss the actual picture which is of a Army that has been attritioned if not yet fully to the point of collapse at least to a point when a collapse is starting to look inevitable now I've discussed why Western leaders want this offensive to happen they may be hoping that if this offensive happens and fails that would last get the ukrainians to accept the need for talks with the Russians and there's some hope perhaps that something could be retrieved from all of this through those talks it's also the case that this offensive as I said in my video yesterday provides the glue that keeps this Western Coalition together the they're all talking about supporting this offensive they're all making their own contributions there's hope that this offensive might succeed if it doesn't it doesn't there it is all I will say is all of this is a very these are not good reasons to conduct a defensive it's not good reasons to continue this war it is based on a refusal to recognize the realities on the ground which we have just had described To Us by some Americans who are clearly soldiers is it not the time to put all this to one side to finally accept those realities to open talks with the Russians now it is impossible to see how this offensive can fundamentally change the picture of the wall it can only make Ukraine's already critically bad situation far worse why not instead acknowledge that fact now talk to the Russians today and see whether perhaps the Russians possibly working through Chinese mediation might be more amenable to some kind of compromise than they're likely to be in the autumn well there we go that's my program for today much more from me soon we'll see what happens over the next few weeks and whether this offensive does indeed come but in the meantime just to remind you you can find all our programs on our various channels locals Rumble it shoot Odyssey rockfin telegram you can also go to our shop and buy our amazing things there are monks are um t-shirts or hoodies or sweatshirts all those great things and last but not least if you've liked this video please remember to tick the like button and to check your subscription to this channel [Music] thank you

Channel: Alexander Mercouris

Views: 161,638

Keywords: Alexander Mercouris, The Duran, duran news, alexander duran, alex duran, Alex Christoforou, duran alexander, duran alex, US news, EU news, Russia news, China news, Donbass, putin, russia, ukraine, zelensky, EU ukraine, NATO Ukraine, nato russia, ukraine nato, biden ukraine, nato ukraine, kremlin, nord stream, politico, the hague, medvedev, shoigu, gerasimov, borrell, marinka ukraine, Kupyansk, pentagon ukraine

Id: 6uTsC2jcEU0

Length: 84min 20sec (5060 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 04 2023