#Chasiv Yar (Ukraine)

[sonyaheaneyauthor]

4th July 2024: The city of Chasiv Yar, Ukraine after being destroyed by the invading russians.

[thegirlwhohid]

russia is not an agressor. russia only wants to protect russian-speaking from Ukrainian aggression. Ukraine bombed 'the Donbas' for eight years, after all.

You hear it a thousand times.

Well, take a look at this photo. Once upon a time, there was a district of the town of Chasiv Yar called 'Canal'. Now, it's completely erased.

Chasiv Yar, by the way, is a part of Donbas.

russia doesn't give a f... care for 'russian-speaking', neither in Ukraine, nor in russia on any other country. It uses them as an excuse to invade, exploit, eradicate, fill its inner war machine, and move forward.

These 'peace talks' end with nothing. russia just swallows part of Ukraine, grows bigger, and come back for more blood and soil. And, of course, it won't be satisfied with demolishing only Ukraine.

Because, as, the bloody butcher putin said, 'the borders of кussia don't end anywhere'

[dontforgetukraine]

Drone footage of what was the Ukrainian city of Chasiv Yar...

[gwydionmisha]

Russia's War on Ukraine Round Up: Published 7/30/25

Russia says it captured Ukrainian town of Chasiv Yar after 16-month battle

Russian air strike on Kyiv kills six, officials say

[kokchapress]

Russia’s capture of Chasiv Yar is a strategic breakthrough in the Donbass conflict, weakening Ukraine’s defenses and opening pathways to key strongholds. 🚨 #ChasivYar #Donbass #RussiaUkraineConflict #Geopolitics #MilitaryStrategy

[youthchronical]

Russian Forces Depleted and Stalling on Eastern Front, Ukraine Says

Ukrainian forces have stalled the Russian offensive in the eastern Donetsk region in recent months and have started to win back small patches of land, according to Ukrainian soldiers and military analysts. Russia still holds the initiative, and conducts dozens of assaults across the eastern front every day, the soldiers and analysts say. But after more than 15 months on the offensive, Russian…

[dostoyevsky-official]

some of the comparisons between the russia/ukraine-israel/palestine wars are gauche, but there's an invitation for them to be made and they are, to an extent, unavoidable. underneath the many similarities are striking differences, but what i am absolutely certain of is that the only reason why russia has not devastated ukraine to the degree israel has destroyed gaza is competency, equipment, and sheer size. russia has already destroyed many, many cities in their entirety across ukraine, from mariupol to chasiv yar. this is what bakhmut looks like:

but russia can't flatten the whole country, and russia can't extend the same level of carnage everywhere because its ground and air troops and officers are incompetent, because the ukrainians have some measure of anti-air access and denial (the palestinians have none) and can destroy russian airbases deep within russia, and because ukraine is the second-largest country in europe. otherwise it would be grozny or aleppo 2.0

[mariacallous]

As Yale University historian Timothy Snyder recently posted on X, “The only war that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is winning is inside [U.S. President Donald] Trump’s head. Putin only wins the war on the ground by setting American policy, through Trump.”

And, boy, is Putin succeeding. What transpired between Trump, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office on Feb. 28 was remarkable—not only for the undiplomatic blow-up, but for the clarity it provided on how Trump and his surrogates view the war. The most persistent among their views is the idea that Ukraine is rapidly losing the war to an unstoppable Russian army and that the only way out of this is to give in to Putin’s demands.

Time and time again during the exchange at the White House, both Trump and Vance attempted to hammer this idea into Zelensky, telling him that “you don’t have the cards right now,” “you’re not winning this,” and “your country is in big trouble.” Since then, Trump has doubled down on social media, posting that “Russia is absolutely pounding Ukraine on the battlefield right now.”

These claims do not correspond to the reality on the ground, but they are exactly what Putin needs Trump to think. For Putin, the narrative of an inevitable Russian victory makes it appear invincible in Western eyes and, more importantly, spreads the idea that any assistance to Ukraine is futile and merely prolongs the war. As Trump gifts Putin with unrequited concessions, including the suspension of military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine, it’s becoming clearer that Washington has joined Moscow’s side.

Trump is making his claims at a time when Russia’s actual advance—rather than the imaginary one in his head—has stalled in key contested areas. According to DeepState, a Ukrainian project mapping the course of the invasion, the Ukrainian military has taken back several occupied areas in local counteroffensives in recent days. One of these areas is Pokrovsk, a city that Russian forces have been unsuccessfully attempting to capture since last August. Mikhail Zvinchuk, a former Russian Defense Ministry spokesperson who now runs Rybar, a popular pro-war Telegram channel with more than 1.3 million subscribers, reported in his latest front-line dispatch that Russian forces have suffered a number of painful setbacks in Toretsk, a mining town in Donetsk Oblast that Moscow declared as “liberated” in early February. There are similar reports about Chasiv Yar, another front-line city where the Russians have been bogged down.

The stalled Russian army is a shadow of its former self. Its most capable and elite units are long gone, ground down by fierce Ukrainian resistance in the first few weeks of the war. Stocks of tanks, armored vehicles, and even trucks are perilously low; Russian soldiers at the front have increasingly resorted to donkeys and horses to move supplies.

Worse, the small gains Russia has made over the past year and a half have come at a terrible loss of life. At the time of writing, open-source data confirms close to 96,000 regular Russian troops have been killed in action, with the likely real number to be at least 160,000. Adding the seriously wounded brings Russia’s irrecoverable combat losses to an estimated 550,000, according to recent report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. There are drone videos of Russian soldiers limping on crutches or crawling on stumps of their legs toward the Ukrainian positions. Their final mission: to act as bullet sponges that reveal Ukrainian fire nests.

The reality on the front has nothing to do with the Kremlin narrative of an infinitely resourced Russia on a relentless, unstoppable march—a narrative that has been swallowed hook, line, and sinker by Trump and the MAGA movement.

Official Russian media is still full of bombastic triumphalism, but Russians who are closer to the war do not see their country as winning—or capable of winning by military means alone. Ilya Mersh, a pro-war blogger with deep ties to Russia’s top military command and about 600,000 subscribers on Telegram, directly contradicted Vance on Ukraine. On Feb. 20, Mersh wrote, “Vance claims that Russia has an overwhelming advantage in manpower and equipment, and that Ukraine doesn’t stand a chance. Let’s take a closer look at that. Throughout this entire war, we’ve never actually had a numerical advantage in troops—at some points, we were even outnumbered.”

Yuri Kotenok, one of the most prominent front-line war bloggers, wrote on Telegram that “the Ukrainians are becoming bolder by the day, counterattacking and even pushing us out of several defended positions.” He complains about “a severe shortage of troops for assault operations” in southern Donetsk.

To find fresh recruits, the Russian army has long been scraping the bottom of the barrel. Anastasia Kashevarova, another passionately pro-war blogger, explained that people with severe physical handicaps, mental health issues, and drug addictions are being tricked into signing up.

Igor Girkin, one of Russia’s most prominent and vocal pro-war nationalists, now serves a prison sentence for his criticism of Putin for not pursing the war relentlessly enough. In a note from prison, he recently wrote that the war is lost. Russia has not reached any of its strategic goals, he said, and Ukrainian forces have stood as equals to the Russian army. According to him, the country’s failure in the war means its entire future is now bleak. “The systemic crisis in which our country finds itself still has no prospect of resolving and will deepen,” Girkin concluded.

Some of the most passionate pro-war Russians are grappling with the grim realization that the war is not the grand historical struggle they envisioned, but a slow, grinding catastrophe. Modest Kolerov, an ultranationalist blogger and former Kremlin spin doctor, lamented in a widely shared post that the war “has proven beyond doubt that ‘New Russia’ is nothing more than … a pale shadow of historical Russia—whether the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union.” This sentiment, once confined to the opposition, is now creeping into the rhetoric of the pro-war camp itself.

These are all telling signs of just how far the Kremlin’s narrative has unraveled. But perhaps the best indication of the shifting mood over the war inside Russia is a video that has gone viral on Telegram. Originally appearing on a Russian account with more than 1 million subscribers, it shows Russian soldiers freezing in a trench, desperately awaiting news of a cease-fire. Unlike earlier propaganda pieces that framed the war as a patriotic duty or a lucrative adventure, this video invited sympathy for the exhausted, war-weary troops.

If Russia has a chance of winning this war, it will not be because of its military achievements on the battlefield. It will be because Putin has convinced Trump, Vance, and their MAGA acolytes that Russia holds all the imaginary cards.

[stele3]

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/canada-plans-recognize-palestinian-state-raising-allies-pressure-israel-2025-07-31/

[sonyaheaneyauthor]

23rd July 2023: The Palace of Culture in Chasiv Yar, Ukraine after being bombed by the russians.

The city has since largely been destroyed in russia's invasion.

[thegirlwhohid]

Thinking a lot about this inscription from the Armed Forces of Ukraine, made on a wall of the destroyed kindergarten:

"We are not asking too much We just need an artillery shells and aviation We must avenge our children" - AFU

[dontforgetukraine]

The maintenance battalion of the 24th Mechanized Brigade is repairing equipment that helps destroy the enemy in Chasiv Yar.

Source: Defense of Ukraine, 24th Mechanized Brigade

[warriormale]

Servicemen of 24th Mechanized Brigade, named after King Danylo, of the Ukrainian Armed Forces rest at their position on a front line in Chasiv Yar in the Donetsk region [Handout: Oleg Petrasiuk/Press Service of the 24th King Danylo Separate Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces via Reuters]

Support Ukraine Freedom!

WarriorMale

[rvps2001]

Russia-Ukraine Daily Briefing

🇷🇺 🇺🇦 Friday Briefing:

- US to send new $225m military aid package to Ukraine - Germany procures more artillery shells for Ukraine - France to transfer Mirage-2000 fighter jets to Ukraine - Russian warships will arrive in Havana next week - Germany, France fight for Putin’s oligarchs to get their BMWs and Mercedes - Russia holds Frenchman accused of gathering military information - NATO to expand defense tech, intelligence sharing with Kyiv - Russian forces using thermobaric munitions in attacks on Chasiv Yar - Ukraine's military intelligence destroys Russian tugboat in Crimea

📨 Daily newsletter: https://russia-ukraine-newsletter.beehiiv.com/

💬 Telegram: https://t.me/russiaukrainedaily Socials: https://linktr.ee/rvps2001

[beardedmrbean]

It’s Cossack to the future for the beleaguered Russian army.

The Kremlin is using horses and donkeys to transport troops and supplies on the battlefield in Ukraine — as part of an attempt to apply 15th century tactics in 21st century warfare.

The Moscow mules have allowed Russian forces to sneak by Ukraine’s high-tech defenses and dodge drones that have become deadly efficient at taking out invading armor after three years of brutal fighting.

The tactic, however, has drawn ridicule from Kyiv as evidence that Moscow is running out of trucks and armored vehicles, and forced to rely on comically outdated tactics using conscripts from Russian minority groups.

Anton Gerashchenko, a former adviser to Ukraine’s minister of internal affairs, mocked the tactic on X last month as he posted a video from Telegram reportedly showing soldiers from Sakha Republic in Russia’s far east on horseback.

“Rolling back to the times of the Russian Empire — complete with cavalry and drafting representatives of national minorities as cannon fodder,” Gerashchenko wrote.

Ukrainian Army Sgt. Ihor Vizirenko was one of the commanders who first spotted the trotting horses and donkeys on the frontline near the city of Chasiv Yar, which he has been defending for almost a year.

With drones and heavy artillery dominating the war, Vizirenko said both sides have had to innovate to get past the others’ defenses, but the Kyiv sergeant was shocked nonetheless when he spotted one of the Russian horses.

“The Russians are quite creative,” Vizirenko told the Wall Street Journal.

“But then [motor] bikes being used in assault took us by surprise, so who knows?” he added. “A horse would run faster than a man in a field.” 

But far from indicating that this is the Kremlin’s last rodeo, Lt. Gen. Viktor Sobolev, a member of the Russian State Duma’s Defense Committee, said the critics should get off their high horse about the use of the pack animals.

Sobolev told Russian media the horses and donkeys are useful in traversing the muddy countryside and forests, with the animals costing less than if a resupply vehicle were deployed with several soldiers and taken out.

Experts, however, say the tactic seems to have been born more out of desperation than creativity.

“I’m not sure the resuscitation of old technology, nets, shotguns, horses, is out of choice,” Phillips O’Brien, a professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, told the WSJ.

“They are desperate attempts to cope with unmanned aerial vehicles.”