The Russian military is deploying air defence to the Kharkiv region.

ZRPK complexes "Pantsir-S1" and S-300 were filmed at Izyum.
Translated from @RVvoenkor and @anna_news

Another one from Rybar:
A special post for those who do not understand what is happening in the Nikolaev-Krivoy Rog direction.

Since the beginning of the offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Kherson, irretrievable losses have amounted to over four thousand people.

Again.

At Sukhoi Stavka, on the outskirts of Vysokopole, near Posad-Pokrovsky, there are the bodies of at least four thousand Ukrainian citizens.

Especially for the citizens of Ukraine: you can not believe us and listen to official information from the military registration and enlistment offices and the command of the brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Maybe they will make an exception for you and tell the truth. Although hardly.

Location unknown, but posted by Ukrainian channels that say this is a Russian attack on their positions.

TG channels repost this video from Kyiv. Column of ambulances.

"Now we got a call from fellow fighters located in Kupyansk and reported the good news that Ukrainian military are suffering absolute losses (according to them, more than a thousand two hundredths). Our aviation, artillery are working, the enemy cannot do anything and he is losing his previously acquired advantage everywhere."
@mediasalt

Translated from https://t.me/pridnestrovec/26353

Balakleya - Kupyansk: the advance of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is stopped

After the retaliatory actions of the RF Armed Forces, the settlements of Sinikha, Senkovo, Vorontsovka, Fedorovka, Lesnaya Stenka were cleared of Ukrainian forces and are moving further to the western outskirts.

Russian aviation and artillery are actively working in the areas of concentration of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, even late at night. The enemy suffers heavy losses. Particularly large damage - in the area between Shevchenkov and Pervomaisky, where the Armed Forces of Ukraine are squeezed by dense fire. Over 60% of the personnel lost the 22nd battalion of the territorial defence of the Kharkov region and its "mother" unit - the 92nd separate mechanized brigade.

Ukrainian soldiers write that the aircraft of the Armed Forces of Ukraine did not appear, and the offensive now looks like a trap planned by the RF Armed Forces.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine did not completely take control of Balakleya either. We managed to occupy only the centre of the city, where the footage with Ukrainian flags was filmed. There are conflicting reports that, after the transfer of reserves from the outskirts, the Ukrainian army is being actively squeezed out by PMCs.

The 56th brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine bears serious losses. Ukrainian sources write that the artillery and aviation of the RF Armed Forces are “burning out” the offensive formations of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and near Kupyansk, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are attacking a full-fledged army corps.

An attempt by the Armed Forces of Ukraine to exit from the south side near Izyum through Dolgenkoe also failed, the 127th separate brigade of the Kharkov Territorial Defence Forces, which was thrown into battle without cover, suffers heavy losses.

Six months into the conflict, what exactly does Russia hope to achieve in Ukraine?
Putin’s latest comments reveal that Moscow’s thinking has shifted and compromise is no longer on the agenda
Dmitry Trenin is a Research Professor at the Higher School of Economics and a Lead Research Fellow at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations. He is also a member of the Russian International Affairs Council.

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin referred to Ukraine as an “anti-Russian enclave” which has to be removed. He also said that the Russian soldiers taking part in the military operation there were fighting for their “own country.” These statements carry important implications.

Over the last six-plus months, the mantra of the Russian officialdom has been that all aims of the offensive will be reached. On purpose, however, the specific objectives, such as how far Moscow’s forces plan move into Ukraine, have never been spelled out. This cannot but raise speculation about what the Kremlin is actually hoping to achieve.

The only person who can authoritatively answer that question, however, is the president, and second-guessing him makes no sense. Yet, two things cannot escape close attention. One is the radicalization of Moscow’s position on Ukraine as a result of both Western policies and Kiev’s actions; two is the widening gap between the minimum result of the military campaign that Russia can be satisfied with, and the maximum amount of what the US and its allies can accept.

For about six years after the second Minsk Agreement was signed in 2015, the Kremlin tried hard to get that accord implemented. It would have ensured the autonomous status of Donbass within Ukraine and given the region influence on national politics and policies, including in the issue of the country’s geopolitical and geo-economic orientation. From the very start, however, Kiev was unwilling to cooperate on the deal’s implementation, seeing it as a win for Moscow. Washington, in pursuit of a policy to contain Russia, encouraged such an obstructionist stance, while Berlin and Paris, formally the guarantors of the agreement (alongside Russia), had no leverage in Kiev and ended up embracing the Ukrainian position.

Vladimir Zelensky’s election to Ukraine’s presidency in 2019 initially appeared to be an opening for peace, and President Putin made a serious effort to get the Minsk agreement off the ground. Kiev, however, soon backtracked and took an even more hardline position than before. Nevertheless, until mid-2021 the Kremlin continued to see as its goals in Ukraine a resolution of the Donbass issue essentially on the basis of Minsk, and the eventual de facto recognition of Crimea’s Russian status. In June of last year, Vladimir Putin, however, published a long article on Russian-Ukrainian relations which made it clear that he viewed the current situation as a major security, political, and identity issue for his country; recognized his personal responsibility; and was resolved to do something to strategically correct it. The article did not give away Putin’s game plan, but it laid out his basic thinking on Ukraine.

Last December, Moscow passed on to Washington a package of proposals, which amounted to a list of security guarantees for Russia. These included Ukraine’s formal neutrality between Russia and NATO (“no Ukraine in NATO”); and no deployment of US and other NATO weapons and military bases in Ukraine, as well as a ban on military exercises on Ukrainian territory (“no NATO in Ukraine”). While the US agreed to discuss some military technical issues dealt with in the Russian paper it rejected Moscow’s key demands related to Ukraine and NATO. Putin had to take no for an answer.

Just before the launch of its military operation, Moscow recognized the two Donbass republics and told Kiev to vacate the parts of Donetsk and Lugansk then under Ukrainian control – or face the consequences. Kiev refused, and hostilities began. Russia’s official reason for unleashing force was defending the two newly recognized republics which had asked for military assistance.

Shortly after the start of hostilities Russia and Ukraine began peace talks. In late March 2022 at a meeting in Istanbul, Moscow demanded that Zelensky’s government recognize the sovereignty of the two Donbass republics within their constitutional borders, as well as Russia’s own sovereignty over Crimea, which was formally incorporated into the Russian Federation in 2014, plus accept a neutral and demilitarized status for territory controlled by Kiev. At that point, Moscow still recognized the current Ukrainian authorities and was prepared to deal with them directly. For its part, Kiev initially appeared ready to accept Moscow’s demands (which were criticized by many within Russia as overly concessionary to Ukraine), but then quickly reverted to a hardline stance. Moscow has always suspected that this U-turn, as on previous occasions, was the result of US behind-the-scenes influence, often aided by the British and other allies.

From the spring of 2022, as the fighting continued, Moscow expanded its aims. These now included the “de-Nazification” of Ukraine, meaning not only the removal of ultra-nationalist and anti-Russian elements from the Ukrainian government (increasingly characterized by Russian officials now as the “Kiev regime”), but the extirpation of their underlying ideology (based around the World War Two Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera) and its influence in society, including in education, the media, culture and other spheres.

Next to this, Moscow added something that Putin called, in his trademark caustic way, the “de-Communization” of Ukraine, meaning ridding that country, whose leadership was rejecting its Soviet past, of the Russian-populated or Russian-speaking territories that had been awarded to the Soviet Ukrainian republic of the USSR by the Communist leaders in Moscow, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev. These include, besides Donbass, the entire southeast of Ukraine, from Kharkov to Odessa.

This change of policy led to dropping the early signals about Russia honoring Ukraine’s statehood outside Donbass, and to establishing Russian military government bodies in the territory seized by the Russian forces. Immediately following that, a drive started to de facto integrate these territories with Moscow. By the early fall of 2022, all of Kherson, much of Zaporozhye and part of Kharkov oblasts were being drawn into the Russian economic system; started to use the Russian ruble; adopted the Russian education system; and their population was offered a fast-track way to Russian citizenship.

As the fighting in Ukraine quickly became a proxy war between Russia and the US-led West, Russia’s views on Ukraine’s future radicalized further. While a quick cessation of hostilities and a peace settlement on Russian terms in the spring would have left Ukraine, minus Donbass, demilitarized and outside NATO, but otherwise under the present leadership with its virulently anti-Russian ideology and reliance on the West, the new thinking, as Putin’s remarks in Kaliningrad suggest, tends to regard any Ukrainian state that is not fully and securely cleansed of ultranationalist ideology and its agents as a clear and present danger; in fact, a ticking bomb right on Russia’s borders not far from its capital.

Under these circumstances, in view of all the losses and hardships sustained, it would not suffice that Russia wins control of what was once known as Novorossiya, the northern coast of the Black Sea all the way to Transnistria. This would mean that Ukraine would be completely cut off from the sea, and Russia would gain – via referenda, it is assumed – a large swath of territory and millions of new citizens. To reach that objective, of course, the Russian forces still need to seize Nikolaev and Odessa in the south, as well as Kharkov in the east. A logical next step would be to expand Russian control to all of Ukraine east of the Dnieper River, as well as the city of Kiev that lies mostly on the right bank. If this were to happen, the Ukrainian state would shrink to the central and western regions of the country.

Neither of these outcomes, however, deals with the fundamental problem that Putin has highlighted, that is to say, of Russia having to live side-by-side with a state that will constantly seek revenge and will be used by the United States, which arms and directs it, in its effort to threaten and weaken Russia. This is the main reason behind the argument for taking over the entire territory of Ukraine to the Polish border. However, integrating central and western Ukraine into Russia would be exceedingly difficult, while trying to build a Ukrainian buffer state controlled by Russia would be a major drain on resources, as well as a constant headache. No wonder that some in Moscow would not mind if Poland were to absorb western Ukraine within some form of a common political entity which, Russia’s foreign intelligence claims, is being surreptitiously created.

Ukraine’s future will not be dictated, of course, by someone’s wishes, but by the actual developments on the battlefield. Fighting there will continue for some time, and the final outcome is not in sight. Even when the active phase of the conflict comes to an end, it is unlikely to be followed up by a peace settlement. For different reasons, each side regards the conflict as existential – and much wider than Ukraine. This means that what Russia aims for has to be won and then held firmly.

🇮🇳India is under pressure, with the West and Ukraine trying to force New Delhi to toe their line on Russia – will they succeed?
New Delhi has its own view of the world, but Kiev and its backers don't understand the nuances

“I have no comments to offer… other than being mystified at my inclusion in this list." That's how former National Security Advisory Board head P.S. Raghavan, a retired foreign service officer who also served as India’s ambassador to Russia, replied to an accusation of disseminating ‘Russian propaganda.’

It was made by the Center for Countering Disinformation, a subsidiary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council.

The body released the list on July 14, and it included “speakers promoting narratives consonant with Russian propaganda.” Two more Indian nationals – veteran journalist Saeed Naqvi and Sam Pitroda, a former adviser to Prime Ministers Rajiv Gandhi and Manmohan Singh – found themselves among the politicians and experts whose positions on the Ukrainian crisis appear to be a dissonant chord in the chorus of Western narratives.

Ukrainian information warriors seem to have intentionally omitted many other Indian names rather than accidentally missing their statements on the ongoing hostilities between Moscow and Kiev. The list could gain new names after any political talk show on Indian TV – and neither alleged Russian spying nor state-sponsored propaganda is the issue.

It is the widely accepted coverage of the conflict in Ukraine in the West and India’s worldview that do not dovetail.

Another twilight of the gods
“This is a defining moment. Our decisions in these days will shape [the] decades to come. Our response to Russia’s aggression today will decide the future of both the international system and the global economy. Will heinous devastation win or humanity prevail? Will the right of might dominate or the rule of law? Will there be constant conflict and struggle or a future of common prosperity and lasting peace? What happens in Ukraine will have an impact on the Indo-Pacific region,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said at the Raisina Dialogue on April 25.

This speech serves as a great example of how the West perceives the ongoing crisis versus India’s place in world. For West European politicians, the idea that the country is part of the "civilized world" requires actions backing up that status. Accordingly, the West expects "proper" behavior from New Delhi.

This is where we should acknowledge Ukraine’s success – the nation’s perspective dominates in American and EU media sources, which further disseminate it among non-Western countries. According to this discourse, the conflict there is one of global importance, which has dismantled the global economy and international security, caused energy and food crises, and undermined international law.

In short, it has destroyed the world we once knew.

Frankly speaking, one should not be surprised that Western Europeans consider the conflict to be a catastrophe for their world. For more than 70 years, have they nurtured the Kantian idea of Perpetual Peace, even if that meant conveniently ignoring the fact of the war in Yugoslavia. Political elites ranging from prominent intellectuals, such as Jürgen Habermas to national leaders such as Olaf Scholz, seemingly don't regard the Balkans as a part of the continent.

The Ukrainian top brass have managed to achieve full-scale coverage of the conflict as a European war. Thus, whatever arguments Russia could have produced for further discussion have been blocked out.

The Ukrainians grasped this and successfully promoted their victimization, learning from tactics used in the 1990s Balkans, and left no chance for anybody to allow alternative voices to be heard.

However, the weltanschauung proposed could not have met with similar support all around the world, and such a construct should not be taken for granted in a place like India in which almost all of the variables are completely different.
#India

🇮🇳No point to singing in unison
“We have to be confident about who we are. I think it is better to engage the world on the basis of who we are, rather than try and please the world as a pale imitation of what they are… This idea that others define us, somehow we need to get the approval of other quarters – I think that is an era we need to put behind us,” Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said in response to European pressure on the issue of Ukraine at the same venue.

India is acknowledged as having its own worldview about major issues in the international arena. The country’s strategic culture includes New Delhi taking hard stances on matters directly challenging national security in the neighborhood; seeking broad economic, political, and cultural interaction within the Indo-Pacific region; positioning itself globally as a great power operating in a multipolar world.

In this context, Ukraine and problems related to the region lie beyond the scope of India’s vital national interests. At the same time, New Delhi is ready to discuss a wide range of issues, including Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and other war-torn countries, with Ukraine being a part of broader security agenda, not a cornerstone.

For example, the situation in Afghanistan could be of much greater interest for India. But after the withdrawal of US and allied troops, this issue of global importance turned out to be a marginal one. Nevertheless, from the Indian perspective, its significance actually increased – New Delhi claimed that “in Afghanistan, [the] entire active civil society was thrown under the bus by the world,” with the West turning a blind eye to the developments in Kabul.

Hence, India’s political elites have showed no enthusiasm for discussing Ukraine. Mounting pressure from the West is certain to provoke further irritation in New Delhi.

Chance to pull out all the stops
To sum up, any Indian expert could end up on the list of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation. There are two main paths to unlock this ‘achievement’: questioning narratives based on the Ukrainian coverage and referring to alternative sources of information.

The variety of points of view that exist in the political, business, military and media circles of India is amazing. However, both “pro-Western” and “pro-Russian” Indian experts are used to analyzing the situation from an Indian perspective and would hardly give up this approach – even if the West expects some of them to chant mantras from Ukrainian actors.

Ukrainian elites enjoy the full support of the West. At this juncture, they appear to think that those who do not support them ‘in the proper way’ deserve denigration and canceling. In this case, Russia has nothing to do but to wait for the elites in Kiev to create new ill-wishers. This is where they never fail.

By Gleb Makarevich, Junior Research Fellow, Group on South Asia and Indian Ocean at IMEMO RAS
#India

The battle for Kharkov: the situation on the Izyum-Kupyansky sector of the front
by the end of September 9, 2022 (From Rybar)

🔻Kupyanskoe direction

▪️Due to the transfer of reserves to the Kupyansky sector of the front, the RF Armed Forces managed to stop the advance of the main forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine a few kilometers from the city limits.

▪️By the end of the day, the Armed Forces of Ukraine established control over the villages of Chkalovskoye, Shevchenko, Borovskoye and controlled the Chuguev-Kupyansk highway to Grushevka, which made it possible to transfer equipment and artillery systems to the line of contact.

▪️The Ukrainian command is forming a strike force to storm Kupyansk in the area of Grushevka and Staroverovka. The RF Armed Forces carry out artillery and rocket-bomb strikes on enemy concentration areas.

▪️The Armed Forces of Ukraine are shelling the rear settlements in the liberated territories. The village of Bolshoy Burluk was hit especially hard.

🔻Izyum direction

▪️From the south of Izyum, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are attacking from Vernopolye and Dolina.

▪️When trying to advance to Gorokhovatka, the mobile groups of the Armed Forces of Ukraine met with a rebuff near the village of Yasinovatoe.
▪️The reserves of the Russian Armed Forces came to the eastern bank of the Oskol River, which prevented attempts to cross the river by mobile groups of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Apparently, the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine will reinforce the mobile units on the western bank of the Oskol with heavy equipment and will try to conduct reconnaissance in combat of the defense of Izyum from the direction of Gorokhovatka.

🔻Balakliya direction

▪️There are unverified reports that the eastern quarters of Balakleya are still being held by detachments of the Russian Armed Forces. In the near future, we should expect an attack by the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the villages of Vesele and Kunye.

In the near future, the Armed Forces of Ukraine will attempt to attack the Liman from Raygorodok. The main goal of the Ukrainian command in the area is to reach the Oskol reservoir and encircle the Russian group near Izyum.