‘An inflection point’: How the next 100 days may look in Ukraine

Russia's war in Ukraine has now gone on for 100 days. CNN's Ben Wedeman, CNN's Brian Todd and retired Army Gen. James "Spider" Marks look back at the evolving military strategies of Russia and what the state of the battlefield may be in the next few months.
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54 comments

  1. If the map showed the valleys and hilltops it would make a lot more sense to people as far as tactics and success or the opposite…

    1. Ukraine in the East is famously flat. It’s got lots of marshes and forests which are useful. And the rivers are nice.

      In the Donbas, the Ukrainians had like three lines of defense, but they’ve now been pushed beyond the third.

      But in that sense I agree with you. The lack of valleys and hills, the flat terrain, has been to the use of the invading Russians and is obviously no small part of their success.

      The biggest western and Ukrainian failure was not having any defense for the bridge between Crimea and the Ukraine. They put a damn on the canal there, to cause a drought in the Crimea but didn’t build bunkers or even have many men deployed there. Eventually I’d like an answer for that.

    2. @Someathinanamebutainitalina Depends on the bridge we are talking about.. If you are talking about the land bridge around the village of Perekop, Crimea well it’s 4 miles across at the narrowest part Perekop sits in the middle of it, has a population of 1000 and is still small enough that there is no shoreline property in the town on either embankment. Just north of Perkop is Preobrazhenka, Ukraine population 3K, it’s a bit bigger and touches both banks of the land bridge. That is part of the problem, Ukrainians where living right there, right in the middle of the section you want to militarize.

      You can’t get Floridians to evacuate from a hurricane that everyone KNOWS is coming. How would you get Ukrainians to leave their homes when NO ONE believed that Russians were stupid enough to actually invade?  

      The other philosophy is “defense in depth”, A US doctrine has long been in preached (the US never actually had to do this.. It’s a doctrine we preach to our Allies (since the 1960’s).) Only defend the front lightly against a Russian Blitz. As defense you’ll want to stretch the Russian lines, so just let them have it. Not until the Russians gain sufficient territory (territory you’ve given them) only then attack their supply and support, and starve the spear point of supplies like fuel, food and ammo. Eventually that spear point will break as they run out of ammo to defend themselves with, fuel to keep them in the fight and finally starve them. This is exactly what played out in the north (it was text book). But this is also why the south had played out like it did. (Ukraine used the same US strategy in both locations.)

      What is more interesting to me is the Tuzla “Crimean bridge” in the south. It’s an actual bridge.

    1. We need medicin , food . We need to helping those who had nothing or it turn back to us . Yeeeee its the way it works

  2. Took many decades to build Ukrain and only 100 days to destroy it. That’s very sad. FSLN

    1. Not to mention when the war is over how much we will send to rebuild Ukraine. I wish they put this much into rebuilding our cities.

  3. I wonder how many people are dead in all that rubble. So sad. Ukraine is/was a beautiful country. So sad to see this happening 😔

  4. What a shame and disgrace to the face of the earth to see the devastation of other humans hard years of work just crumble to the ground by an invader, who has no mercy on innocent children and vulnerable people. While the invader’s country is standing supreme and the world sits and look on. It is unbelievable this is happening in this century. What a shame.

  5. I disagree with the retired Army Gen. I think Russia planed this well. First attacked the capital to pin a significant fraction of the Ukraine force there. Then quickly concentrated the Russian force around the eastern and southern regions. Now all dots are mainly connected with the Russian mainland. Logistic problems solved. After the Donbas is taken, soon Russia will extend the connection to the strategic city, Odesa. If so, Ukraine will be completely cut off from the sea. Ukraine will be in big trouble then, economically, militarily and politically.
    Glory to Ukraine, but we people also need to face the plain reality, i.e., Russia is actually winning the war.
    Peace!

    1. Agree but without Glory to Ukraine 😁 I wish succes to Russian forces to bring this to a quick end

    2. ​@Randen Richards There should be no problem with the man power. Russian speaking locals can be quickly organized and equipped with weapons. This is one reason the Russian military forces focus on the south and east of Ukraine.

    3. ​@Randen Richards I agree that the Russian forces pay the price a lot. But the bottom line is that Russia has nuclear weapons and currently controls the air. Russia can not possibly lose this war. Anyhow, things will become crystal clear after another 100 days.
      Peace to Ukraine people!

  6. Wolf, you have had a remarkable and prestigeous career and have become and will undoubtedly forever remain an icon of ‘truth-to-power’ television journalism. Ben Wedeman and the foot-soldier-journalists who follow the world’s conflicts do us all a great service by giving us sound-bites and visuals of the ravages of armed conflict as well as live in great peril at times to bring us the latest updates. Wolf, we have passed the 100-day mark of a war that is illegal and immoral by the Russian Empire which has signed treaties saying sovereign countries must never be invaded. But as you know, Putin has one thing on his side that he will play to the maximum: time. What I suggest is that now that 100 days have been passed, you and your colleagues at CNN have a round-table and see if you can come up with a new way of showing us the next 100 days of reporting the war in Ukraine. What do I mean by that? People get numbed-down seeing the same thing—even if its horrific visuals and harrowing testimonials. If you see burned-out tanks enough, after they become part of the scenery. What am I getting at? I haven’t got a suggestion per se, but there must be a way to make the next hundred days look, feel and sound different. It could be the way you film it and for you in the studio, maybe a new background, a turning studio that has you moving slowly with the Ukrainian country’s landscape behind you. There could even be a change in how Ben and his colleagues bring us the latest unfolding events in the field to make it look like we’re seeing things for the first time. We must do this so we don’t lose the world’s attention. I would change every 100 days in how you report the war. It could be backgrounds, it could be reporters in the field filming and showing us things at a different angle or questioning the locals in a slightly more detached or intimae way. Why not have one reporter showing us children’s drawings and asking them questions about their art work? I’m not complaining, but attention spans wither in the digital age. We can’t let this war fade away and let Putin win…

  7. *So according to CNN Russia has occupied Donbas since 2014?. So the battle for Mariupol was fictitious then?…and why AZOV had their military base in Donbas if Russia was in control then? (Mariupol is in the Donbas region).*

  8. “La literatura es lo contrario de una bomba nuclear.”
    “Literature is the opposite of a nuclear bomb.”
    -Arundhati Roy (1961-, Planet Earth)

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