By Tony Kevin, Facebook, 8/5/24

Tony Kevin is a former Australian Foreign Affairs officer 1968-98 at Australian Government. Writer of ‘Return to Moscow’ (UWA Publishing, Perth 2017) and ‘Russia and the West, 2017-19’ (2019)

Here is my latest update on the Ukraine war situation as of 5 August 2024, drawn from multiple independent and Russian sources:

Russia has absolute military supremacy on the Ukrainian frontline. There is active fighting now in 3 particular localities: Pokrovsk/Progress, Toretsk, and near Kharkov . Ukraine is taking casualties, dead or disabled, of 1000-2000 men per day or up to 14,000 per week. These casualties cannot be replaced despite extreme and cruel measures of forced mobilisation that are now increasingly being resisted by Ukrainian civil populations from all regions. There has been massive male flight out of Ukraine and the birthrate has collapsed . Foreign mercenaries have largely fled the country too. Quite large numbers of untrained forces sent to the front and left without weapons or leadership, are simply surrendering to Russian forces when surrounded , or retreating without orders to do so.

Unable to make progress on the battlefront, but with a temporary surplus of long range drones, Kiev is carrying out militarily meaningless terrorist drone attacks that are damaging a few apartment buildings and killing a few civilians in weakly defended towns and cities in frontline regions of Russia adjacent to Ukraine like Belgorod, Kursk, Voronezh, and Rostov. Russia regards these acts as war crimes and promises retribution when the war is over. Ukrainian security chief Kirill Budanov will be high on the Russian prosecution list.

There will come a point – and it may come soon – at which enough Ukrainian soldiers will just stop fighting at the front that no amount of bullying by Kiev war enforcers can change the outcome .

It is still bipartisan US policy to fight Russia in Ukraine to the last Ukrainian but the Ukrainian soldiers are not superhuman. Their will to fight and die is close to cracking.

Russians are calibrating the rate of their advances and destruction of Ukr military units just fast enough to keep steadily demoralising and neutralising Ukr soldiers, while not panicking NATO elites too much into desperate decisions to expand the war. NATO elites have got the message and are going quiet.

On The Duran, Alexander Mercouris was convincing this week in reporting on this: see The Duran conversation, “Ukraine front line slow motion collapse” (copied also to YouTube and to my social media- and recommended viewing) .

Here also are extracts from the latest Russian Defence Ministry weekly report. Note the huge Ukr casualties this week. Russian casualties would by most expert estimates be between 5 and 10%% of these, which are sustainable given Russia’s massive mobilised manpower advantage:

“August 2️⃣. [2024]

▪️ 11 group strikes were carried out during the week against Ukrainian armoured enterprises, UAV workshops, ammunition depots and temporary staging areas of the Ukrainian armed forces and mercenaries.

▪️ The Central Group of the Russian Armed Forces liberated five settlements during the week, the Defence Ministry said.

▪️ Kiev lost 13570 soldiers, 14 tanks, 42 armoured vehicles, 189 field artillery guns during the week, according to the summary” (extracts end).

It’s only a matter of time now. The NATO armaments cupboard is bare. The trickle of F-16 aircraft now getting into Ukraine from US are militarily meaningless. NATO is afraid overtly to expand the war with their own declared regular forces. NATO covert special force units in Ukraine have taken significant personnel hits in recent weeks. Russia has superb intel on where they are and hits them now without compunction, when they are located in legitimate military rear-area targets alongside NATO weapons and ammunition storages and depots.

Finally, on the diplomatic front, Russia is rejecting phony peace signals by Kiev that do not reflect military and political reality as it has evolved on the ground since February 2022. Russia has made clear it is open to genuine peace signals through possible intermediaries China, Hungary or Turkey.

Until there is real policy and/or regime change in Kiev, such efforts will not bear fruit and the war will continue its slow and bloody path.