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→=NATO-backed insurgency
By August 23, 2022 the NATO/Ukrainian counteroffensive never materialized. However a Russian offensive toward Nikolaev (pop. 475,000) was underway.
By August 23, 2022 the NATO/Ukrainian counteroffensive never materialized. However a Russian offensive toward Nikolaev (pop. 475,000) was underway.
{{Anchor|Zelensky Offensive}}
{{Anchor|Zelensky Offensive}}
===NATO-backed insurgency==
===NATO-backed insurgency===
[[NATO]]-backed [[neo-Nazi]] partisan insurgent activity and sabotage, as well as [[terrorist]] acts against the civilian population, was detected in the [[Zaporozhye]] and the Kherson regions as early as June 2022. The same month [[Biden]] Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks said the U.S. [[Pentagon]] was prepared to continue supplying arms for five, 10, and 20 years into the future.<ref>https://news.antiwar.com/2022/06/13/pentagon-says-ukraine-will-survive-and-the-us-will-arm-it-for-years-to-come/</ref>
[[NATO]]-backed [[neo-Nazi]] partisan insurgent activity and sabotage, as well as [[terrorist]] acts against the civilian population, was detected in the [[Zaporozhye]] and the Kherson regions as early as June 2022. The same month [[Biden]] Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks said the U.S. [[Pentagon]] was prepared to continue supplying arms for five, 10, and 20 years into the future.<ref>https://news.antiwar.com/2022/06/13/pentagon-says-ukraine-will-survive-and-the-us-will-arm-it-for-years-to-come/</ref>
On October 23, 2022 the Ukrainian special services planted an improvised explosive device (IED) on a pole. A civilian passerby was killed and three others injured in the terrorist attack.
On October 23, 2022 the Ukrainian special services planted an improvised explosive device (IED) on a pole. A civilian passerby was killed and three others injured in the terrorist attack.
===Autumn Zelensky Offensive===
[[File:Zelensky Offensive, Fall 2022.PNG|right|300px|thumb|Zelensky Offensive, Autumn 2022]]
Ukraine's much ballyhooed "August counteroffensive" commenced on Volodymyr Zelensky's personal orders in the early morning hours of August 29, 2022. Approximately 36,000 Ukrainians advanced along the 183 km Kherson front, with the loss of 26 tanks, 23 amphibious vehicles, 9 armored vehicles, 2 SU-25 fighter aircraft, and 560 killed in action. The Russians lost 1 tank, 1 Uragan rocket launcher, 1 Pantsir missile system, 2 drones, 9 ammo storage locations and 41 casualties.
On the Ukrainian side of the line of contact, requests went out to the general public for [[blood]] donors. By Day 3, more than 1,700 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed. By Day 4, the counteroffensive stalled and withdrew, with over 2,000 dead.
The Zelensky Offensive was four months in the planning since April 2022. Western powers demanded to see action and results for all the money and weapons pumped into Ukraine since 2014.<ref>https://youtu.be/KF6rUGtSIGg</ref> Military strategists argued the plan to send human wave [[infantry]] attacks across flat land with no artillery or air support was doomed to fail from the start. Zelensky ordered the attack anyway on the morning August 29, 2022 to please his Western masters and keep the flood of cash and weapons flowing. Within three days the attack accomplished nothing other than killing thousands more of Ukrainian troops.
Because of the high number of untrained and unmotivated conscripts serving on the front line, the Ukrainian High Command abandoned the NATO tactic of keeping officers behind the line and away from the battle and having the attack led by sergeants. Ukraine reverted to the Soviet school of having officers and commanders lead the attacks on the frontline.
By Day 5 of the Zelensky Offensive, Ukraine lost 3,000 troops killed and 7,000 wounded who could not return to combat, or roughly one whole Division. ''The Washington Post'' reported,
{{quotebox-float|"In dimly lit hospital rooms in southern Ukraine, soldiers with severed limbs, shrapnel wounds, mangled hands and shattered joints recounted the lopsided disadvantages their units faced in the early days of a new offensive to expel Russian forces from the strategic city of Kherson...The soldiers said they lacked the artillery needed to dislodge Russia’s entrenched forces and described a yawning technology gap with their better-equipped adversaries...The interviews provided some of the first direct accounts of a push to retake captured territory that is so sensitive, Ukrainian military commanders have barred reporters from visiting the front lines”.<ref>https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/07/ukraine-kherson-offensive-casualties-ammunition/</ref>}}
Ukrainian soldiers told ''WaPo'' they were not able to hear the Russian drones spotting their positions from miles up in the sky, while Russian military hackers took control over every drone the Ukrainians sent up. One soldier remarked, “They used everything on us...Who can survive an attack for five hours like that?”<ref>https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/07/ukraine-kherson-offensive-casualties-ammunition/</ref> Russian built Geran kamikaze drones on the Iranian design were reportedly used for the first time in Ukraine.<ref>The Shahed-129 and Shahed-136, rebranded the Geranium 2 in Russian nomenclature, is low cost with a range of 2000 km.</ref> 1/3 of the Polish-supplied T-72 were destroyed in the first week of counteroffensive.
[[File:Zelensky Offensive Kherson.PNG|left|400px|thumb|Nearly 2,000 Ukrainians killed in the long awaited first 2 days of the Zelensky Offensive.]]
Beginning on September 15, 2022 the Russians began knocking out upstream dams on the Inhulets river, washing out the Ukrainian pontoon bridges and cutting off the main advance on the Kherson front. The Russians allowed evacuation of the dead and wounded without attacking.
On the night of September 17, 2022 Ukrainian saboteurs in the city center of Kherson were eliminated.<ref>https://youtu.be/U-pTz0ZYbKA</ref>
On September 25, 2022 during the referendums, the Kyiv proxy regime and NATO attacked a hotel in downtown Kherson, killing a [[journalist]] and Alexey Zhuravk, a former member of the Ukrainian parliament.<ref>https://youtu.be/HqIS5Ti9N2A</ref> Russian paratroopers destroyed a column of NATO armored vehicles.<ref>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=or7bhCNncpk</ref>
October 14, 2022 Russia began evacuation of civilians from the city of Kherson as Ukrainian sources reported that NATO had gathered a force of 60,000 outside the city. Fears of reprisals against Russian "collaborators" and murder of citizens swept throughout the city should NATO/Ukraine take the city. Another Ukrainian offensive in the region was halted by Russian forces on October 16, 2022.
On October 18, 2022 the AFU/NATO launched a US-made High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM) and hit the Energia stadium in Nova Kakhovka, Kherson region, killing two civilians and injuring others. In a late-night TV address a Kherson official called for people to "evacuate the city as quickly as possible" and said Ukraine "will begin an offensive on the city of Kherson very soon."<ref>https://youtu.be/frn2NqZHzbE</ref> Approximately 50,000-60,000 civilians were being ferried across the Dnieper river. Russian Commander of the Integrated Group of Forces in Ukraine Army General Sergey Surovikin told reporters,
{{quotebox-float|"The NATO command of the armed forces of Ukraine has long been demanding offensive operations in the Kherson direction from the Kiev regime, regardless of any casualties – both in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and among the civilian population.
The Russian military is aware of Kiev’s plans to use “prohibited” means of waging war in the Kherson area, and Ukraine is preparing a massive strike on the Kakhovka hydroelectric plant, located on the Dnieper River, as well as launching massive rocket and artillery attacks on Kherson itself.
These actions can lead to the destruction of the infrastructure of this large industrial center and massive casualties among the civilian population.
In the ongoing effort to dislodge the Russian military from its positions, Kiev is pouring its reserves ''en masse'' into the frontline.
The vast majority of those reserves are [[territorial defense]] units, who have not been properly trained. Such troops have low morale, thus they are propped up by “barrier squads” composed of hardline nationalists who shoot anyone trying to leave the battlefield.
The enemy’s losses amount to 600 to 1,000 casualties daily.
We have a different strategy. We are not aiming at fast-paced offensives, we spare every soldier and methodically grind the enemy’s attacking forces. This not only minimizes our own losses, but also significantly reduces the amount of victims among the civilian population.
The enemy is the criminal regime that pushes Ukrainian citizens towards death.
We are one people with Ukrainians and only wish for Ukraine to be a state independent from the West and NATO and friendly towards Russia."<ref>https://youtu.be/JjUe14xCZ3U</ref>}}
On the morning of October 19, 2022 the Ukrainian military launched another large-scale offensive with at least two battalions of the 128th Mountain Assault Brigade of the AFU, reinforced by a tank battalion of the 17th Brigade. A total of about 50 armored vehicles were reportedly deployed by the AFU in their offensive. By noon, the AFU transferred reserves to the battlefield. They included two companies of the 28th brigade and a tank company of the 56th motorized Infantry Brigade. At least two battalions of the 60th Separate Infantry Brigade, which are reinforced by foreign militants from the [[USA]], France, [[Belgium]] and [[Canada]] also took part in the offensive. According to the Russian MOD, all attacks were repelled with large losses on the NATO/Ukraine side.
A Russian computer simulation anticipated the effects of NATO/Ukraine's planned destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam across the Dnieper river on the city of Kherson and surrounding environs all the way to the river's mouth on the Black Sea. The territory is the home of some 300,000 civilians. The simulation anticipated a rise in the river's level of 1.5 meters, with a cresting wave of 4.5 meters. The water would take at least 3 days to recede during which time the NATO/Ukrainian offensive toward what was formally the city of Kherson would commence.<ref>https://youtu.be/BqV1ts5TIPE</ref>
On October 21, 2022 [[RT]] reporter Oleg Klokov was killed in a HIMAR attack on evacuating civilians.
==References==
==References==