Saturday, September 24, 2022

'General' Putin leaves salient exposed

Professional commanders have urged tactical withdrawal from Kherson in order to avoid the cut-off of Russian soldiers there, but Russian Dictator Vladimir Putin, fearing a propaganda coup for Ukraine, overruled them.

The Kherson unit now faces being flanked and surrounded. With their supplies coming across easily destroyed pontoon bridges, Russian soldiers in Kherson face a grim future, whether by a long, grinding siege or by rapid annihilation.

Appointment of a new commander of military supply chains is unlikely to solve problems such as the Kherson pontoon bridge threat or the fact that shoddy equipment -- including rusty old rifles -- is all that is available to send to Putin's beleaguered forces.

Complicating matters is the fact that Putin's most ruthless commander, Col. Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev, has been taken from the field in order to run army-wide logistics. Hence, the one general feared by the Ukrainians no longer is active on the battlefield. It is possible that Putin lost confidence in Mizintsez following the startling reverses across eastern Ukraine.

Mizintsez, the so-called "butcher of Syria," managed Moscow's brutal, and successful, siege of the port city of Mariupol.
More from The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/23/us/politics/putin-ukraine.html
More from BBC News
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63021117

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