A lieutenant general in Russia’s military was killed in a strike near the city of Kherson on Friday, the highest-ranked officer to be killed in the war so far.
Lt. Gen. Yakov Rezantsev is reportedly the seventh Russian general to die amid the country's invasion of Ukraine and the second of his rank to be killed. Morale is believed to be low among Russian soldiers, with some troops fatally turning on their own commanders in recent days.
“Yakov Rezantsev is the second Russian lieutenant general to die in the war against Ukraine,” Ukraine’s defense ministry said Friday. “Torn apart Georgian Abkhazia, bombed-out Syria and finally inglorious elimination in Ukraine. This is becoming a typical track-record of Russian generals.”
At the outset of the war, Rezantsev told his soldiers the invasion would be over within hours, prompting unrest among his subordinates as the war dragged on for weeks, according to a conversation intercepted by the Ukrainian army. This led to increasingly low morale among troops, supposedly forcing senior officers to the front lines, according to the BBC. --->READ MORE HERE
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| Photo: Maximilian Clarke/Zuma Press |
Is the Ukraine crisis stabilizing?
With the proviso that an accident, another giant Putin miscalculation or a catastrophic success by Ukrainian forces on the battlefield might always upset the dynamic, the answer seems to be yes. Sadly, the situation also appears to be stabilizing in ways more tolerable to Ukraine’s Western allies than to Ukraine itself.
Militarily, the battle lines have become static in the last two weeks. On key fronts, the Russians adopted an apparent aim of avoiding contact with the Ukrainian army while shelling cities from afar. At home, Kremlin propaganda began hinting that the goal all along had been to “liberate” those parts of Ukraine Russia had already occupied since 2014, with the new line becoming official at a Friday briefing. Ironically, the biggest risk of destabilizing a stabilizing situation now may come from the Ukrainian military itself going on the offensive and a sizable Russian force disintegrating and fleeing the battlefield, with unpredictable consequences.
Economically, where the long-term damage is being done to Vladimir Putin’s regime and likely won’t be reversed in a decade or more, the initiative belongs to the allies. Consider Mr. Putin’s feeble attempt this week to leverage Germany’s and Europe’s fear over their natural-gas supplies without actually threatening their gas supplies, demanding they start paying their bills in rubles rather than euros or U.S. dollars.
This was an obvious ploy to get the Europeans to use the $700 million a day they spend on gas to increase demand for the ruble, thereby eroding sanctions and making it easier for Russia to buy needed imports. Yet Mr. Putin was quick to insist he wouldn’t shut off the gas. If he believed escalation in the energy war could get him out of his mess, he would shut it off now or at least issue an ultimatum demanding that the Europeans stop arming Ukraine. He hasn’t. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to +++++relevant+++++ and related stories:
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