Ukraine attacks Russia: Kremlin Says Ukrainian Attack on Fuel Depot in Russia Unhelpful for Peace Talks – My Military Analysis
[The Ukrainians are not acknowledging it. But my assessment is that this is most probably true.I have been wondering if the Jews are going to try to expand this war between Russia and Ukraine. Until now, Ukraine has been fighting inside Ukrainian territory. The only military reason for this could be if this fuel depot is a very important logistical point where the Russians get a lot of their fuel from. Remember the Russians have fuel supply lines into Ukraine. Russian logistics is already a huge problem. From what I see, Russian logistics played a big part in slowing down the Russians. This might be a key point from which the Russians get fuel and send it to Ukraine. Hitting it would then play a big role in starving the Russian armour of fuel. That could present the Russians with a LOT of problems. It could be a really brilliant move. I took a look at the map. This is almost like in Rhodesia/South Africa where the Blacks were being reinforced from across the border. And it carried on for years until the Rhodesian/South African armies began doing cross border strikes. Remember, there is a whole Russian army sitting inside Ukraine. This could be very clever because it means the Russians would NEVER have seen this in their planning. So popping a huge fuel depot that the Russians use to supply their armour and trucks with, will totally bugger things up for them. This city is just across the border from Kharkiv, the 2nd biggest city the Russians were fighting in. It could also play a role in the supply of armour/trucks to Kyiv. I would say that this might totally mess up a LOT of the Russian military operations, especially in the north. But it might even affect the North East. Also, this has a psychological angle. It means that if Belarus, for example were to fight Ukraine, that they need to be aware that they could also be attacked. Furthermore, if it took only 2 helicopters to do this, then there wasn't much defence. Looking more closely at this, the fuel depot does not seem that large. But I suspect it is very likely a valid target. The other aspect of this is that it also throws another spanner in the works – a big one for the Russians. They will have to begin DEFENDING various things inside Russia which they were not defending before. This means more troops, more weapons, more money. Militarily this is a clever move. If the Ukrainians begin knocking valid targets – e.g. Bridges for example – it could become a nightmare for the Russians. And it could have a serious effect on Russia's ability to wage war in Ukraine. The Americans especially, are big believers in destroying infrastructure. As per WW2 and thereafter. It's a common American tactic. The only place they did not use it much was in Vietnam. That's a topic for another day. Jan]
The Kremlin on Friday accused Ukraine of a military strike against a fuel depot in the Russian city of Belgorod while saying that the attack was unhelpful for the progress of Russia-Ukraine peace talks, which were set to resume on Friday.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday that the strike, which Ukraine has neither confirmed nor denied, would do nothing to build trust between the two sides and could jeopardize peace talks.
“Clearly, it’s not what could create conditions for further talks,” he said, according to Russian state-backed media Tass.
Russian President Vladimir Putin had been informed about the Belgorod incident, according to state-backed media RIA Novosti.
The Kremlin’s claim that Ukraine carried out the attack could not be verified and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Friday he could not confirm or deny Ukraine’s alleged involvement in the Belgorod fuel depot strike, citing a lack of familiarity with details of military operations.
“I can neither confirm nor reject the claim that Ukraine was involved in this simply because I do not possess all the military information,” Kuleba said at a briefing in Warsaw, Poland, where he met with top officials to discuss the latest frontline developments in Ukraine.
Anastasia Golodova, a spokesperson for the airport in Belgorod, told Tass on Friday that two helicopters of the Ukraine armed forces had carried out two strikes that caused a fire at the city’s oil depot.
Golodova said the airport hadn’t sustained any damage and there were no casualties.
Footage posted on social media showed what appeared to be multiple rocket attacks from helicopters followed by a massive explosion, while another video showed a helicopter flying away from the scene as a blaze lit up the sky in the background.
Kuleba said Ukraine was waiting for Moscow’s formal response to Kyiv’s proposals laid out at peace talks in Turkey earlier in the week.
A centerpiece of the proposal put forward by Ukrainian negotiators in Istanbul on Tuesday was that Kyiv would renounce its bid to join NATO in exchange for security guarantees similar to the pact’s Article 5 arrangement where an attack on one member is considered an attack on all.
While a number of Western countries have expressed willingness to provide some form of security guarantees, there has been reluctance for commitments to intervene militarily in case Ukraine is attacked.
It comes as Russia-Ukraine peace talks resumed in video format on Friday, the 37th day of the war, according to Moscow’s chief negotiator Vladimir Medinsky.
“Our positions on Crimea and Donbass have not changed,” Medinsky said in a message on Telegram.
One of Moscow’s demands is for Kyiv to recognize Crimea as belonging to Russia and acknowledge the independence of the separatist-controlled Donetsk and Lugansk regions, known collectively as Donbass.
Medinsky said after Tuesday’s negotiations in Istanbul that he would pass along to Putin the terms proposed by Ukraine and come back later with a response.
There appears to be little hope for a breakthrough in talks in the near term, however.
Italian prime minister Mario Draghi, who spoke to Putin by phone on Wednesday, said that Putin told him that “small steps had been taken in the talks” so far but that the conditions “did not exist” for stopping military action.