Green shoots as to renewal. First Ukraine pilots go to USA accessing training needs for UA pilots, next Russian collapse on agenda and Roads, Bakhmut
Lets now get ahead in a scientific critique of what is needed to end this damn war
quote; First the fall of the Putin regime: Marjorie Greene can go in mourning starting NOW
It was hardly surprising against that backdrop that industry fell into the hands of a corrupt group of oligarchs, and that an authoritarian state controlled by Putin quickly took charge. We ended up with a repressive, militarised regime, threatening its neighbours, and repressing its people. In other words, right back at square one.?
The collapse of 2023 needs to be handled very differently. Like the post-war reconstruction of Japan and Germany, or indeed, the post-Soviet rebuilding of Poland, now on track to be richer than Britain, at least?according to Sir Keir Starmer?(who conveniently forgets to mention that it will also be richer than Spain and France), it needs to create small businesses, back entrepreneurs not robber barons, and encourage free and competitive markets operating under the rule of law instead of a gangster clique entirely dependent on favours from the Government.?
None of that is going to be easy, but then it wasn’t easy in Japan and Germany, either. It will require massive financial assistance when the Putin regime falls apart to stop output going into freefall, and that will be expensive, especially at a time when we will need to help Ukraine rebuild as well.?
Even more importantly it will take slow, patient institution building. If successful, however, there will be at least a chance of a modern, liberal democracy emerging from the ruins of this dreadful war. And that will be a neighbour the rest of us can finally live with.?
In reality, Russia’s economic collapse is not far off – and this time around the West needs to have a plan ready for when it happens.
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Secondly that pesky little business of training UA pilots gets real'
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Two?Ukrainian?pilots are currently in the United States undergoing an assessment to determine how long it could take to train them to fly attack aircraft,?including?F-16 fighter jets, according to two congressional officials and a senior U.S. official.
The Ukrainians’ skills are being evaluated on simulators at a U.S. military base in Tucson, Arizona, the officials said, and they may be joined by more of their fellow pilots soon.?
U.S. authorities have?approved bringing?up to?10 more Ukrainian pilots to the U.S. for further assessment?as early as this month, the officials said.
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Also the matter of Roads and Bakhmut comes into focus
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In any case, the seven-month battle for Bakhmut — Russia’s longest-running sustained assault since the invasion last year — is now being decided by seesaw fighting around the rural roads, which cut through rolling, grassy hills and small villages to the west of the city.
One of the roads heads west to the town of Chasiv Yar. The other, which was more open after the Ukrainian counterattack, leads southwest to the town of Ivanivske. Ukraine has fallback positions in the hills along both routes.
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The factors and state of play is now coming into focus. Its now time to play ball
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With Ukraine Under Pressure in Bakhmut, Fight Becomes a Battle Over Roads
Ukraine’s military said that Russia was inching ahead in its efforts to encircle the city but that it had beaten back several attacks on supply routes.
March 4, 2023
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian forces repelled multiple Russian attacks on Saturday in fighting around the partly encircled city of Bakhmut, which has come down to a yard-by-yard battle for vital roads that supply the city’s defenders.
But the Ukrainian military acknowledged that soldiers inside the city were now encircled on three sides by a combined force of the Russian Army and the Wagner private military company, which includes fighters recruited from prisons.
On Friday, the company’s owner, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, taunted President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in a video, saying that only one road remained open to the west of Bakhmut, a city in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian commanders say that a counterattack this past week pushed Russian forces away from at least one of the embattled roads into the city, for the moment easing resupply for troops inside.
In any case, the seven-month battle for Bakhmut — Russia’s longest-running sustained assault since the invasion last year — is now being decided by seesaw fighting around the rural roads, which cut through rolling, grassy hills and small villages to the west of the city.
One of the roads heads west to the town of Chasiv Yar. The other, which was more open after the Ukrainian counterattack, leads southwest to the town of Ivanivske. Ukraine has fallback positions in the hills along both routes.
Much is at stake. Although military analysts say it is unlikely that Russia could steamroll deeper into Ukrainian territory if it captured Bakhmut, the city’s fall would hand President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia a symbolic prize as the first major city taken by his forces since July.
The State of the War
In waves of assaults by Wagner’s forces through the fall and winter, and with relentless artillery, Russia inched toward the city from the south and the north, trying to encircle the Ukrainians inside.
Inside the city, street fighting has broken out, with both sides holed up in abandoned houses and factories, fighting block by block. “There is fighting in the city,” the deputy mayor, Oleksandr Marchenko, told the BBC. “Thanks to the Ukrainian armed forces, they still haven’t taken control of the city.”
The Ukrainian military said in its morning battlefield assessment on Saturday that Russia had continued its efforts to encircle the city over the past 24 hours. “The defenders rebuffed multiple assaults,” the military said of its forces, providing few details other than to list yet another Russian assault on a village straddling the road that Ukraine said it had recently cleared of Russian forces.
Britain’s military intelligence agency said Saturday that two key bridges had been blown up. One is on the road to Chasiv Yar; it was not immediately clear if that closed off supplies or if the Ukrainians have a workaround. The other bridge was a pontoon crossing the small Bakhmutka River within the city.
The Institute for the Study of War, a U.S.-based analytical group, wrote on Friday that Ukrainian troops had blown up the bridges, a sign they were preparing to withdraw. The blown-up bridge on the Chasiv Yar road would “limit Russian egress routes out of Bakhmut” on the heels of the retreating Ukrainians, the group wrote.
The Ukrainian military, if it retreats, would probably do so stealthily, trying to fall back with minimal casualties, military analysts have said. It may pull back to the city’s western neighborhoods, using the Bakhmutka River as a defensive line in the city.
In the worst case, the thousands of Ukrainian troops fighting in Bakhmut could become surrounded, starved of ammunition and be killed or pushed to surrender, but analysts deemed that outcome unlikely.
Despite the indications of an imminent retreat, Ukraine’s military continued to express resolve. Gen. Viktor Khorenko, the head of Ukraine’s special operations forces, visited Bakhmut just a day after the commander of the ground forces went to the city. Ukrainian commanders say they want to hold on and degrade Russian forces as long as they can.
General Khorenko “worked out a number of urgent issues regarding the provision and organization of the work” of units, the command said in a statement.
Russia’s defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, paid his own visit to troops elsewhere in the Donbas region, Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Saturday. He inspected a frontline command post in the southern part of Donetsk and was updated on “the current situation and troops’ action,” according to the ministry, which released a video showing him awarding medals.
Though Ukraine’s grip seems to be slipping, either side could double down, pouring in men and weaponry to prolong the battle, analysts say, but only at the risk of sapping their armies’ strength for other fights.
A Ukrainian withdrawal would suggest hopes for success later — in a long-anticipated counteroffensive that would put into play a new arsenal of Western heavy weaponry, including German Leopard II tanks. Soldiers in Bakhmut could be redirected to that offensive, analysts say.
“There might be a trade-off between committing the resources necessary to hold Bakhmut and depleting forces needed for the spring offensive,” said Rob Lee, a military analyst at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a think tank based in Philadelphia.
Much is riding on the battle for the access roads. Oleh Kadanov, a Ukrainian volunteer who assists the military, drove the road from Chasiv Yar to Bakhmut on Tuesday. “There were not too many craters,” he said in an interview. At that time, the road was not under direct tank or machine gun fire, he said.
The city itself, he said, was “scary.” Bombarded from three sides by Russian artillery and in the grips of street fighting, “there were no safe places” once inside.
For Russia, capturing Bakhmut would open these roads to the west — but not by much. Ukraine has multiple layers of defenses in the Donbas region, sometimes seen in long trenches cut through fields to the rear of the current front line. So if Russia does ultimately claim Bakhmut, the grueling war of attrition could simply shift a few miles to the west.
Cassandra Vinograd?contributed reporting.
Andrew E. Kramer is the Times bureau chief in Kyiv. He was part of a team that won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting for?a series?on Russia’s covert projection of power.?@AndrewKramerNYT
A version of this article appears in print on?March 5, 2023, Section?A, Page?13?of the New York edition?with the headline:?Fight for Bakhmut Turns Into a War for Vital Roads.?Order Reprints?|?Today’s Paper?|?Subscribe
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also
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Two Ukrainian pilots are in the U.S. for training assessment on attack aircraft, including F-16s
The arrival of the two pilots marks the first time Ukrainian pilots have traveled to the U.S. to have their skills evaluated by American military trainers.
A F-16 Fighting Falcon flies during a NATO air shielding exercise in Lask, Poland in 2022.Omar Marques / Getty Images file
By?Courtney Kube?and?Carol E. Lee
Two?Ukrainian?pilots are currently in the United States undergoing an assessment to determine how long it could take to train them to fly attack aircraft,?including?F-16 fighter jets, according to two congressional officials and a senior U.S. official.
The Ukrainians’ skills are being evaluated on simulators at a U.S. military base in Tucson, Arizona, the officials said, and they may be joined by more of their fellow pilots soon.?
U.S. authorities have?approved bringing?up to?10 more Ukrainian pilots to the U.S. for further assessment?as early as this month, the officials said.
The arrival of the first two pilots marks the first time Ukrainian pilots have traveled to the U.S. to have their skills evaluated by American military trainers. Officials said the effort has twin goals: to improve the pilots’ skills and evaluate how long a proper training program could take.
“The program is about assessing their abilities as pilots so we can better advise them on how to use capabilities they have and we have given them,” an administration official said.?
Two administration officials stressed that it isn’t a training program and said that the Ukrainians will not be flying any aircraft during their time in the U.S.??
These officials said the pilots will be using a simulator that can mimic flying various types of aircraft, and they emphasized that there are no updates on the U.S. decision to provide F-16’s to Ukraine beyond what the Pentagon’s top policy official said to Congress last week.?
The official, Colin Kahl, told the House Armed Services Committee that the U.S. has not made the decision to provide F-16’s and neither had U.S. allies and partners.??
He also said the U.S. has “not started training on F-16s” and that the delivery timeline for F-16s is “essentially the same” as the training timeline, about 18 months.??
“So you don’t actually save yourself time by starting the training early in our assessment,” said Kahl, who is the under secretary of defense for policy. “And since we haven’t made the decision to provide F-16’s and neither have our allies and partners, it doesn’t make sense to start to train them on a system they may never get.”?
Other U.S. defense officials have said the training could be shortened to six to nine months, depending on the pilots previous training and knowledge of fighter aircraft.??
Ukrainian officials have told the U.S. and other allies that they have fewer than 20 pilots ready to travel to the U.S. to train on F-16s and another 30 or so who could be trained in the near future, according to American and Western officials.??
Asked about the assessment of two Ukrainian pilots, a defense official described it as “familiarization event.”??
“It is a routine activity as part of our military-to-military dialogue with Ukraine,” the official said.
“The ‘familiarization event’ is essentially a discussion between the Air Force personnel and an observation of how the U.S. Air Force operates. This event allows us to better help Ukrainian pilots become more effective pilots and better advise them on how to develop their own capabilities.”?
The defense official added that there are no immediate plans to increase the number of pilots beyond the two currently in Tucson but said “we’re not closing the door on future opportunities.”
Recommended
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly asked the U.S. for F-16s, but President Joe Biden has resisted the requests so far. In an interview with ABC News last?month, Biden said Ukraine does not need F-16s at this time, adding that’s based on the U.S. military’s advice.?
“I’m ruling it out for now,” he said when asked if he would ever send F-16s to Ukraine.
Biden also told reporters last week that he had discussed F-16s with Zelenskyy during his visit to Kyiv on Feb. 20 but would not disclose the details of that discussion.??
In his appearance before the House Armed Services Committee, Kahl said that Ukrainian officials have asked the U.S. for as many as 128 aircraft — a mix of F-15s, F-16s, and F-18s.??
Kahl said the U.S. Air Force estimates that Ukraine will ultimately need between 50 and 80 F-16s to replace its current air force. If the U.S. provides newly built aircraft, it will take three to six years to deliver them to Ukraine, with a slightly shorter timeline of 18 to 24 months if the U.S. sends refurbished older models F-16s.?
The cost to send the F-16s would be as much as $11 billion, depending on the model and number delivered.
“That would consume a huge portion of the remaining security assistance that we have for this fiscal year,” Kahl said.?
On Sunday, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said U.S. military officials told him they support providing F-16s to Ukraine.?
“I was at the Munich Security Conference, met with a lot of the high-ranking military officials, including our supreme allied commander,” McCaul said on ABC News' "This Week."
“They’re all in favor of us putting not only F-16s in but longer-range artillery, to take out the Iranian drones in Crimea.”?
But with the long timeline for delivery and training of F-16s, the huge price tag and the large Russian Air Force already gathering aircraft across the border from Ukraine, some US military leaders recommend focusing on weapons and equipment that Ukraine can use immediately like air defense systems.?
“Even in our most earnest effort it will take months to get Ukrainians flying F-16s. They are beating the Russian Air Force with air defenses, why would we change tactics now?” a U.S. defense official said.
The Russian Air Force has roughly 500 aircraft, the official said, which dwarfs the Ukrainian force.?
“It’s just not the way to fight the Russian Air Force,” the official added. “Even if we spend all the money and send every aircraft we can, it’s just a drop in the bucket compared to the Russian Air Force.”
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also
https://ukrainetoday.org/2023/03/04/the-west-must-prepare-for-the-imminent-collapse-of-putins-russia/
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MARCH 4, 2023SCRADGE1The West must prepare for the imminent collapse of Putin’s Russia
Putin ignored every lesson of history, leaving Russia’s economy on the brink
MATTHEW LYNN?3 March 2023 ?
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Demand for its oil and gas has been choked off. Sanctions are finally starting to bite. The costs of a war that the Kremlin expected to be over in a matter of weeks are escalating wildly out of control, and the state is increasingly having to rely on borrowing to keep going.
Even supposed allies of the Russian regime, such as the billionaire Oleg Deripaska, are now warning that the country is close to?running out of money.?
Vladimir Putin ignored almost every lesson of history when he invaded Ukraine just over a year ago. But the one that might well haunt him the most is this: wars of attrition are brutally expensive, and are usually won by whoever has the deepest pockets and the productive capacity to keep up the fight for the longest. That isn’t going to be Russia.?
It could even be that the total?collapse of Russia’s economyis not far away. And if it is, it will happen a lot more quickly than anyone currently thinks.
If we are to avoid a repeat of the events that followed the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 – when the economy fell apart , the oligarchs took control, and Russia ended up becoming a corrupt, gangster state intent on re-establishing its empire – the West needs to be ready.?
It has taken longer than anyone thought, but the economic pressure on the Kremlin is finally starting to tell. True, last year the country got away with a fairly modest 2.2pc contraction in GDP, at least if you believe the official figures. This year, however, is going to be much worse.?
There are estimates that output fell by 6pc to 7pc in the last quarter of the year, and the decline will only have accelerated since then. Europe, including the UK, has managed to wean itself off Russian oil and gas, its main customer, far faster than was expected. The G7 has imposed a price cap of $60 on Urals oil, and while some customers will inevitably avoid that the price has still dropped by 20pc since December, hitting revenues hard.?
Companies might have been too slow about it – no one knows why the typically sanctimonious?Unilever is still there?– but they are steadily winding down their operations in the country, laying off staff and closing down units. The Russian budget deficit is climbing at an alarming rate, as tax revenue collapses.
“There will be no money already next year,” Deripaska, the metals tycoon already subject to American, British and EU sanctions, told a conference in Siberia this week. “We will need foreign investors.”
That much is certainly true. The spending on the war has?escalated dramatically. According to an analysis by Reuters, the military and security budget has risen to $155bn, or a third of all state spending. Putin and his generals may have planned a lightning campaign leading to a victory parade through the streets of Kyiv within a matter of weeks. But that is not the way it has worked out.?
Instead, Russia is bogged down in a brutal war of attrition along a stretched front line that is consuming men and machinery on an epic scale. And if the fighting is tragically reminiscent of the First World War, then there will be similarities in the economic context, too. The Great War was effectively over once the economic might of the United States was thrown behind the Allies.?
It is possible that?China?may step in to help Russia out. But it would be rash to count on it. The Chinese, and especially President Xi, are not sentimental, and they are certainly not interested in losers.
It is hard to see that they have anything to gain by bailing Putin out. And without help from China, it is impossible that Russia’s shrinking economy can match the spending power of the West (and the White House announced another $400m of help only yesterday). A total economic collapse is simply a matter of time.?
The West needs to be ready for that. When the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991 the response was a total disaster. The country was allowed to sink into chaos, with GDP falling by a shocking 45pc between 1988 and 1998.?
It was hardly surprising against that backdrop that industry fell into the hands of a corrupt group of oligarchs, and that an authoritarian state controlled by Putin quickly took charge. We ended up with a repressive, militarised regime, threatening its neighbours, and repressing its people. In other words, right back at square one.?
The collapse of 2023 needs to be handled very differently. Like the post-war reconstruction of Japan and Germany, or indeed, the post-Soviet rebuilding of Poland, now on track to be richer than Britain, at least?according to Sir Keir Starmer?(who conveniently forgets to mention that it will also be richer than Spain and France), it needs to create small businesses, back entrepreneurs not robber barons, and encourage free and competitive markets operating under the rule of law instead of a gangster clique entirely dependent on favours from the Government.?
None of that is going to be easy, but then it wasn’t easy in Japan and Germany, either. It will require massive financial assistance when the Putin regime falls apart to stop output going into freefall, and that will be expensive, especially at a time when we will need to help Ukraine rebuild as well.?
Even more importantly it will take slow, patient institution building. If successful, however, there will be at least a chance of a modern, liberal democracy emerging from the ruins of this dreadful war. And that will be a neighbour the rest of us can finally live with.?
In reality, Russia’s economic collapse is not far off – and this time around the West needs to have a plan ready for when it happens.
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Andrew Beckwith, PhD