re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

I forgot to post yesterday

ISW Update April 23 2025

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Key Takeaways:

The United States reportedly recently presented Ukraine with a seven-point proposal to end the war in Ukraine in which the United States would recognize Crimea as part of Russia and allow Russian forces to continue to occupy significant parts of southern and eastern Ukraine. Available reporting about the contents of the US proposal suggests that it marks a sudden and substantial change in the Trump administration's strategy for ending the war in Ukraine.

Ukrainian officials reiterated Ukraine's continued commitment to the United States' March 2025 proposal for a full ceasefire as part of efforts to achieve a lasting peace.

Russian officials rejected aspects of Trump's reported peace plan.

Senior US, Ukrainian, and European officials held bilateral and multilateral talks about support for Ukraine and ending the war in London on April 23, but officials cancelled the scheduled multilateral talks at the foreign minister level.

The US and Ukraine continue to take steps toward signing a joint mineral deal.

Ukrainian forces likely conducted a drone strike against the Alabuga Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in the Republic of Tatarstan, where Russia assembles Iranian-provided Shahed drones.

Russia continues to use chemical weapons against Ukrainian forces and civilians in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), of which Russia is a signatory.

Ukrainian forces recently advanced near Borova and Toretsk. Russian forces recently advanced in Kursk Oblast and near Toretsk, Pokrovsk, and Kurakhove.

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Literally the song which the Russian propagandists live by
Edna

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Speaking of people who should keep their small muzzle shut....

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wtf is a “small muzzle”?

Do English better.

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wtf is a “small muzzle”

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My English is fine. I used the term "small muzzle" instead of "small mouth" because a "muzzle" is a term you use for an animal. If you were smart... you would of figured out I was calling him an animal Have you never heard of the late, great Hannibal Lecter? He’s a wonderful man. He oftentimes would have a friend for dinner.

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Fact, Russia is trying to talk their way to victory. To date their military has completely failed.

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I see many in this thread have allowed their emotions override their logic to the point they’ve divorced themselves from reality.

Disclaimer: What I’m about to say comes from a purely neutral observation of the war and is based on my own military experience and decades of study of military history. I have no emotional connection to either Ukraine or Russia

Russia does not have to “talk” their way to victory. All they have to do is continue to steadily attrit the Ukrainian Army. This war is very much like WWI in that it’s basically a stalemate. The lines have moved hardly at all in almost two years. During that time, both sides are losing men at a rather steady rate, approximately 5,000 per week becoming casualties, usually with Russia taking the brunt of the losses. Despite this, Ukraine is still at a huge disadvantage when it comes to casualties because Russia is far better equipped to sustain losses at this rate than Ukraine. Just as the Allies in WWI beat Germany by attritting the Imperial German Army to the point it could no longer hold a sustained front and it collapsed in the fall of 1918, so too are the Russians doing the same to Ukraine.

The end of this war is a simple mathematical equation. No amount of money or military aid from the West will change the fact Ukraine is approaching the bottom of the barrel from a manpower standpoint. They’ve already exhausted military aged recruits over the age of 25…

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Similar scenes now play out frequently in Ukraine, where the depleted and exhausted army is increasingly made up of older men. As the country approaches three years of full-scale war with Russia, and waits uneasily for the arrival of Donald Trump in the White House, an acute personnel shortage at the front presents a dilemma.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has resisted public calls from the Biden administration to lower the age at which men can be mobilised from 25, where it currently stands, to 18, citing the sensitivities of sending younger men to fight in a society that already faces a demographic crisis. But with Russia continuing to find fresh recruits for its grinding advances, the army is struggling to find enough people to fill the gaps at the front.

A series of interviews with Ukrainian officers, who spoke anonymously, given the sensitivity of the issue, paint a worrying picture for Ukraine’s war effort.

“The people we get now are not like the people who were there in the beginning of the war,” said one soldier currently serving in Ukraine’s 114th territorial defence brigade, who has been stationed in various hotspots over the past two years. “Recently, we received 90 people, but only 24 of them were ready to move to the positions. The rest were old, sick or alcoholics. A month ago, they were walking around Kyiv or Dnipro and now they are in a trench and can barely hold a weapon. Poorly trained, and poorly equipped,” he said.

Two sources in air defence units told the Guardian the deficit at the front has become so acute that the general staff has ordered already-depleted air defence units to free up more men to send to the front as infantry.

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Guardian.com

That last paragraph reminds me of how in the final months of WWII the Wehrmacht pressed Luftwaffe flak crews into kampfgruppen as infantry in a desperate attempt to stave off defeat. The last gasp of a dying army.

The point of all this is, the biggest problem Ukraine faces can’t be fixed by any amount of aid from the west. They need warm bodies, specifically warm bodies trained in infantry warfare. Drones can be a useful battlefield tool, artillery is vital, Tanks and aircraft are as well. But only boots on the ground can hold ground, much less take it. And the truth of the matter is Ukraine running out of not only boots, but men to wear them. And the longer the fighting continues , the closer Ukraine comes to where they reach their November 1918 moment.

Down vote it all you want, it won’t change the fact I’m right.

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I do not disagree with your basic premise. Ukraine will eventually run out of manpower before Russia does. That is a certainty.

The question is how long will that take. It had already lasted over three years.

Now answer this. If Russia and Ukraine go the distance, what has Russia gained? Are they safer? Do they gain an enormous opportunity to plunder? Or do they inherit a country that is rubble and that gated them?

Russia has had enough. They are ready to deal. The cost of victory is way more than the net overall “profit”.

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Russia will need to get conscripts from Moscow and St. Petersburg and what shape will its economy be in with making next to zero net gain from sales of oil, and same for natural gas to China. What else is Russia's economy based on? Does anyone buy Russian made goods except what is shown to be less than as advertised arms which it is presently maybe capable of providing.

Wars are won and lost on economies as much as military ability. The USA out produced everyone in WWII by a wide margin. Russia's T34 really wasn't so much superior, it overwhelmed German armor in numbers by a wide margin plus they received thousands of Sherman tanks and of course logistics with US made trucks.

High-ranking Russian general killed in car bombing near Moscow

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Lieutenant General Yaroslav Moskalik, deputy head of the Main Operations Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, was killed in the explosion of a Volkswagen Golf, Russia’s Investigative Committee said in a statement.

The blast was caused by an improvised explosive device packed with shrapnel, it added. The Investigative Committee said it has opened a criminal probe into the case. It added that an investigative team, including forensic experts and law enforcement officers, had begun examining the scene in Balashikha, which lies less than 20 miles east of Moscow.

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A Volkswagon Golf...? Yaroslv, ya gotta stay out of those neighborhoods...

As long as we're here, let's take a stroll down memory lane with the Big Hits of 2024. Always a popular choice -

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While Ukraine has not been officially linked to the recent car bombing, Kyiv has previously targeted Russian officials who play a key role in Russia's full-scale invasion.

Igor Kirillov, the head of the Russian Armed Forces' radiation, chemical, and biological defense troops, was killed in an explosion at a residence in Moscow in December 2024, a source in the Security Service of Ukraine told the Kyiv Independent.

Mikhail Shatsky, a Russian expert involved in modernizing missiles launched against Ukraine, was shot dead near Moscow on Dec. 12, a Defense Forces source told the Kyiv Independent.

Aleksey Kolomeitsev, a Russian colonel who trained specialists in the use of attack drones, was killed in the city of Kolomna in Moscow Oblast, Ukraine's military intelligence (HUR) reported on Sept. 28.

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Video.

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High-ranking Russian general killed in car bombing near Moscow

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