While there are not official confirmations (that I know of) from the Russian military, it appears that Lavrov is the first, and so far only, Russian official who declared that the 2nd phase of the operation has begun. Truth be told, pretty much everybody else thinks likewise. Considering the intensity of Russian bombings and artillery strikes overnight, which were reported by numerous sources, it certainly appears reasonable to me to conclude that this 2nd phase has indeeed begun.
For example, the Russian defense ministry reported on Tuesday morning that its troops had delivered artillery strikes at 1,260 Ukrainian military targets overnight, including 1,214 locations where Ukrainian troops amassed their forces.
How long this phase of the war will last is anybody’s guess. Optimists think a week, pessimists a month, but in reality nobody really knows because the outcome will be determined not by maneuver like during the first phase, but by logistics, specifically fuel and ammunition, in other words by mobility and firepower.
I remind you that the Ukronazi forces in the eastern Ukraine have been in a de facto “cauldron” (as I explained, you can be physically surrounded or you can be “blocked by fire”) since over one month, and that the Ukrainians were not able to meaningfully resupply them while the Russian side has quasi limitless fuel and ammo (in spite of the Pentagon’s hallucinations). Russia also has air supremacy and very heavy weapons, neither of which the Ukrainians have.
In other words, while the Nazi forces in the eastern Ukraine get slaughtered, the US administration in Kiev will have to change the narrative about “the glorious Ukrainian military is winning” to “Russians are killing babies” (without ever wondering WHY and HOW civilians and even kids ended up inside the Avtostal complex, assuming the recent photos of kids hiding there are real and not made in Kiev).
Nobody really knows how many Ukrainians are still in the Donbass cauldron, and neither do we know how their morale and determination to stand and fight to the end is. For all these reasons giving even an approximate timeframe for this battle is impossible, at least for me.
In conclusion, I just want to end with a reminder. This is not a war between Russia and the Ukraine. This is a war between Russia and the united West, the latest one is a series going back at least a thousand years. Russia has been singled out for “cancellation” and we don’t want to be canceled.
While for eight years Russia did all she could NOT to get involved, the Empire of Hate and Lies did successfully force her into an open military intervention in the Ukraine, and now that Empire will do all it can to prolong that war and have it result in the maximal loss of human life and the total destruction of the Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, exactly the OPPOSITE of what the Kremlin wants: to disarm and denazify the Ukraine with the minimum of human loss of life and with as much of the civilian infrastructure preserved as possible. These goals are as asymmetrical as can be, and it is much MUCH easier to destroy than to preserve. Please keep that in mind when the next propaganda Tsunami hits.
(This is an abridged piece of what originally appeared in TheSaker).
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