Ukraine tells critics of slow counteroffensive to 'shut up'
Ukraine told critics of the pace of its three-month-old counteroffensive to "shut up" on Thursday, the sharpest signal yet of Kyiv's frustration at leaks from Western officials that say its forces are advancing too slowly.
You know what? I never thought I'd say this but I'm with Ukraine on this one.
This whole counter offensive insanity is so militarily nonsensical that it had to have been mounted to please the West with a "win" so that they'd stay in the war. Real Chiang Kai Shek committing the best of the KMT army to Shanghai to impress the Westerners energy.
The West is standing on the sidelines, supplying just enough equipment to keep the embers going and judging the ordinary Ukrainians going to their deaths by their hundreds.
Fuck the clowns in charge in Kiev and fuck the Nazi militias obviously. But at this point the men being sent to the front are old men and boys dragged off the street against their will. Sending them to die to appease the West is fucking sick.
This got an upvote?
Are you open to proposing your master plan?
Ukraine has been invaded. Are you suggesting they do not fight back?
NATO is not war. No NATO country has been attacked. Engaging against Russia directly would put NATO at war with a nuclear power. I cannot imagine that this is your plan.
Not just “the West”, but everybody is on the sidelines as far as direct engagement goes. Most countries are assisting Ukraine where they can. Some to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. Most have imposed crippling sanctions. So. “sidelines” is a bit misleading from that perspective.
Even Russia’s allies are “on the sidelines”. You certainly do not see much overt support from China. They have even maintained ( in fact stepped-up ) diplomatic relation with Ukraine.
Or are you trying to imply that the underlying cause of everything here is something other than Russia’s continued invasion? Everybody could truly go back to the sidelines if Russia just left.
The only other path is for Ukraine to win. Are you supporting that or not?
Ukraine has plenty of opportunities to win. It could have chosen to chart a more balanced position between the EU and Russia. It could have given the Donbass some independence referenda and just let them go. It could have actually tried to adhere to the numerous Minsk Agreements to deescalate and prevent war. It could have negotiated for peace while the Russians were pulling back after its previously more successful counter offensives.
But each time its leaders ignored the off ramp to peace and pursued delusional maximalist goals, egged on by promises of EU and NATO membership which even Zelensky acknowledged publically were just carrots dangled in front of Ukraine.
Now there's no pathway to any sort of Ukrainian victory and the most realistic scenarios all involve Ukraine permanently giving up Donbas and Crimea. The only difference between the likely outcome now and just giving them a referendum in 2014 is a couple hundred thousand Ukrainian graves.
I'd respect the EU and NATO more if they had actually followed through with their promises to Ukraine instead of this Charlie Brown football bullshit.
Most countries are assisting Ukraine where they can.
lmao here i am living in a 200 million people country where nobody gives a single fuck about ukraine
even more political groups and discussions rarely involve ukraine except when lula decides to own zelensky in some way, no one here cares about nato's proxy war
No shit. Western training and equipment is not fit for purpose. Acting as a colonial cop by bombing with impunity ≠ attacking the strongest defensive lines of the 21st century. All their wunderwaffe just gets blown up by mines or drones.
Cannot wait to see how well this comment ages. All the Hexabear stuff is just comedy gold in the long run. Thank you for spending your life force creating it.
Yeah, Ukraine is really going to retake those two oblasts and Crimea. It will all be worth all the hundreds of thousands of lives thrown into the meatgrinder instead of honoring two ceasefires or negotiating a new ceasefire when that happens.
Real Hitler in his bunker energy, except instead of Hitler youre a nazi in some other country not directly involved coping about how Germany can still win.
Cannot wait to see how well this comment ages. All the Hexabear stuff is just comedy gold in the long run. Thank you for spending your life force creating it.
Can't imagine thinking commentary, wrong or right, about brutal trench warfare, could be comedy gold.
Embarrassing
The people telling you Ukraine is winning are lying to you. They don't believe it. Ukraine doesn't have enough equipment or enough soldiers.
The Wests only hope is a Russian coup. They'll force every Ukrainian they can to die to try and make this happen. You cheer this death march on from the sidelines.
If you actually give a shit, go fight for Ukraine. If you don't have the courage to die with them, then you have no right to advocate for continuing this war.
Go back to your Fox News
Lmao 4 months in and this comment already didn't age very well, with even outlets like NYT starting to report the truth about Ukraine's offensives going terribly.
Also, I wouldn't call thousands of people dying for meaningless western imperialism/NATO expansion "comedy gold"
Pretty telling that the new line being fed to NATO worshippers is 'don't say anything critical about our objective failures'. This is, ironically, the same message Goebbels pushed when failures began to mount on the eastern front after Stalingrad and then Kursk. As the Soviet steamroller continued to Berlin, the line in the media was 'it is unpatriotic to say we are losing'. And then they lost.
hasn't that been the line the whole time?
Okay it must have gone even worse than we thought
Cold weather begins to hit in October. It's not just "slow", it's over.
Can't forget the fall mud either, rasputitsa ain't no joke
it's joever
The comment threads here are weird. Who, in their right mind, would ever support a country like Russia? It's mind blowing.
It's not supporting Russia to be critical of one-sided narratives or to call for peace for the sake of minimizing loss of life.
Get out of your bubble. The majority of the world supports Russia. It's an uncommon view in Europe/USA, but common everywhere else.
Also, being anti NATO expansion doesn't mean you support Russia. That is a reductive world view.
Tankies claim to not be supporting Russia but only point out issues with Ukraine and believe every bit of info that comes out of Russia.
Hexbear never criticizes Russia except for all the times we criticize Russia https://hexbear.net/post/278334
Hexbear.net is a Russian nationalist instance... They've grown up under Putin's cencorship and state media brainwashing.
It's a whole subculture. I don't know, I can think of weirder conspiracy theories with a following.
Struggle sessions are daily now lol
To be fair that's how it was being on reddit. Everything outside our community is a liberal hellscape.
The liberals are demonstrating that they're not very good at competing in the "market of ideas" though. There are many many many more of them than us, but they can't be bothered.
Thus the highest form of generalship is to balk the enemy's plans; the next best is to prevent the junction of the enemy's forces; the next in order is to attack the enemy's army in the field; and the worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities.
Did I read the same article as everyone else? I don't get where "failed offensive" is coming from. It was western media that created the impression of an impending counter-offensive that would all but end the war, not anything from Ukraine's armed forces as far as I know.
Since launching a much-vaunted counteroffensive using many billions of dollars of Western military equipment, Ukraine has recaptured more than a dozen villages but has yet to penetrate Russia's main defences," .... NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told CNN that Ukrainian commanders deserved the benefit of the doubt. 'Ukrainians have exceeded expectations again and again," he said. "We need to trust them. We advise, we help, we support. But... it is the Ukrainians that have to make those decisions."
This doesn't sound like a "failed" offensive to me. The "much-vaunted" part came from the West, not Ukraine. It sounds to me like western officials got themselves psyched up based on nothing and are now whining about it. So like, yeah, critics of the slow counteroffensive, shut up. You sound as ridiculous as the people who acted like Kyiv would be taken by March 2022.
Respectfuly, it is painful to read shit like this from uninformed people.
Here try googling this "Ukraine counter offensive goal crimea before:2023-07-01"(without quotes), just 3 random examples.
Zelensky signaled Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Russia is underway. Here’s what to expect
In terms of its goals, Kyiv has consistently said that it wants to recapture all of the territory controlled by Russia. In an address earlier this year Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that included Crimea.
“It is not an intention, it is our land. Crimea is our sea and our mountains,” Zelensky said.
Ukraine ‘ready’ to talk to Russia on Crimea if counteroffensive succeeds lol lmao
Ukraine's counteroffensive: Goals, opportunities, risks
In September 2022, in his only programmatic paper so far, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Lieutenant General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi offered only a rough sketch of how a Ukrainian counteroffensive might look. In the paper, he spoke of "several resolute, ideally simultaneous counterattacks." One strategically crucial target Zaluzhnyi mentioned was the Crimean peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014. In Kyiv, all agree this is the main direction Ukraine should focus its efforts. But they are also expecting surprises and deceptive maneuvers. Many, however, doubt Ukraine has enough equipment and fighting power to regain the peninsula.
Even western media tried to downplay it casting doubt from the beginning but the point I highlight is undeniably the planned goal was not achieved and it wont be achieved. Everyone would call that a failure.
But even the fucking Nazis can't agree on their own narrative and they're just coping now
Ukraine counteroffensive creeps ahead, measured in blood exactly 2 months ago, July 1st 2023
Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the counteroffensive was "slower than desired", without getting too specific. Ukraine says it has recaptured a cluster of villages in operations that liberated 130 square km (50 square miles) in the south, but this is a small percentage of the total territory held by Russia.
Go tell Zelensky to shut the fuck up, oh wait.
billions of dollars of western equipment and they recaptured a dozen villages.
The Russians have the parts of Ukraine they want and have fortified heavily which leads my analysis of the situation to be that Ukraine recapturing the taken area is not realistic and their goal of getting Crimea on top of that to be completely delusional
The Russians have the parts of Ukraine they want
This is revisionist. It was clear that Russia's military objectives in invading the rest of the country last year were to remove Zelensky and put back a friendly government to Moscow. They failed, and now are falling back on what was always the more pragmatic and "reasonable" war goal of holding the pre-February 2022 lines of control + what they still have now. But, now that an all-out state of war exists between Ukraine and Russia, it's "allowable" in the eyes of the West for Ukraine to try and regain all of its internationally-recognized territory in a way that it wasn't before.
...have fortified heavily which leads my analysis of the situation to be that Ukraine recapturing the taken area is not realistic and their goal of getting Crimea on top of that to be completely delusional
I don't mean to deride your analysis, but I also do wonder how much analysis some random Hexbear user can really make. I mean, I can look at maps of assessed control from the ISW and I hear about what goes down in some of the more nationalist Russian telegram channels but I deliberately try to avoid anything that makes me sound knowledgeable in military strategy and tactics.
I will say, that given the general attitude here that we want choices and decisions to be taken that reduce the fighting and scale of death, Ukraine's approach of incrementally retaking villages instead of throwing everything it's got in a mad rush to break Russian lines shouldn't be criticized.
Ukraine needs to get within artillery range of certain major logistical hubs to hamper Russian reinforcement and supply via the southern corridor. And it is close, now. The Russian administrators of Melitopol have already abandoned the place.
With ATACMS, this would have been easier, fyi.
Only people who don't understand the situation repeat the sort of thing you are claiming.
Furthermore, the US aid to Ukraine was mostly stuff that was destined to be decommissioned. The "billions of dollars" is on paper, not in fact. Nothing Ukraine is receiving from the USA is current gen or in use by the US and therefore isn't diminishing the US armed forces. Arguably it's actually increasing US strength, since the USA is now ramping up artillery shell production.
From a strategic standpoint, destroying the Russian military (estimated around 50% of Russia's MBTs and Airforce) in exchange for stuff you weren't going to use anyway is a bargain.
Given the substantial losses of men and equipment and the meagre gains I do think it is safe to assume that the counteroffensive does not go as well as Kiev has hoped for.
Totally – but I think in the west, people were conditioned to expect breakneck speeds similar to the initial invasion and push towards Kyiv by Russian forces or the rapid advance last year of Ukrainian troops that pushed out Russians from Kyiv suburbs and northeastern Ukraine.
In my mind, a "failure" would mean that they gained nothing – not even a few small villages.
It was western media that created the impression of an impending counter-offensive that would all but end the war, not anything from Ukraine’s armed forces as far as I know.
Or from NATO generals. At least not as an overall theme, or after actually understanding the situation on the ground.
I'd say western media recalled the likes of Operation Desert storm, generally "it's not a war but a drubbing" NATO operations, then saw the Kharkiv counter-offensive, missed that the fast mechanised advance was preceded by slogging advances until a breakthrough was achieved, and then expected the same thing to happen against the Surovikin line. Ukraine simply does not have the capacity to employ NATO offensive doctrine, more or less "hit the opposing force so hard in the air that they'll find themselves fighting a land war against air superiority on their whole territory".
And the Surovikin line which wasn't even the main obstacle as now transpired Russians had positions in literally every single forest belt parallel to the trenches visible from space. And mines, mines literally everywhere, Ukraine turned towards IR imagining to figure out where to best go through them (mines heat up in the sun and are then very visible at dusk).
Russia, of course, also announced the offensive failed the day it started but that was to be expected.
You sound as ridiculous as the people who acted like Kyiv would be taken by March 2022
I mean, in that case Russia was the much superior force on paper, and it didn't happen because they're more incompetent than was thought possible for anyone. I think you make a good point but this isn't a great comparison.
Haters gonna hate. Still though, they'll need to be cordial if some of these critics are also paying Ukrainian bills. Being rude is the fast track to falling out of favor with foriegn taxpayers.
They’re tired and weary from the onslaught of war fringe to safe their country from Putins aggression. Any dig at their progress is a dig at morale that spreads not only through the ranks, but also to the general public. There is a time for constructive criticism, but that should be done in private with actual solutions offered by those criticizing. I understand their needs to be some decorum but you can’t blame them for what I would consider a mild retort as their countrymen die trying to retake their land everyday.
Yeah, but like, they are their worst countrymen. Nazis and such. No one in the war stands to win anything. They will still pay their landlords and the corrupt banks for the right to live in now freshly burned down houses. Wages will stay super low, the wartime reduction becoming a reconstruction reduction whenever it ends. Anyone from Ukraine who is able to escape the nazis ought to defect to Russia where they would be taken care of a little better.
It's not about decorum, it's about the pointless deaths of hundreds of thousands.
Not trying to hate, but you narrowed in on excusing Ukraine for saying a mean thing to the West and its supporters. Reexamine your priorities.
Well said.
Somewhere in the Pentagon there surely must be a series of rooms isolated for this war. In them intelligence is gathered, counterparts in Ukraine can be in instant contact, resources from both armies are tracked, tactics are formulated, simulations are run. How do I know this? Because this would be too good of a learning opportunity to pass up.
And those folks ain't talking.
Someone should go bunker-hunting as a 'lost urbex enthusiast' and put them on a map. Maybe some backchannel archive in case they go 'missing'. Once the list/map goes public, thousands of unmissed tech sociopaths turn to pink mist overnight.
the whole world is sending people to become veterans so they can return with their experience and become trainers.
IMO these critics are used to air superiority which Ukraine doesn't have.
It’s crazy to me that any military doctrine as a base assumption relies on air superiority. How could you ever assume that if facing off against a peer nation? Though I guess with nuclear armament there’s an assumption that you’ll never face off against a peer level natuon
That's what 70 years of exclusively using your military as the enforcers of neo-colonialism does. Turns out what works for leveling a low-tech guerilla hideout in Vietnam or Afghanistan isn't so effective when your opponent has comprehensive SAM networks.
What a coincidence, "shut up" is what I tell people who can't stop talking about Ukraine and Russia.
Honestly I'm just sick of hearing about it.
Why?
Could be because the dominant narrative is just people (mostly Americans) cheering for more men, women, and children to be forced into the meat grinder by the thousands, just so they (who are cheering from safety on the other side of the world) can feed their twisted sense of justice and pro-American/NATO and “freedom”/“democracy” delusions.
It's like every time there's a war everybody forgets how fucking long they take. WW2 took six years. The Vietnam War took almost 20 years, same with the Afghanistan War. Anybody expecting anything solid within the next couple years is delusional. Ukraine is in it for the long haul.
“We’ll fight til the last Ukrainian!” libs
There’s a lot of angry liberals replying to your post, so I thought I’d link a great video on how/why the war in Ukraine came to be:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=LL4eNy4FCs8&si=gaMRzFwo5JP5RzeD
This channel is leftist but they aren’t communists, as far as I know.
Tldw: This war was completely avoidable. Had the US/NATO kept its promise to not expand eastward none of this would have happened. Even Biden said that 25 years ago. Americans groomed certain Ukrainians for political office, and prevented others from running. There was an opportunity to end the war last year on somewhat decent terms for Ukraine, but Boris Johnson rushed in to stop it from happening, promising massive support. But war exhaustion has caught up and Ukraine is running out of people, and western leaders are already starting to call for the end of the war — except this time it will be on russias terms and Ukraine is going to get fucked. Big western capitalists have had their fingers in this pie because there’s a lot of money to be made in the country. That’s it.
Anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows that Putins invasion was a horrific, imperialist move. Any commie you see protesting the war isn’t doing it because they support Russia (Russia is a capitalist country), they’re doing it because they don’t support NATO. We are often the makers of our own enemies here in the west. Viet Cong, Taliban, ISIS, and Russia were all created or shaped by western (mainly US) policies.
That's because it isn't really about any particular military objective, it's about creating business for the war industry.
I wish we would just go ahead and give ATACMs. It would certainly speed things up.
Zurely zis wunderwaffe will defeat zose orcs
Most anglophones have a nazi conception of how to win wars because their governments asked the defeated nazis for advice on how to win wars and that ideology was integrated and trickled down like piss onto the masses.
Speed up the end of the world maybe. US only hope is revolving Russia or escalation to direct conflict.
I think that once the F16 training is completed, it will really change the face of the battle field. I assume we are giving them jdams so they will be capable of striking hundreds of miles into occupied territory.
I think that once the HIMARS, BRADLEY, LEOPARD, STORM SHADOW, CLUSTER MUNITIONS, F16 training is completed, it will really change the face of the battle field
fast-forward 6 months
I think that once the F22 training is completed, it will really change the face of the battle field
I think that once the F35 training is completed, it will really change the face of the battle field
I think that once the LGM-30G MINUTEMAN III NUCLEAR ICBM training is completed, it will really change the face of the battle field
So 10 years?
