Arnon Grunberg

Expectations

Advantages

On serious ambitions – Marc Santora, Ivan Nechepurenko and Marco Hernandez in NYT:

‘Michael Kofman, the director of Russian studies at C.N.A., a research institute in Arlington, Va., said the campaign in the south did not appear to be a diversion to draw Russian forces.
“These appear to be interrelated offensives,” he said on Twitter on Thursday. “Kherson likely intended as a more deliberate, sequenced advance. Kharkiv to take advantage of favorable conditions.” Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Thursday that Ukraine has made tangible gains in recent days, but he sought to temper expectations for what will probably continue to prove a bloody campaign.
“There is fighting — both offense and defense — all the way from Kharkiv all the way down to Kherson,” he said at a news conference in Germany.
Still, General Milley said the Ukrainians were making efficient use of newly acquired weapons systems to set the stage for their offensive. The American-made HIMARS missile system, he said, has been used to strike more than 400 targets. And it is just one of a number of advanced weapons systems now being deployed by the Ukrainians.
But he emphasized that Russia, although its supply lines were strained and its manpower troubles far from resolved, retained significant advantages in the war.
“The war is not over,” he said. “Russia’s a big country. They have very serious ambitions with respect to Ukraine.”’

Read the article here.

What struck me, this week in Ukraine (Lviv and Odesa) is that most Ukrainians didn’t seem to be much interested or fascinated by the exact front line, the daily battles. The air raids in their cities were of some interest to them, most people don’t bother to go to the shelters anymore, but the fighting itself was far away. Yes, there was much talk about victory, and sometimes skepticism about the president, or what kind of country Ukraine would become after the victory, and refugees from the occupied territories had often horrifying stories about their escape and the people (and animals) they left behind, but the fighting today, no. Medium interest. Maybe even less.
No judgment here.
As one Ukrainian told me: ‘War cannot be a reason to postpone life indefinitely.’

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