Victory Chronicles
-DAY 126

RUSSIAN TERRORISM

Above: Kremenchuk mall after Russian terrorist attack.  Photo via Ukraine Media Crisis Center

• A day after Russian missiles hit a central Ukrainian shopping center filled with people, analysts are unable to predict how long the aggressor can sustain its relentless artillery terror campaign against Ukraine’s civilian population.

COMBAT HIGHLIGHTS

Above: Occupied territory as of August 11, 2014. After four months of full-scale invasion, Russian aggression and terror have tactically failed. Map via Wikimedia Commons

• While the enemy has made progress in western Luhansk Oblast over the last month, Ukraine has mostly contained it along the rest of the roughly 1000 kilometer (620 mile) front.  This is a rather astonishing fact since, only months ago, Russia was thought to have the second strongest military in the world.
• The battle for Severodonetsk has shifted a few kilometers to the west to Lysychansk, the last large unoccupied city in Luhansk Oblast. After their failure to take both Kyiv and Kharkiv, the struggling enemy positioned half of all its available combat forces around the Donbas pocket, then struggled for weeks to take small bites of  Luhansk Oblast at great cost.
• Russia now focuses its offensive on the remaining part of Donetsk Oblast, specifically the cities of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, only fifty kilometers from Lysychansk.
• Just prior to the invasion, Russia illegally recognized the sovereignty of occupied Luhansk and Donetsk. Therefore, the complete occupation of Luhansk and Donetsk Oblasts will give the Kremlin a great propaganda victory at home and an excuse to pause the exhausted and depleted “special military operation”.

NATO SUMMIT

Above: Anti-war rallies in Madrid call for an end to Russian military intervention in Ukraine. Photo via Anadolu Agency

• On the heels of the G7 meeting in Germany, the media is replete with arrival videos as NATO leadership convenes for a three-day summit in Madrid, Spain.  The agenda focuses on the creation of a new Strategic Concept detailing how to significantly strengthen the alliance’s deterrence and defense capabilities in the face of Russian aggression.
• Netherlands Minister-President Mark Rutte tweeted that Turkiye gave the green light to NATO accession for Finland and Sweden. Turkiye signed a trilateral memorandum with the applicant countries confirming Ankara’s support. Finish and Swedish membership is on the agenda at the NATO summit starting today and analysts expect that the alliance will fast track the membership process for these countries.  Finland shares a 1,300 kilometer border with Russia, while Sweden shares about 200 kilometers.