The battlefield situation has not changed noticeably. The fight in the east is still hot, as Russians rush troops there to claim victory on May 9th, their VE Day.
The pipeline of supplies from the west continues full on and Ukrainians are holding Ivan to minimal ops in most of the country…The Germans came around on oil.
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FNC: Germany will support the European embargo of Russian oil, marking another significant turnaround in the nation’s position as the invasion of Ukraine continues.
Ambassadors will reportedly table the proposal at an ambassadors summit in Brussels on Wednesday, with expectations to approve the embargo by the end of next week.
Germany has resisted such an embargo, but government sources told German news agency dpa on Sunday that Chancellor Olaf Scholz will back the embargo.
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These are the indicative estimates of Russia’s combat losses as of May 1, according to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/SjdjrA0nge
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) May 1, 2022
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Zelenskyy tells Russian infantry what waits in store for them. “Every Russian soldier can still save his own life. It’s better for you to survive in Russia than to perish on our land,” Zelenskyy said.
He added: “The Russian commanders are lying to their soldiers when they tell them they can expect to be held seriously responsible for refusing to fight and then also don’t tell them, for example, that the Russian army is preparing additional refrigerator trucks for storing the bodies. They don’t tell them about the new losses the generals expect.”
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The Ukes are on the offensive and repairing damaged infrastructure. “We are actively demining the liberated territory. Every day several dozen settlements are added to the list of those where demining has been completed,” Zelesnkyy said. “We are restoring electricity supply, communications, water supply and gas supply. We are doing everything to return normal medicine, educational services, access to financial institutions.”
“We are doing everything to return normal life to the de-occupied part of our Ukraine,” he added. “We are restoring roads.”
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The Ghost is dead. FNC: A Ukrainian fighter pilot who some outlets have identified as the “Ghost of Kyiv” has been killed, an outlet reported.
Major Stepan Tarabalka, 29, was killed after he was shot down during a combat mission on March 13, The Times of London reported Friday. The “Ghost of Kyiv” persona grew in popularity online in the first weeks of the war as the legendary fighter pilot was credited with shooting down at least 40 Russian fighter jets. His identity was not previously been revealed.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posthumously awarded Tarabalka with the title Hero of Ukraine, Ukraine’s top medal for bravery, according to the report. Some reports, however, dispute Tarabalka’s identity as the “Ghost of Kyiv” and instead claim the online persona embodies the whole of the Ukrainian Air Force and the resolve of each fighter pilot.
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The Russians are moving on Donbas. “The occupiers are accumulating additional forces for new attacks against our military in the east of the country. They built up reinforcements in the Kharkiv region, trying to increase pressure in Donbas,” Zelenskyy said, noting Russia has “already lost more than 23,000 soldiers. But they do not stop,” he added. His top brass agrees. “As of today, we see signs that Russia has been increasing its troops in eastern areas of operations. They are increasing the numbers of their units, and they want to take as much Ukrainian territory as possible,” Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense spokesman Col. Oleksandr Motuzyanyk told reporters. “As of now, their main goal is to get administrative boundaries of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts as well as Kherson oblast.”
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A diatribe of wishful thinking.
The “Ghost of Kyiv” lives on in the spirit of each and every member of the Ukrainian Air Force and the resolve of every fighter pilot – Russia may have had the manpower numbers at the beginning, but as the days advance so does the litany of death take its toll on them. Russia may not quickly run out of airplanes – they are easy to manufacture – but experienced and well-trained pilots really are a limited resource.
One can only imagine the pressure inside Russian households as the number of dead rises. Putin has no where to go now but forward. And when a country’s leader is in that precarious position, increasingly dangerous things can happen. It is 2022; one cannot expand their country by invading another country, while the world looks on. What good is an additional few hundred square miles when the rest of the world will marginalize you into oblivion?
Putin truly shocked the unscrupulous German ingrates off the seat of their pants. Ungrateful of the US commitment to their defence, they had such high estimates of the Russians. They regarded Americans as chumps, to shoulder the burden of (what they perceived) unnecessary defence spending. Let’s see now, how they are going to tolerate the high energy expense that’s going to impact them.