As I was saying, "While Putin is testing what he genuinely believes is the hegemonic will of the West, within days his own will shall be tested — his willingness, that is, to deploy nuclear weapons in the Donetsk province. Ukraine, undeterred by the dictator's threats, is gearing up for a fresh offensive on the Russian-held city of Lyman, an important logistics center whose Ukrainian capture would open a path to retaking large parts of the neighboring province of Luhansk."
I mistyped. The second sentence should have read: Ukraine is gearing up for an offensive in the Russian-held city of Lyman. (Map provided by the Institute for the Study of War. If you can't make it out, Lyman is situated in the top circle.)
Denis Pushilin, leader of the Kremlin's illegal "Donetsk People’s Republic," wrote on Telegram that Ukrainian forces have encircled the critical logistics city of Lyman, a situation he described as "disturbing." He added, "Our guys are fighting, we are pulling up reserves, we must hold out, but the enemy has also thrown serious forces."
The fall of Lyman could come as soon as today [this post, as you might have noticed, is a repost from 30 September], just as Vladimir Putin is heroically declaring the Donetsk province, along with the province of Luhansk, also in the east, and the provinces of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson in the south, is now a part of the Russian Federation.
The Daily Beast reports that "Ukrainian sources claimed that the strategic city of Lyman ... has been encircled and supply lines cut. 'The operation [named 'Lyman!'] to encircle the Russian group is at the stage of completion,'" said a Ukrainian lawmaker today. "It would be one of the most serious Russian military losses of the war so far," observes the Beast. "Pro-Kremlin forces have conceded that the Ukrainians have made major gains in the region and are close to cutting off the Russian staging post in northern Donetsk."
Another map, also from the ISW and published by The Washington Post. It is self-explanatory.
What scattered protests there were in Russia after its invasion of Ukraine dissipated shortly after Putin's repressions. But with his 21 September order of a 300,000-man mobilization, protests and assaults on recruitment centers have swelled to uncontrollable breadths. At home, Putin is in real trouble.
In the south of Ukraine, in today's annexed province of Zaporizhzhia, those at this center for the displaced remain ... displaced. Even the attending dog had had enough. Many Ukrainians told the Post that they see "Putin’s gambit as somewhere between surreal and absurd." Said one woman who escaped a Russian-controlled area, "It’s serious, but how can you take it seriously. They’re just making up lines on a map."
Neither does the West seem to be taking Putin's land grabs very seriously. Today the U.S. imposed — you guessed it — more sanctions on Russia, reports Reuters. The U.S. also re-"condemned" its slaughter of tens of thousands of Ukrainians and pledged to "rally the international community" to "denounce" the bloodiest, most aggressive war in Europe since 1939.
We can, for the moment, simply ignore the West and its unfounded fears of the weakest but most desperate bully on earth. To watch for instead are any reports of Vladimir Putin's movements of tactical nuclear weapons closer to the Ukrainian border.