Zelensky and Pentagon hit “pause” button on counter-offensive

[laferia52]

Your statement is referring to the Ukrainians tactics…they were charging into minefields and fire. They finally figured out that is bad.

they are trying the tactic of sending small groups of infantry to attack the russian positions, squads or platoons. but what can groups of 10 or 30 infantry soldiers do against the russian lines.

 

[theHawk]

A reminder that 19 years ago yesterday, Russia, using missiles they had moved to Donbas, shot down civilian airliner MH17, killing all on board.

At first Russia bragged about shooting down a Ukrainian aircraft. Then, after they learned it was civilian, they denied having anything to do with it.

That's the kind of truthiness you get from Russia.

I never understood why civilian airliners were flying over a war zone. There was a civil war going on. It was either shot down by Ukraine separatists or the Kiev government. No one really knows.

 

[mamooth]

It was either shot down by Ukraine separatists

With a Russian "buk" missile system, manned by Russian soldiers.

That is, Russia did it.

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

I never understood why civilian airliners were flying over a war zone. There was a civil war going on. It was either shot down by Ukraine separatists or the Kiev government. No one really knows.

By now I think it is pretty damn clear that it was indeed a Russian team working for or with the Donbas separatists that shot the Malaysian airliner down. Though the shoot down of the civilian airliner was unintentional, the Russians had apparently just sent in the Sam-11 missiles and launcher, and no other ground missiles had the ability, or ever fired at a plane as high as the 35,000 foot flight pattern of civilian airliners before in the area. The Russian or Russian-Ukrainian team were obviously much too trigger happy.

Wikipedia reports: “In addition to the technical investigation, the selection of the flight route was also investigated by the DSB [Dutch Avistion Safety Board]. Some airlines had avoided eastern Ukrainian airspace prior to the MH17 shootdown, while many others, including 62 operators from 32 countries, had continued to fly routes over the region.” Of course all such flights were subsequently canceled.

The commander of the seceding Donetsk rebel military at the time was a hardline Russian ex-FSB officer who fought in Chechnya, Bosnia, and had subsequently co-ordinated and led much of the rapid, successful, (mostly non-violent) secession of Crimea from Ukraine. He is still an influential military blogger and Russian nationalist who was at least at one time a close sympathizer of the “EurAsian” Russian fascist theoretician Aleksandr Dugin, who’s daughter was killed in an apparent Ukrainian-engineered assassination attempt on him inside Russia. He still evidently has the support of “patriotic” military veterans who want a strong state and harder line against Ukraine. At the same time he was and is very critical of Prigozhin. I’m talking about Igor Girkin, aka “Strelkov”: Igor Girkin - Wikipedia

Girkin is one of four individuals wanted for extradition as a war criminal for the shoot-down, named in a formal Dutch investigation. There is much to indicate he at least knows who is responsable. For example he reportedly published a message boasting that his men shot down a Ukrainian airplane just after the airliner was hit, and then erased the message. Even the cautious dissident “Moscow Times” (no longer published in Russia) has raised his name repeatedly in this respect:

MH17 Suspect Admits ‘Moral Responsibility’ for Downing Jet - The Moscow Times