Mark Sumner reports in Daily Kos:
Russian forces continued assault operations in Bakhmut and its vicinity on April 20. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled 22 Russian attacks in the Bakhmut direction. Russian forces attempted to improve their tactical positions in the Kreminna area and conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near the southern outskirts. Russian forces in the east (left) bank of Kherson Oblast are equipping defensive lines, looting, and transporting looted goods in cars, as Russian forces feel insecure about their positions. Discourse about the likely upcoming Ukrainian counteroffensive is filling the Russian information space.
Russian forces continued defensive preparations in southern Ukraine out of concern for a possible Ukrainian counteroffensive.·Russian forces continued assault operations in Bakhmut and its vicinity on April 20. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled 22 Russian attacks in the Bakhmut direction – specifically in Bakhmut city and in the area of Khromove (2km northwest of Bakhmut).[30] A Kremlin-affiliated milblogger claimed that Russian conventional forces attempted to advance towards Stupochky (about 14km southwest of Bakhmut) while Wagner Group forces continued to attack Ukrainian forces from central, southern, and northern parts of Bakhmut.[31] A Russian source claimed that Wagner forces are changing the direction of the main attack against Bakhmut and are intensifying efforts to advance towards the O0506 highway that runs through Khromove into Bakhmut.[32] A milblogger claimed that Wagner forces attacked near Khromove and were able to advance to an unspecified highway - likely the O0506 - that Ukrainian forces use as a ground line of communication (GLOC) into Bakhmut.[33] Geolocated footage posted on April 20 showed Ukrainian forces shelling Russian positions northwest of Khromove.[34] A Wagner-affiliated source published a video purportedly showing Wagner tank crews firing at Ukrainian forces in central Bakhmut using T-90 tanks.[35] Another Russian milblogger claimed that Wagner forces are ”confidently” holding positions in the area of the Bakhmut administration building and the central square forces while Ukrainians hold a ”relatively small” portion of the urban area.Russian forces continued limited ground attacks in the Kreminna area on April 20. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces attempted to improve their tactical positions in the Kreminna area and conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near the southern outskirts of Kreminna and near Hryhorivka (11km south of Kreminna).[25] Ukrainian sources reported battles near Bilohorivka (12km south of Kreminna) and that Chechen Akhmat Special Forces are operating near the settlement.[26] A prominent Russian milblogger claimed that previous Russian claims that Ukrainian forces withdrew from Spirne (13 km south of Bilohorivka) were premature and that Ukrainian forces still control the settlement as of April 20.[27] Another Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful ground attacks in the direction of Torske (15 km west of Kreminna), Terny (17 km northwest of Kreminna), and Nevske (17 km northwest of Kreminna).[28]Russian forces continued defensive preparations in southern Ukraine. Spokesperson of the Ukrainian “Grim” (“Thunder”) Tactical Group Dmytro Pletenchuk stated on April 20 that Russian forces in the east (left) bank of Kherson Oblast are equipping defensive lines, looting, and transporting looted goods in cars, as Russian forces feel insecure about their positions.[48] Pletenchuk noted that discourse about the likely upcoming Ukrainian counteroffensive is filling the Russian information space.[49] Pletenchuk stated that minefields actively inhibit Russian advances in an unspecified area in southern Ukraine. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces will transfer 400 conscripts from Izyumivka (14km northwest of Feodosia) to defensive positions in Volodymyrivka, Crimea (18km southwest of Yevpatoria).[50] Russian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Alexander Gordeev claimed that Russian forces operated a TOS-1A thermobaric artillery system, normally a military district-level asset, near Novodanylivka (36km southwest of Hulyaipole) in western Zaporizhia Oblast, which could indicate a Russian prioritization to augment Russian defensive positions along this line
No one has really managed to give a better list of the reasons that the United States stands so strongly behind Ukraine than Secretary of State Tony Blinken did in a speech to the U.N. back in September 2022.
Defending Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity is about much more than standing up for one nation’s right to choose its own path, as fundamental as that right is. It’s also about defending an international order where no nation can redraw the borders of another by force. If we fail to defend this principle, when the Kremlin is so flagrantly violating it, we send a message to aggressors everywhere that they can ignore it, too. We put every country at risk.
Blinken’s speech was calmly delivered, but clearly heartfelt. It worked unflinchingly through a list of Russian crimes in Ukraine, dealt with Russia’s repeated nuclear threats, and looked at how Russia’s war in Ukraine affected the whole planet, including raising the cost of food everywhere. It’s a speech that deserves to be remembered. This point near the end, while certainly not original, was quite powerful:
Here’s the reality. None of us chose this war. Not the Ukrainians, who knew the crushing toll it would take. Not the United States, which warned that it was coming and worked to prevent it … One man chose this war. One man can end it. Because if Russia stops fighting, the war ends. If Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ends.
As Russian sources keep making clear, that’s not just true of the nation of Ukraine. It’s also true of the people of Ukraine.
With the latest round of peace proposals being pressed by multiple analysts, it’s worth remembering that all these supposed solutions for “lasting peace” are actually formulas for three things:
Dividing Ukraine
Preventing Ukraine from entering NATO
Giving Russia a chance to rebuild their military
Proposals like those put forward at Foreign Policy assume that sometime later this year, after “the fighting season” ends, the United States and Europe will get tired of supporting Ukraine. The U.S. will also give up on that other thing, the one Blinken mentioned in his speech, about how failing to fight redrawing national boundaries by force invites others to do the same.
Ultimately, the solution requires what seems very close to the ultimate irony. The U.S. and others who have so studiously stood aside while Ukraine sacrificed tens of thousands in the fight against Russia and refused every call from Volodymyr Zelenskyy to “close the skies,” should actually put boots on the ground to stop Ukrainian forces from attacking Russian invaders. As that highly realpolitik Foreign Policy proposal puts it…
Ideally, both Ukraine and Russia would pull back their troops and heavy weapons from the new line of contact, effectively creating a demilitarized zone. A neutral organization—either the UN or the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe—would send in observers to monitor and enforce the cease-fire and pullback. The West should approach other influential countries, including China and India, to support the cease-fire proposal.
Something about that solution seems a lot less than ideal. And that something is not just that it rewards Russia by allowing it to keep some of what it took by force, punishes Ukraine by removing territory and its autonomy to defend itself, and benefits China by elevating its position in the settlement. It’s also ignoring what Russia has done in Ukraine. The mass graves scattered from Irpin to Izyum. The torture. The beheading. The theft of children from multiple occupied cities. The mass deportation of citizens from Mariupol. How can these things be dissolved by drawing a line? Apparently, they don’t need to be.
Ukraine might want these things addressed, but “Putin would surely reject these demands out of hand” and “ideally, the cease-fire would hold,” leading to a stable division of Ukraine like Korea. Which, again, was what Putin said he wanted.
But assuming that Ukraine can be divided into two stable factions, no matter how unsatisfactory or immoral that may seem, is ignoring more than just the war crimes Russia has committed. It’s ignoring the war crimes Russia wants to commit.
Calls like this one, for the “liquidation” of Ukrainians, aren’t hard to find. They’re present both in the statements of Russian officials and in the daily propaganda shows that blanket Russia.
Genocidal speech is directly connected to the bodies on the streets of Bucha. It’s right there in that Russian pilot’s decision to drop a bomb on children sheltering in the theater at Mariupol. It was vividly illustrated by two men carving off the head of a screaming Ukrainian prisoner with a knife—and putting him in a pile with others who faced similar treatment.
It’s certainly not unusual for any nation to try and dehumanize its opponent in war. World War I recruiting posters in the United States and the U.K. treated Germans as barbaric “Huns.” World War II propaganda in America was genuinely disgusting in its characterization of the Japanese.
But Russia has harnessed the zeitgeist of the moment, the easy ability to use false reporting and social media to elicit fear, evoke anger, and cement raw hate, to create a policy of genocide toward Ukraine. If the U.S. gets frustrated enough with the progress of the war to forget this, then we’re guilty of losing touch with every aspect of that speech by Blinken. A speech that really needs to be remembered.
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