But that can't be the case, because Russia seems to put a lot of effort into cleaeing out e.g. Donbass, yet there Ukraine still is "occupying" large areas of it.

If Russia does not care, then stop fighting there. If Russia does care, then why do they have so much trouble with it, taking years and years to kick out "occupiers". How can Russia tolerate such a situation? Or is it, maybe, the case that Russia can't kick them out, despite the superior military? Which again goes back to my point about how impressivly bad Russia is performing, all things considered.

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Last I checked, Russia evacuated the citizens living in these few villages, and now it's become a cauldron for the AFU where they have thousands of troops stuck who can't leave. Was real gift to Russia as even Forbes admits. Ukraine is losing twice as many vehicles in this debacle as they were previously. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/08/17/out-in-the-open-and-on-the-move-in-russias-kursk-oblast-ukrainian-forces-are-vulnerable-and-losing-lots-of-armored-vehicles/

Guess what's gonna happen once this "offensive" burns itself out. Russia is going to do a counter attack and open a new front in Sumy region against the depleted and demoralized AFU.

[–] sweng@programming.dev -3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Last I checked, Russia evacuated the citizens living in these few villages, and now it’s become a cauldron for the AFU where they have thousands of troops stuck who can’t leave.

And why exactly did the Russian military allow this to happen? Considering the state of the Ukrainian military with outdated tech even some mininal protection should have sufficied? If I care about someone, I protect them so that nothing bad happens to them. I bust don't ignore them, then go "oops" and do the very minimal amount of work, which would not even had been necessary had I done my job in the first place.

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 months ago

Seems pretty obvious why the Russian military would want to expand the front creating logistics problems for Ukraine. Creating a large front has literally been the doctrine since WW2 times. Ukraine is now stuck in Kursk because politically they can't just pull back, so now they have to keep feeding valuable resources into a battle that has zero strategic value for Ukraine. Meanwhile, this is weakening actual strategic places like Pokrovsk. Once Russia takes that, it splits the front in half between north and south which will make it impossible for AFU to reinforce its southern forces. This will create a huge cauldron where Ukrainian troops are trapped. Even mainstream western media understands this, yet here you are.