{"id":130193,"date":"2022-11-25T16:52:14","date_gmt":"2022-11-25T23:52:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=130193"},"modified":"2022-11-25T16:52:14","modified_gmt":"2022-11-25T23:52:14","slug":"putins-sledgehammer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2022\/11\/25\/putins-sledgehammer\/","title":{"rendered":"Putin&#8217;s Sledgehammer"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em><a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" title=\"Articles, Columns, and Major Blog Posts by Mike Whitney\" href=\"https:\/\/www.unz.com\/author\/mike-whitney\/\" rel=\"author\">MIKE WHITNEY<\/a><span class=\"datewords\">\u00a0 Courtesy The Unz Review<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p><strong>The Ukrainians are in bad shape\u2026<\/strong>\u00a0It won\u2019t be long before the Ukrainians run out of food. It won\u2019t be long before they freeze\u2026 They have done all that we can reasonably expect them to do.\u00a0<strong>It\u2019s time to negotiate\u2026. before the offensive begins, because once it begins, there will be no further discussion between Moscow and Kiev until it is over to the satisfaction of the Russians.\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?app=desktop&amp;v=CB9yBkVAfDQ&amp;t=11s\">Colonel Douglas MacGregor,<\/a>\u00a0War in Ukraine; Quiet Before the Storm\u201d, 15 minute-mark<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p><strong>Strictly speaking, we haven\u2019t started anything yet.\u201d Russian President Vladimir Putin<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"p_1_3\">The relentless attacks on Ukraine\u2019s electrical grid, fuel-storage units, railway hubs, and Command-and-Control centers mark the beginning of a second and more lethal phase of the war. The increased tempo of the high-precision, long-range missile attacks suggests that Moscow is laying the groundwork for a major winter offensive that will be launched as soon as Russia\u2019s 300,000 reservists join their formations in east Ukraine.\u00a0<strong>Kiev\u2019s refusal to negotiate a settlement that addresses Russia\u2019s core security concerns, has left Russian president Vladimir Putin with no other option but to defeat Ukrainian forces on the battlefield and impose a settlement through force-of-arms.<\/strong>\u00a0<strong>The impending winter offensive is designed to deliver the knock-out punch Russia needs to achieve its strategic objectives and bring the war to swift end<\/strong>. This is from Reuters:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Full Report<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.unz.com\/mwhitney\/putins-sledgehammer\/\">Putin&#8217;s Sledgehammer, by Mike Whitney &#8211; The Unz Review<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MIKE WHITNEY\u00a0 Courtesy The Unz Review The Ukrainians are in bad shape\u2026\u00a0It won\u2019t be long before the Ukrainians run out of food. It won\u2019t be long before they freeze\u2026 They have done all that we can reasonably expect them to do.\u00a0It\u2019s time to negotiate\u2026. before the offensive begins, because once it begins, there will be [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-130193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130193\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}