Battles of Kiev & Kharkov | Ukraine Update – All You Need to Know
This transcripts belong to the video that was published at February 28th, 2022 and as such the information published in this article is based on the data that we had up until that point.
Let me tell you what the situation looks like in Ukraine. Here’s a live map of the conflict.
The red marks are Russian troops. As you can see they’re mostly above Crimea and in the Donbass region. Of course, there’s the matter of Kiev which you’ve been hearing conflicting reports about whether the Russians are actually have Kiev surrounded or they don’t have it surrounded. I’m going to be honest with you, there’s a lot of like hero stories which we’ll get to in a second but which don’t add up. We’ve been hearing a lot of things like these Russian jets have been shot down and yet, there’s no videos of it. In any case John Sweeney whom you might know from the BBC is in Kiev and he was saying he was basically just filming with his phone. He was saying that it’s particularly silent it’s quite eerie, there’s no shelling. There’s nothing happening in Kiev. So people are wondering are the Russians going to launch an offensive? what’s going on?
Day1
Now let’s look at the maps of Russian controlled territories which show you the progression of Russian forces. The picture on the left is from day. Russian forces going into Ukraine and as you can see Kharkiv was not doing too well. On the right, you can see the map of day four. As you can see, Kiev isn’t taken. There’s heavy fighting in Kharkiv from what I’m seeing. There has been interesting development or as western media calls it huge escalation in this fight. Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, has put the deterrent forces on high alert. When you say deterrent forces, it means nuclear forces. While that sounds very worrying, at the same time there’s actually some good news. This was reported a few hours ago that the Ukrainian President Zelensky agreed on Sunday to have Ukrainian officials take part in talks with Russia without preconditions. So Zelensky says that we agreed that the Ukrainian delegation would meet with the Russian delegation without preconditions on the Ukrainian Belarusian border, near the Pripyat river. I think everyone in the world is in agreement the best thing would be for the war to stop & for both parties to come to an agreement. I think that is that is without question the number one objective. I really hope that it works out.
I want to show you something else from a few days ago. This is from February 26th.
Putin reportedly offered peace if Ukraine embraced neutrality and rejected NATO’s arms. Ukraine’s President Zielinski was elected in 2019 largely by ethnic Russians on a platform to make peace with Russia which is ironic. The guy is in a war with Russia. He hasn’t foresworn NATO membership which is a shame because the people who elected him had hoped he would do something along those lines or at least maintain a peace with Russia. Well, this is a very regrettable situation but this is very interesting because of what I saw reported and this was from Sputnik. Of course, you’ll have your regular neoliberal democrat troll saying these things are not true but I haven’t seen Zielinski or anyone in Ukraine deny it. Again, John Pilger said is that Putin offered to I think he straight up just paused the operation and offered to enter negotiations with Ukrainians and then they didn’t hear back anymore from Kiev and so they kept on with the operation. Of course, this is after it already started right after the invasion started so I’m happy to see that there is a chance that there will be talks or some sort of agreement.
what I think happened is that Zelensky felt emboldened because he’s got NATO sending to him. They’re trying to send as many missile stinger as they can and I think it’s not just up to Zelenski. I can assure you he has people making decisions for him in London and new York sorry in Washington. Actually, new York isn’t far isn’t too far off right with Wall Street. They always call the shots but my point here is that NATO has a stake in this. This is a geopolitical issue. There are many other countries involved. It’s just like when you talk about Syria. You can’t just act like it’s a civil war. No, it’s not a civil war. There are tons of actors involved. Zelensky has NATO backing him and he doesn’t call the shots alone. They would never let him. So, what I think again and I’m just speculating and I think it’s reasonable to believe that.
A few days ago on Thursday when the Russians didn’t hear back from Kiev anymore, it was probably because the NATO was telling him not to accept and just take the weapons and keep going. In any case, my point is whatever the case may be, I’m happy there’s a chance that they enter talks and I really hope if something good comes to fruition. I just wanted to show you a bit from this report. This is from the United Nations from OCHA. They’re giving you an update. Keep in mind, this is from one day ago. This is from 26th of February. I would assume some of these figures are not exactly the same but I still wanted to give you what their latest report was. They’re saying Russian troops entered Ukraine with intense fighting ongoing across major cities including the capital Kiev, Kharkiv, Kersen and Odessa among others in the Donbass region. Then, they said as of 5p.m 26 February, the UN reported at least 240 civilian casualties including at least 64 dead. They also say damage to civilian infrastructure has left hundreds of thousands of people without electricity or water. Hundreds of homes have been damaged or destroyed while bridges and roads damaged by shelling have left some communities cut off from markets. I’ve seen also the mayor of Kiev talking about low food supplies because everything’s closed. Obviously, it doesn’t make it easy to fill up your pantry. So there are concerns about food because everyone’s on lockdown. Essentially now, according to the UN, more than 160,000 people have reportedly been internally displaced. When we talk about internally displaced, that means they’ve left their homes but they’re inside Ukraine. They haven’t gone outside Ukraine. They say over 116,000 have been forced to flee across international borders into neighboring European countries. Government estimates, as many as 5 million refugees in worst case scenarios which is, obviously, a lot. I’m going to get into the situation at the border where people are trying to get into Poland. For example, some really racist stuff are going on which I’ll break down for you. There are lots of people who are internally and internationally displaced now as a result of the conflict. We have seen that happen in Syria before. My heart goes out to them. I don’t think anyone should have to live through that. In any case, I expect these figures to be a bit different because this was from one or two days ago. Another update that I can give you is that the EU has shut down its airspace for Russian planes.
These are the countries (those that are in blue) that have planned an airspace ban for Russian flights. They said: we’re not going to let any more Russian planes through European airspace and that includes the oligarchs. You keep hearing this term, oligarchs which to me is kind of amusing because the people who are saying it, especially when it’s coming from the U.S. Corporate media. You turn on CNN and they’re talking to you about Russian oligarchs while at this exact same moment you have American oligarchs denying you health care, good wages, dignity. It’s like the focus. It is really something. Anyway, the head of the EU commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced this. Basically, all such planes including the private jets of oligarchs that I told you will now be unable to land in, take off from or fly over any EU nation. As a result, Russian plans have also been banned from UK airspace. You have to keep in mind, this is something that happens a lot in international relations. There’s always a tit for tat. That could be anything. For example, Israel attacks Iran and its nuclear program and then Iran beefs up its nuclear program as a result. The UK bans CGTN and China bans the BBC. Here, the EU bans Russian planes and Russia bans UK planes. There’s always a tit for tat. So, Russia’s biggest air flight airline Aeroflot said it would cancel all flights to European destinations as a result. These are some of the brief updates.
The Ukrainian delegation will meet with the Russian delegation without preconditions on the Ukrainian Belarusian border near the Pripyat River. I only hope for the best for both parties. I think this is really important. I’m just speculating, but what I think is that, the Russians have refrained from really launching a full offensive. I’ll elaborate more on that in a second but I think the reason for that is, you’ve had civilians that have already been killed. The Russians are trying to avoid killing civilians. That’s why they haven’t flattened the capital city or seized the government buildings. What I think, they’re trying to do is create leverage as we’ve been talking about in order to force the Ukrainian government’s hand and so on you’ve seen a lot of talk in the mainstream media about Vladimir Putin wanting to unleash 200,000 troops and it’s going to be like a d-day Normandy invasion and he’s going to go to Kiev and he’s going to install a puppet government after he overthrows the Zelensky. That hasn’t happened. Look, let’s not kid ourselves. Here, this is Russia. They have more nukes than any other country. If they really wanted to they would have taken Kiev by now. They would have seized the government buildings and already put a puppet in place. That’s obviously not the strategy. That’s what the western press thinks the strategy is but very obviously it’s not. What I think they’re trying to do is create leverage to force the Ukrainians into negotiations. It’s very funny because while people are appalled at this. It’s actually an American thing, they call it coercive diplomacy. Nixon used this term famously during the cold war in Vietnam. They literally bombed the living hell out of Vietnam in order to bomb the Viet Cong to the negotiating table. I can assure you it was much uglier than this. They had linebacker one and linebacker two. These operations were carried out by sending dozens of b-52s to carpet bombing Vietnam. It’s quite horrendous. I just find it funny that the west is appalled that at coercive diplomacy. It’s actually something engineered by the Americans. This is just me speculating but I think given the facts that they haven’t taken the capital, they haven’t seized any government buildings, I think that’s what’s going on.
