Eurasia note #54 - Ukraine Fights Back, Lobbing Missiles at Donbas

Predictions of imminent victory for either side seem far-fetched

United Nations condemns shelling of Donetsk civilian areas by Ukraine forces.
Macron, NATO chief urge Kiev to consider suing for peace, even at the cost of land.
President Zelenskiy defiant, vows to regain Donbas and Crimean territories.

Two U.S. mercenaries go missing in battle; one a former Chemicals Corps expert.
NATO, Polish figures call for more countries to host nuclear weapons.
Head of Russian Duma says it would trigger war, destroy central Europe.
(1,600 words or about eight minutes’ read).

Grandmother in Potashnya, with doll (Corriere.it)

Tbilisi, Jun 16, 2022

Ukraine has launched some its heaviest bombardment of Donbas in eight years of war. Artillery rained on civilian areas, leading a United Nations spokesman to condemn the attacks.

The country’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy was defiant, promising to regain or “liberate” the independent territories of Donetsk and Lugansk, and even Crimea.

The head of a Ukrainian delegation to Washington DC, David Arakhamia, said Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) is suffering about 1,000 casualties daily including wounded and dead of 200 to 500.

French president Emmanuel Macron said on a visit to Kyiv that Ukraine would have to compromise, echoing NATO Sec-Gen Jens Stoltenberg that it may have to give up land in return for peace. At the Kultaranta Talks in Finland on Sunday the NATO chief did not directly advise the country but gave the example of the Finns after WW2 who ceded part of Karelia in their settlement with the USSR.

In the parallel universe of Western media, Newsweek declared: “Putin Is Losing the War. Don't Be Fooled by What Happened in Severodonetsk.” The article says Ukraine is “standing on the brink of major western augmentation of its offensive capability.”

This is the risk: while Newsweek’s report clearly does not reflect the war on the ground, there is no doubt the neocons would like to fight all the way to Moscow in the hope of regime change.

Then a Boris Yeltsin Mark II, with a new generation of economic advisers from Harvard and a revitalised Bill Browder (grandson of the leader of Communist Party USA — meet the neocons) would in their dreams tear up energy contracts with China, constricting its access to oil, gas and coal, before launching a war with Beijing.

The latest suggestion of U.S. biolab activity: a former U.S. serviceman, Alexander John-Robert Drueke, 39, of Alabama, was captured, killed by Russian forces, or has gone dark.

He was a mercenary but in his service days a member of the U.S. Army Chemical Corps, tasked with protection against biological, radiological, nuclear and chemical weapons. We know from the Wuhan labs that preventative work cuts both ways.

He went missing with another Alabama native, Andy Tai Ngoc Huynh, 27, during a battle in Izbytske, northeast of Kharkov.

Military latest

The week began with massive shelling of Donetsk, which the head of the autonomous region Denis Pushilin says is the heaviest yet. AFU was reported shelling residential buildings, a marketplace and a maternity hospital in the center of Donetsk.

Though it went largely unreported in Western media, Stephane Dujarric, a spokesman for the UN Sec-Gen condemned the attack. [1]

An adviser to president Zelenskiy actually justified fighting among civilians. Mikhail Podolyak told the New York Times that “Russians fight poorly in the cities.” He added “in the cities, it is possible to maneuver, and find cover, and you minimize losses; you can resist a longer time and inflict significant casualties on the Russians.” [2]

The Donets river, the largest tributary of the Don, remains a key focus of fighting. In the north, around Kharkov, Russian forces protecting their gains to the east, aim to stop Ukraininan forces crossing the shallows in the direction of Izium, an important Russian hub.

They agreed to a Ukraine request to evacuate civilians from the Azot steel plant in the city of Severodonetsk in Lugansk oblast, one of the AFU’s most easterly positions. Some accounts say the evacuation did not go ahead and the Russia side accuses the AFU of using the pause to consolidate its position. AFU remains isolated since the destruction of bridges that connected with Lysichansk across the Donets.

Russian forces press on towards Slovyansk, Donetsk oblast.

The victims of this war, of whatever ethnicity, whether they fight or shelter, are paraded in the media in a way that dehumanizes them — as if the West has reprised its age-old attempt to euthanize the Slavic peoples.