Ukraine war: Kyiv claims first victories of counter-offensive - BBC News

I think it's what you said, it is not continuous speed. The offensive may slow down, may accelerate - let's be honest, there is even the chance of failure. However, looking at the last 6-9 months, we should be optimistic. The recapture of a small village may not seem impactful, for people who were born there, lived there until the war or even still live there under Russian oppression - it means the world to them.

I understand we're you're coming from but I think that's a wrong way to look at it. The villages and towns rarely are equal in the face of front-line activities - some offer great defense opportunities and can be held for months. Most are strategically unimportant and their freedom is reclaimed by battles fought in other locations. History books are full of small town names that have witnessed grand battles and sometimes a victory over a small patch of land can translate to a much greater victory later on.

Edit: typo

Ukraine will need to push through the first and second lines of defense, where the Russians are extremely dug in. Once they breech those fortifications it should become like driving a scalpel through Russian defenses.

If they manage to go through the first lines of defense, they'll operationally encircle a lot of Russian positions on the west, either prompting the Russian forces to retreat or get trapped in the pocket.

TL;DR this is the hard part

Just remember how Kharkiv oblast was liberated in September 2022. Ukraine made some progress in the weeks before, which put enough pressure on the Russian occupiers to make the continued occupation untenable, so they had to pull back into Luhansk.

Something similar could easily happen here, all it needs is a cirumvention of the defense fortifications to push far enough to disrupt e.g. the supply lines between Donetsk and Crimea, and significant parts of the occupation could crumble quickly.

27k settlements according to a quick search. Yikes.

But progress in anything is rarely sweeping and most commonly a matter of chipping away at an issue one tiny step at a time. Environmental issues, social issues. Unless you're finally hitting a watershed moment it's a depressing battle of inches. But you won't ever get the former unless you commit to the later.

Hopefully russia crumbles from within. They are doing everything possible to show that this is a battle between "good" and "evil" - the destructin of cities, kidnapping children, rape, castration, civilian deaths from distance and in person.

Banderite slogan. https://www.dw.com/en/new-glory-to-ukraine-army-chant-invokes-nationalist-past/a-45215538

This is a fascist slogan.

Quit reddit behavior please. This adds nothing and is not at all useful.

Just things fascists say while they murder Poles and Jews.

I have to genuinely ask - who is the liberal in this context? People are leaving reddit because it's encouraging them to do it, simple as that.

I wish there was a way to block all lemmygrad tankie cretins as an individual account

Don't confuse propaganda for the actual status of the war.

Maybe you're just discovering what the median opinion of the mainstream public looks like?

TIL iam a CIA freak

It's funny how with certain folks its always the fighting back that's the escalation, never the original aggression...

I guarantee you it means something to the residents of those six houses.

It's easy to lose track of individual humanity at the scale of a war, but this victory is the one these people will always most remember when they think of the tide turning. Their lives are worth something.

You might have the wrong city. Mr prigo was originally hailing those successes in bakhmut.

Third army? Did the other two go somewhere?

correct, they have reconstituted themselves twice over and there's hardly any elements left of their prewar jäger, mountain, airborne etc. divisions.

Bunch of Redditors hete getting stoked for this war to be down to the last Ukrainian.