June 02, 2025
Days before negotiations towards an and of the conflict the operational tempo of the war in Ukraine has increased.
During the last week of May the Russian forces took 18 settlements and over 200 square kilometer. During the last 24 hours at least another 3 settlements have changed hands. The Ukrainian army is no longer capable to hold its defense lines. Its situation is deteriorating day by day.
On Saturday a Russian missile attack hit a Ukrainian military training camp. It killed or wounded about 100 soldiers. It was the second time the camp had been hit. Other agglomerations of Ukrainian forces had previously experienced the same fate. Still, Ukrainian forces beyond the frontline keep bunching up to become targets of long range weapons.
Taking responsibility for the repeated mistakes the commander of the Ukrainian ground forces resigned:
Commander of the Ground Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Mykhailo Drapatyi, has submitted his resignation over the tragedy at the 239th Training Range Center, where a Russian strike killed soldiers from a training battalion.
The loss is significant:
[Drapatyi] is considered one of the most skilled commanders in the Ukrainian Armed Forces and was a leading candidate to become the future Commander-in-Chief, expected to succeed Syrskyi.
On Saturday/Sunday Ukrainian diversion groups used explosives to destroy two Russian railroad bridges in the Kursk and Bryansk region. These bridges were located some 50 kilometer north of the Sumy region frontline. The hits will impact, if only for a short time, the railway bound supply of Russian forces north of Sumy.
One of the bridge explosions destroyed a civil passenger train. Some 10 people were killed and some 100 were wounded. This was likely intended and thereby a terror attack.
On Sunday morning a large scale operation by the Ukrainian secret service managed to attack multiple strategic airfields throughout Russia. Ukrainian sources claimedattacks on five airfields and the destruction of more than 40 strategic bombers.
Current damage assessment confirms attacks on two airfields and the destruction or damaging of up to 10 bombers.
The attack allegedly used 120 remotely controlled drones launched from civil trucks positioned near those airfields. Ukrainian sources claim that the operation took 18 month to prepare. It seems that the Russian mobile telephone network was used to remotely control the drones. It will be thereby relatively easy to prevent another attack of this kind by blocking the relevant traffic through these channels.
While the attack is of high propaganda value it will have no favorable impact on the Ukrainian position on the battle field. It will rather entice the Russian forces to hit harder, mostly likely by long range attacks against Ukrainian decision centers.
The U.S. claims to not have been informed about the attack on strategic (nuclear) Russian assets. The claim is not plausible. As former CIA agent Larry Johnson asserts:
In my opinion, none of these attacks could have been planned and executed without assistance, if not the direct involvement, of Western intelligence and NATO officers. The drones likely were activated by a remote signal made possible by Western satellites and/or systems like Starlink. Those systems also played a critical role in enabling the drones to navigate to the targeted airfields.
The escalation of the war beyond the battlefield came on the eve of Ukrainian-Russian negotiations in Istanbul, Turkey.
The Ukrainian side had likely hoped that its attack on strategic Russian airfields would entice Russia to delay or break-off the talks. They will however take place and continue.
Both sides are expected to exchange memoranda about their envisioned paths towards an end of the war.
I do expect the Russian side to deliver some kind of ultimatum.
Posted by b on June 2, 2025 at 8:17 UTC | Permalink