Back Story Newsletter
Good morning,
The Russian army has focused it’s forces on taking the last city in the Luhansk Oblast in eastern Ukraine, Sieverodonetsk.
The fighting for weeks there has been “terrifying” said Ukrainian President Zelenskiy described it and he admits casualties on the Ukraine side have been numerous, and the Russians to have made taking this city costly for Putin’s invasion force.
Ukraine though is getting stronger and even as we speak more long range artillery is being delivered to Ukraine from the west and will reshape the battle field.
President Putin has used the economic forum in St. Petersburg to rail against western sanctions, and claim he had no alternative but to invade Ukraine, to stop NATO expansion. But we all know Ukraine was not an imminent NATO member, and this is more about Putin’s ambitions to restore Russia as some kind of Empire.
Putin has claimed it as a kind of crusade to restore Russian lands (they are not his) just as Peter the Great did.
Delusional dreams of the Kremlin elite, but all of it dangerously threatening to Ukraine and beyond as NATO is now moving to beef up forces in the Baltics, anticipating Russia could try to invade next Lithuania or Poland.
On this Back Story podcast an interview with the Institute for the Study of War will lead you through the options of dealing with Russia, and the imminent threat of Putin announcing annexation of eastern Ukraine and the narrowing window for Ukraine to take back those occupied lands.
I wanted to share the video link with you here and welcome you to have a watch.
Have a good Sunday!
Dana Lewis