By Sergey Poletaev, RT, 1/22/25

Over the past month, the Russian military has advanced along seven directions in Donbass and Kursk Region, with significant progress reported in key areas. The Kurakhovo operation in the western part of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) is nearing completion, while Russian forces are beginning to encircle the Pokrovsk urban agglomeration, further north. What follows is a detailed account of recent developments.

Kursk Region: Kiev’s failed attack

In late 2024, Moscow’s forces significantly reduced the Ukrainian military’s foothold in Kursk Region — part of ‘old Russia’ — mitigating threats and preventing the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) from advancing toward strategic locations like Lgov and Rylsk. The strategy of attrition warfare has kept this section of the front relatively static.

On January 5–6, approximately three Ukrainian battalions launched an attack on the settlement of Berdin. However, Russian troops detected their preparations early and executed counterattacks in the directions of Russkoye and Cherkasskoye, liberating Russkoye Porechnoye. Another counterattack targeted Malaya Loknya.

Photographic evidence indicates that a Ukrainian battalion was destroyed near Berdin, marking one of the AFU’s largest operations since the disastrous 2023 counteroffensive. Despite their efforts, the Ukrainian column failed to penetrate Russian minefields.

The front line remains stable following these engagements, with no signs of an imminent large-scale Russian push. Instead, attrition tactics are likely to persist until Ukrainian resources are depleted or a retreat is ordered.

Toretsk and Chasov Yar: First steps toward Konstantinovka

Months of intense fighting for Toretsk and Chasov Yar in Donetsk have started to yield results. By mid-January, Russian forces had captured a fire-retardant factory in Chasov Yar, followed by the city center, including the city council building, by January 20. The western part of the city remains under Ukrainian control, but these gains position Russian forces closer to Konstantinovka, a major target with a pre-war population of 75,000. But in order to advance in this direction, the Russian army needs to expand the area of control along the Seversky Donets-Donbass canal.

In Toretsk, Russian forces captured the Tsentralnaya mine, the city center, and multiple residential areas. The AFU retains control over the Toretskaya mine and parts of Krymskoye in the northeast. Securing Toretsk allows Russian troops to move towards Konstantinovka, which is 10–11 km further along the railway line.

However, operations in these areas face challenges. In Chasov Yar, supply routes via the Seversky Donets-Donbass canal are problematic due to the canal’s depth, which reaches up to ten meters in places. Meanwhile, Toretsk’s dense urban development and challenging terrain complicate Russian advances. Despite these hurdles, progress in these sectors marks steady, albeit incremental, gains.

Pokrovsk-Mirnograd: Encirclement in Progress

Pokrovsk is emerging as a focal point for Russia’s next major offensive following the Kurakhovo operation. The strategy appears to follow a familiar pattern: encircling the city, establishing fire control over supply routes, and depleting the Ukrainian garrison’s resources.

The southern flank of Pokrovsk was formed after the capture of Selidovo in late October 2024. This area also serves as the northern flank of Kurakhovo. Indicators suggest that Pokrovsk and Mirnograd — together forming an urban area of over 100,000 people — will be targeted as a single entity.

In January, Russian units advanced toward the Pokrovsk–Mezhevaya highway in the south and the village of Vozdvizhenka in the north, cutting off the Pokrovsk–Konstantinovka highway. These maneuvers are initial steps toward encircling Pokrovsk and Mirnograd while demonstrating the potential for a broader offensive that could extend into the Dnepropetrovsk region for the first time since 2022.

Kurakhovo: The final phase of the operation

The Kurakhovo operation began on October 1, 2024, with the capture of Ugledar. On January 6, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced the liberation of Kurakhovo and its extensive industrial zone. Russian troops entered the western part of the industrial zone around New Year’s Eve, facing minimal resistance as the weakened Ukrainian garrison abandoned its positions.

Over the course of three months, Russian forces systematically surrounded the city from three sides, establishing fire control over supply lines and forcing the AFU into retreat. The flanks extended 10–15 km west, encircling Ukrainian forces outside fortified urban and industrial zones.

The operation is not yet complete, however. The capture of Andreevka and Konstantinovka is essential to stabilize the front line and fully secure this strategic area.

Broader Strategic Observations

Russian advances over the past month highlight a methodical approach characterized by encirclement, resource depletion, and steady territorial gains. While operations in Toretsk and Chasov Yar underscore the challenges of urban combat and logistical constraints, progress in Pokrovsk and Kurakhovo demonstrates the effectiveness of Russia’s offensive strategies.

The capture of Kurakhovo and advances toward Pokrovsk and Mirnograd could pave the way for operations extending into Dnepropetrovsk for the first time since 2022, potentially altering the strategic landscape.

As the conflict continues, the effectiveness of Russia’s strategy — coupled with its ability to manage logistical and operational challenges — will play a decisive role. For now, the focus remains on consolidating gains, securing supply lines, and preparing for the next phase of operations.

By Leonid Ragozin, Al Jazeera, 1/18/25

President Joe Biden is about to wrap up what many perceive as a disastrous presidency. His departure from the White House could potentially mark a turning point in both the Russia-Ukraine conflict and in the three decades of poorly thought-out Western policies which resulted in the alienation of Russia and the collapse of its democratic project. But that hinges on the incoming President Donald Trump’s ability not to repeat the mistakes of his predecessors.

It is Russian President Vladimir Putin who decided to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but the ground for this conflict was prepared by US securocrats in the 1990s. Back then, Russia had just emerged from the dissolution of the USSR much weaker and disoriented, while the Russian leadership, idealistic and inept as it was at the time, worked on the assumption that full-blown integration with the West was inevitable.

Decisions made at that time triggered confrontation between Russia and the West which arrived at its logical climax during Biden’s presidency.

The problem was never the eastward expansion of NATO – a security pact created to confront the Soviet Union – and the European Union per se, but Russia’s exclusion from this process.

Crucially, this approach set Ukraine on the course of Euro-Atlantic integration while Russia was kept out of it – creating a rift between two nations closely linked to each other by history, economic and interpersonal relations. It also precipitated Russia’s securitisation and backsliding on democracy under Putin.

This outcome was never pre-destined and it took relentless efforts by American securocrats to bring it about.

One of the lost chances for a different path was the Partnership for Peace programme, officially launched by the Clinton administration in 1994. It was designed to balance the desire of former Warsaw Pact countries to join NATO and the crucial goal of keeping Russia on board – as a major nuclear power and a new democracy with a clearly pro-Western government.

Russia joined it but, as the American historian Mary Sarotte writes in her book Not One Inch, this useful framework was derailed at its inception by a small number of securocrats in Washington.

She specifically talks about “the pro-expansion troika”, consisting of Daniel Fried, Alexander Vershbow, and Richard Holbrooke, who pushed for an aggressive expansion of NATO, disregarding protests from Moscow.

Sarotte also mentions John Herbst as the author of a later report on unofficial promises of NATO’s non-expansion made to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev which, as she suggests, shaped the US policy of ignoring Russia’s complaints about NATO expanding all the way to its borders for decades to come.

The unreflective arrogance and triumphalism that these securocrats embody can also be seen in Biden himself who back then was a prominent member of Congress. In a 1997 video, he mocked Moscow’s protests against NATO expansion by saying that Russia would have to embrace China and Iran if it kept being intransigent. He clearly assumed it to be an absurd and unrealistic scenario back then – believing, perhaps, that Russia had no choice but to stay in the Western orbit. But it turned out exactly along the lines of what he thought was a smart joke.

In his hawkish politics on Russia, Biden found a willing partner in the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. It is hardly a coincidence that Zelenskyy’s massive U-turn on relations with Russia started as Biden took office.

The Ukrainian president had been elected on the promise that he would end the simmering conflict that began with the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014. He met with Putin in Paris in December 2019 and the two agreed to a ceasefire in the Donbas region, which both sides had largely respected, reducing the number of deaths to near zero.

But once Biden set foot in the White House, Zelenskyy ordered a clampdown on Putin’s Ukrainian ally Viktor Medvedchuk, while simultaneously launching loud campaigns for Ukraine’s NATO membership, the return of Crimea, as well as for the derailing of the Russo-German Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project.

Two factors may have played into Zelenskyy’s decisions. Azerbaijan’s victory over Russian-backed Armenian forces in the fall of 2020, achieved largely thanks to Turkish Bayraktar drones, gave hopes that high-tech warfare against Russia could be successful. The other factor was that in December 2020, polls showed Medvedchuk’s party ahead of Zelenskyy’s.

Just a few days after Biden’s inauguration, Zelenskyy gave an interview to American outlet Axios in which he famously asked his US counterpart: “Why Ukraine is still not in NATO?” This was followed by an op-ed with the same question in the title by Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, published by Atlantic Council – a think tank that gets much of its funding from the US government and Pentagon contractors.

Unsurprisingly, some of the same personalities that shaped US policies towards Russia in the 1990s also egged on the Biden administration to adopt aggressive policies that contributed to making the invasion happen.

On March 5, Fried, Vershbow and Herbst, along with three others, published a report in the Atlantic Council with a list of recommendations for the Biden administration with regard to Ukraine and Russia. These boiled down to pressuring Putin by escalating on every front – from offering NATO membership plan to Ukraine to derailing Nord Stream 2 and “enhancing security” in the Black Sea.

Three weeks after that publication, Putin began deploying troops on the Ukrainian border, embarking on 11 months of hair-raising brinkmanship. This period saw the British warship HMS Defender entering what Russia had declared its territorial waters off the coast of occupied Crimea in June, the US starting secret supplies of weapons to Ukraine in September and finally the US and Ukraine announcing a strategic partnership in November – a move that amounted to casus belli in the eyes of Kremlin hawks.

It was around that time that Putin began preparing for the invasion in earnest before eventually triggering it in February 2022. The resulting war is now approaching its third anniversary.

Despite massive Western backing, Ukraine suffered terrible losses and gained nothing from challenging Putin to a fight. The war has brought Ukraine to the brink, causing a massive refugee crisis, economic collapse, social disintegration and ever-growing death toll.

If peace in Ukraine is achieved this year, it will likely be along the lines of the failed Istanbul agreements of 2022, which envisioned an Austria-styled neutral Ukraine with limits on the size of its army. Russia will likely insist on keeping much of the territory that it gained as punishment for Ukrainian intransigence. This will technically constitute a defeat for Ukraine, but it will be a clear win for the Ukrainian people, who have borne the brunt of this war, as well as for the rest of the world.

It will also be a major defeat for the securocratic class which has been pushing for a new standoff with Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The aggressive pursuit of expansion at the expense of Russia has clearly failed as a strategy. It is time for Western policymakers to do some soul-searching on how to reverse the situation and start a slow drift back towards rapprochement with Moscow.

This is not about absolving Putin’s government from accountability for the crime of aggression as well as war crimes committed by Russian troops. It is about removing conditions which caused Russia’s transformation into a militarised dictatorship and ending a conflict which will keep propping up Putin’s regime for as long as it lasts.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

By Laura Gozzi, BBC, 1/21/25

Ukraine has detained its army’s chief psychiatrist for alleged “illegal enrichment” charges related to earnings of more than $1m (£813,000) accrued since the start of Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

In a statement, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said the man sat on a commission deciding whether individuals were fit for military service.

The SBU statement did not name him – however, a man called Oleh Druz was previously identified as the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ chief psychiatrist.

The SBU said he owned three apartments in or near Kyiv, one in Odesa, two plots of land and several BMW luxury cars, and investigators searching his home also found $152,000 (£124,000) and €34,000 in cash.

The statement said the man did not declare the property, which was registered in the name of his wife, daughter, sons, and other third parties.

He now faces ten years in jail for the alleged charges of illegal enrichment and making a false declaration.

Druz was implicated in a similar case in 2017 which saw him fail to declare two SUVs and several properties, leading him to be suspended.

Ukraine has long battled endemic corruption.

In May, a Ukrainian MP was charged with embezzling £220,000, while in 2023 more than 30 conscription officials accused of taking bribes and smuggling people out of the country were sacked in an anti-corruption purge.

Last year, the Ukrainian parliament voted to abolish military medical commissions after several officials were accused of accepting bribes in exchange for issuing exemptions from military service.

The Bell, 1/28/25

Putin-Trump talks: What to expect

Following Donald Trump’s inauguration as U.S. President, the prospect of Washington brokering a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine has shot up the global agenda. A source with contacts inside the Kremlin told The Bell that a deal is possible — but with many caveats.

Trump’s signals

In his election campaign, Trump promised to stop the war in 24 hours. He missed that deadline, but has made public overtures to Vladimir Putin in which he urged a quick resolution to the conflict, while threatening sanctions if Moscow does not comply. Trump has also been keen to talk up his good relationship with Putin and repeatedly said that he wants to meet as soon as possible.

The new US president has so far issued two key statements. First, Trump called on Putin to end his war in Ukraine, threatening to impose harsh “taxes, duties and sanctions” on everything that Russia sells to the US and “other countries involved.” This threat is hard to take seriously — tariffs on imported goods would not impact Russia in any way due to the microscopic size of its sales to the United States ($2.9 billion in the first 11 months of 2024), while sanctions against third countries were mentioned too briefly to constitute a meaningful warning to China or India to stop buying Russian oil.

Second, following a phone call with Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, Trump said that he would ask Saudi Arabia and OPEC to reduce oil prices. In Trump’s mind, that should stop the war by “cutting off” Russia’s vital export revenues. However, it is likely Trump has different motives. He would probably be demanding lower oil prices regardless of the war, just as he did in his first term. The Saudis are already planning to boost supplies to the global market, which would push down prices, but have yet to follow through.

The Kremlin reaction

Putin has twice responded publicly to Trump’s signals and his call to stop the war. First, the Russian president deliberately postponed a Security Council meeting to coincide with the inauguration in Washington when the president used the occasion to formally congratulate Trump on taking office (we discussed it here). Then, late last week, in a more substantial intervention, the Russian president told a state TV reporter that he was ready to meet his American counterpart, whom he called “pragmatic”, to “talk calmly.”

Once a meeting gets arranged, the question is what position the Kremlin will adopt — both in Putin’s first meeting with Trump and in any further wider talks on a ceasefire. Putin stated his current official position in June 2024, which has been dismissed by Volodymyr Zelensky as an ultimatum. Putin demanded the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from four regions that Russia has claimed to have annexed, despite holding only partial control of them (and, in the cases of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, without having seized the regional capitals). He also insisted that Ukraine renounce its desire to join NATO (enshrined in Kyiv’s constitution since 2019), demanded recognition that Crimea and the territories occupied since 2022 are Russian, and called for the lifting of Western sanctions.

These demands are clearly unfeasible and cannot be accepted by any Ukrainian government. The Kremlin’s real negotiating position will likely be more modest, albeit still unacceptable to Ukraine. A source close to the Kremlin told The Bell which issues are most crucial to Putin, and how an acceptable solution could be found:

• A ceasefire could be established along the current front line. As for the territories that Russia has annexed but does not control, neither side would recognize an official border, but they could agree to resolve this through diplomatic means. Putin may not be against exchanging small areas occupied by Russian troops, such as in the Kharkiv region, in return for something else.
• Ukraine will be expected to announce a status of permanent neutrality (as  proposed in the failed Istanbul peace talks in 2022). Putin is absolutely opposed to Ukraine joining NATO and any deployment of a NATO military base there would also be a red line, the source told The Bell. In mid-January a source told Bloomberg that Russia would insist on a sharp reduction in Ukraine’s ties with NATO. At the same time, NATO countries can continue to supply Ukraine with weapons, but these must not be used against Russia or in any attempt to regain control over the “disputed territories.”
• Security guarantees for Ukraine, which should form part of any deal, remain a  difficult area. The Bell’s source does not believe the strong peacekeeping force described by Trump and Zelensky will come about: no country is willing to face down a nuclear power over the fate of Ukraine, they said. “This means that Ukraine will have to accept there can be no meaningful guarantees. The negotiations would have to come up with some kind of formula that at least resembles a guarantee.”
• Russia may also pursue some of the demands from its full “wish list”, particularly in respect of limiting the size of Ukraine’s army, lifting some sanctions and restoring the Central Bank’s frozen assets in the west.

In general, according to The Bell’s source, Putin is prepared for any eventuality. If he needs to fight another year, or five, he is ready. If he sees a chance to reach a favorable settlement, he will take it. In this sense, the success of any negotiations will depend on the Americans, and how far they will push Ukraine to agree to terms acceptable to Putin, The Bell’s source summarized.

Why the world should care:

Trump’s inauguration has brought a radical turn in Washington’s attitude to the war. The United States is now seeking a swift resolution, and endless prolongation via ongoing military aid to Kyiv is off the agenda. There is a good chance that Russia will be able to keep, de facto if not de jure, a large part of occupied Ukrainian territory, if not all of what it has seized. If that is the general shape of the deal, then Putin and Russia’s propaganda machine will be able to hail a glorious victory not just over Ukraine, but over the “collective west.”

Bloomberg News, 1/21/25

Russia’s budget revenue rose to a record high last month even after the US targeted the banking sector with a new round of sanctions aimed at disrupting foreign trade payments and curbing proceeds from exports.

Total revenue in December reached more than 4 trillion rubles ($40 billion), up by 28% compared with the same month of the previous year, according to Bloomberg calculations based on Finance Ministry data published late Monday. That’s the highest level recorded in ministry data that starts from January 2011.

The US and its allies have been seeking to stop the Kremlin’s war machine by limiting export revenues and imposed more sanctions on Russia’s energy industry and banks that service it late last year. That triggered a collapse in the ruble and depressed Russia’s foreign trade in December. Exports dropped by 19% last month compared to the previous year, and imports shrank by about 8%, according to central bank data published on Tuesday.

Still, oil and gas income spiked by a third in December from the previous year and increased by 26% for 2024, according to the Finance Ministry, while other sources of revenue posted a similar advance for the full year due to taxes and dividends amid robust economic growth.

“The volume of non-oil and gas revenues in 2024 significantly exceeded estimates in the 2025-2027 budget law, including from the largest tax sources,” the Finance Ministry said in a statement….

Read full article here (behind paywall).