Amerikanen - de WaPo - lijken al weer in de angststuip te schieten dat Amerikaanse wapens in Rusland zijn gebruikt. En als dat al het geval zou zijn , so what, Dit is nog steeds maar grensregio. De Amerikaanse
overheid straalt trouwens business as usual uit.
Battles persist in western Russia after bold cross-border attack by Ukraine
https://wapo.st/3SB6bLV (deelartikel, let op inloggen met mail account.... tegenwoordig nodig).
De titel is stevig, maar de ondertitel wat minder:
A surprise Ukrainian attack into Russia’s Kursk region raised questions about whether Kyiv’s forces violated U.S. restrictions on the use of donated fighting vehicles.
Deze bezwaren werden door het states department weggewimpeld:
Matthew Miller, a State Department spokesman, said on Thursday that Russia had launched attacks on Ukraine from the Kursk region and that the United States supported Kyiv’s right to defend itself. “We have seen Russia launch attacks from the region,” Miller said. Pressed on the previous conditions imposed on the use of U.S. weapons, he said: “In the area where they are operating just across from the Russian border we have seen attacks come from there.”
Duitsland stut dit ook:
The chairman of the German Bundestag’s Defense Committee, Marcus Faber, said Thursday that he sees no problem with Ukraine using weapons supplied by Germany for its current advance on Russian territory.
“With the handover to Ukraine, they are Ukrainian weapons,” Faber, a member of the neoliberal Free Democrats told the Funke Media Group. This applies “to all materiel,” including the Leopard 2 battle tank, Faber said.
Dit is nog wel handige info om foto's mee te beoordelen:
Video posted by a pro-war Russian Telegram channel purported to show U.S.-provided Stryker fighting vehicles near Ukraine’s border with Kursk as part of the incursion. Others showed German Marder fighting vehicles. Ukrainian forces appeared to have marked their equipment for Kursk with painted white triangles. The Washington Post could not independently verify the videos.
Om de westerse toestemming voor een dergelijke actie nog een keer te herhalen, en dan nog wat breder geformuleerd:
The Sumy region for months has come under repeated bombardment from Russian forces firing across the border. Western countries, including the U.S., have allowed Ukraine to use donated weapons to strike Russia across the border to fend off attacks. They appeared to apply the same justification regarding Ukraine taking the unusual step of using donated vehicles and weapons for the operation in Kursk, U.S. officials said Thursday.
De impact van de aanval op Rusland:
“Ukrainian forces have clearly advanced quite far in to Kursk but how much territory they control or actually intend to control remains unknown,” said Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Whatever the reason, the Kursk offensive has put new pressure on Putin as ordinary Russians had to be evacuated from the region where they faced some of the same types of bombardment that Ukrainian civilians have endured from Russian forces for more than two years.
Deze statement van de Oekraïense overheid zeg wel iets over het gemak van de aanval:
The Ukrainian offensive appeared to be more successful than even many officials in Kyiv expected.
Een weer de roep om ATACMS om te kunnen anticiperen op vergeldingsmaatregeelen:
Ukrainian officials are now requesting that the U.S. to allow them to use long-range ATACMs to hit air fields that Russia is using to retaliate against them — a policy decision Kyiv believes will allow it to retain a portion of Kursk Oblast.
Invloed over de gaspijpleiding was met de verovering van een gasmeetstation geen doel, die invloed heeft Oekraïne al:
Ukraine now controls a gas metering station about five miles inside Russia, the Zelensky adviser said. On Thursday, gas was still flowing through Sudzha, the last operational shipping point for a pipeline that carries Russian natural gas to Europe via Ukraine. The station was unlikely to be used for leverage, the adviser said, because with the pipeline running through Ukraine anyway, Kyiv could have disrupted flows at any time.
In anticipatie op represailles van Rusland heeft Oekraine mensen geevacueerd:
With Kyiv bracing for Russian reprisals, Ukrainian officials on Wednesday ordered about 6,000 people to evacuate from Sumy.
Naast argumenten als het wegnemen van de Russische druk is wisselgeld bij eventuele onderhandelingen een driver:
Ukrainian officials have expressed some sense of urgency to better their military position before the U.S. presidential elections in November. The last tranche of American security assistance was held up for more than six months by Republicans in Congress — a signal that future military aid is not guaranteed, especially if GOP nominee Donald Trump wins office. Trump has said that he would quickly push the two sides to reach a negotiated settlement of the war.
Ook vanuit de hoek van Zelenskyy is dit genoemd:
“This will give them the leverage they need for negotiations with Russia — this is what it’s all about,” the Zelensky adviser said.