- The much-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive has started, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on June 9. He cited the deployment of Kiev’s strategic reserves as a telltale sign of the operation. “We can state with absolute certainty that this Ukrainian counteroffensive has begun, and the use of strategic reserves points to it,” Putin announced at a press conference. The president noted that particularly heavy fighting has been ongoing for five days, with Russian troops managing to hold their positions.
He also claimed that the Ukrainian military has suffered far heavier casualties than the “classic” three-to-one ratio often expected during an offensive. Putin attributed the purported failure of the Ukrainian unsuccessful drive to the effectiveness of the armaments already at the disposal of Russian forces.
- During last four days of AFU ‘offensive’ (between June 4-8) Kiev lost 107 tanks, including 13 German-made Leopard 2A6 and Leopard 2A4, 3 French-made AMX-10 wheeled tanks; 233 armored fighting vehicles, and more that 5,000 servicemen.
Citing anonymous senior U.S. officials, CNN reported that the Ukrainian military had sustained “significant” casualties this week. The outlet’s sources described “greater than expected resistance from Russian forces.”
- Russian forces delivered strikes by seaborne and airborne precision weapons against Ukrainian depots storing foreign-made ammunition, armaments and equipment, including drones, disrupting the enemy’s supplies in the combat area, Defense Ministry spokesman Lieutenant-General Igor Konashenkov reported on June 9. "Last night, Russian forces delivered multiple strikes by seaborne and airborne long-range precision weapons against depots storing foreign-made ammunition, armaments and military equipment, including unmanned aerial vehicles. All the designated targets were hit. The strikes disrupted the supplies of Ukrainian troops in the areas of combat operations," the spokesman said.
- Despite the fact that Russia did not immediately respond to NATO violations of Russian ‘red lines’, Washington and Kiev have many times regretted it, because they received a crushing blow of retaliation, said Vladimir Kozin, political scientist, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Military Sciences in an interview with the Internet website Ukraina.ru:
- In senior U.S. circles, they assume in vain that they and their closest NATO allies can simply ignore Russian red lines. Although they have deliberately crossed some of these lines, ignoring the warnings from Moscow, which could not immediately respond to their violation for a variety of reasons. But gradually on all of them, both Washington and, to an even greater extent, Kyiv regretted many times when they had reckoned on their impunity as a result of misinterpretation and received a crushing blow of retaliation.
Over time, as the Russian Armed Forces get newer and more promising weapons, such frustrations will arise more and more often among U.S., NATO and Ukrainian so-called strategists. If they do not consider the word caveat.
Previously, for example, the Russian Armed Forces did not destroy large military depots filled to the roof with U.S.-NATO heavy weapons and their ammunition. Now their destruction by high-precision and high-powered strike weapons has become a stable practice. What is left of such storage sites is empty territory. Previously, few Russian strikes had targeted the strategic command and control structures of the AFU. But recently it has been repeated many times and very successfully.
Even the Western media acknowledged the deaths of many high-ranking military officials from a number of transatlantic alliance states who sat in such structures and instigated Kyiv to escalate aggression against Russia. Neither Kyiv, nor NATO, nor the European Union took into account that Russia would launch heavy strategic bombers with long-range conventional high-explosive fragmentation missiles. They have missed it. But the process is underway.
For example, while anticipating the supply of American F-16 fighter-bombers (some types of which, by the way, are certified tactical nuclear weapons carriers) to the Ukrainian air forces, it should gently, but strongly warn the Ukrainian and NATO military and political leadership that all of them will definitely be destroyed at Ukrainian airbases and in the skies of Ukraine.
In parallel, it is necessary to warn the aggressor states of NATO alliance that all their military transport aircraft, including those delivering heavy military equipment and ammunition to the AFU, will be destroyed as soon as they enter Ukrainian airspace. This will be done by the Russian Aerospace Forces. It is important to simultaneously warn Kyiv and the alliance headquarters in Brussels about the introduction of a so-called no-fly zone in the skies of Ukraine over the entire national territory under its control. At the same time, I think that in a number of cases Russia can do without red warning lines and act immediately as new challenges and threats emerge, without warning the enemy.
I think that in the current situation, it's not worth a first missile-nuclear or first strike using non-nuclear, conventional weapons. If Russia quickly destroys Ukraine's military machine and achieves its demilitarization and denationalization, preserving for all eternity its non-aligned status, and as a state that will never again threaten Russia, its allies and friends, there will be no need for such strikes from the Russian side. Such strikes - both nuclear and non-nuclear - would provoke not just a nuclear missile war. But a combined war with three components: nuclear-missile, missile-antimissile, and space strike systems.
But if the US and NATO deliver the first nuclear missile strike against Russia, its allies and friends, then of course its powerful nuclear Strategic Missile Forces and seven kinds of hypersonic advanced high-precision systems will respond to the aggressor, as they say, with a full program.
And in all the states of the North Atlantic Alliance, which together with Ukraine unleashed an armed aggression against the Russian Federation, during which, since April 2014, 20 thousand civilians have already been killed and tens of thousands of homes and social and other infrastructure facilities have been destroyed.
Russia will also retaliate against those countries that keep sending and sending lethal weapons to destroy Russians and Ukrainians alike. Such things cannot be forgiven or forgotten.
The Russian Federation has its own national plan to completely stop the aggression of Ukraine and NATO against the Russian state.
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