https://archive.is/avbh1
I wonder how much of this is building to a "welp, no point sending military aid to Ukraine anymore, let's redirect it all to Israel" propaganda push.
I'm sure that's a big part of it coupled with the fact that it's becoming impossible to pretend the war is in a stalemate when Ukraine is losing kilometres of territory on daily basis.
Russia’s success is partly a result of a shifting recruiting message, as it now relentlessly tells would-be soldiers that the war in Ukraine is really a fight against NATO, U.S. officials said. Russian bonuses have also drastically increased. By combining these strategies, Mr. Putin may not need to order a politically unpopular broad draft, U.S. military and intelligence officials say.
dirty tricks like fairly paying your soldiers
Ukraine also drone striked Chechenya lately, i bet this will really discourage Chechens who were per capita most numerous volunteers to that war.
Ukraine also drone striked Chechenya lately
Not really sure of the politics here but it seems they did this trying to play off the fact that Russia has been trying to subjugate Chechnya for the past century, and the current Chechen head Ramzan Kadyrov is a pro-Putin puppet that some Chechens hate. Therefore, by striking a "special forces training center" run by Kadyrov, I'd imagine they'd want to signal support to his detractors and encourage them to continue volunteering in Ukraine to fight against Russia.
Despite this it was indeed a very stupid move because now anyone who is patriotic and doesn't hate Kadyrov would be fucking pissed at this long range attack on their homeland and will probably enlist at greater numbers (the "special forces training center" apparently provided civilians with military skills too).
how do i know if this is just propaganda to get more money for ukraine
Because it's been not a stalemate for a while and they're just now finally admitting it. Things have been going terrible for Ukraine since the foolish occupation of kursk
They were going pretty badly even before that, but Kursk stunt was likely the catalyst for an all out collapse we're seeing now.
This entire war was a useless bullshit excuse for NATO countries and arms dealers to dump their military surplus and profit off of the needless slaughter of tens of thousands of people on both sides using Ukranian civilians to fight a proxy war with Putin. This utter waste of life would never have happened if the west didn't interfere in Ukrainian politics in the early 2010s, or allowed peace talks to occur unobstructed between Russia and Ukraine in the early days of the war. Total deaths on both sides now is estimated to be 1 million people and a lot of Ukraine has been destroyed. How fucked is this.
