Quote Originally Posted by Shchors View Post
I too second Outlaw 09's position mentioned above that the Russian Buk shot down the wrong civilian airliner on July 15. There were reports of an averted Russian invasion overnight from July 17-18, that was aborted at the last minute. At the time, it remained a mystery. In light of the Ukrainian SBU's (intelligence service) recent publication of the theory that this incursion was to follow Russian outrage and Western sympathy over a Russian airliner that was to have been shot down over Ukrainian territory by a Russian Buk, but with the Malaysian Air Flight 777 falling instead, the recall of the invasion now makes sense. Regarding Outlaw 09's comment about mission orders, you have to realize that the US Army and Marines occasionally train to fight where they face an equal adversary and their officers try to adjust on the fly on the basis of general mission orders, but in actuality fight scripted wars from above where the adversary has to hide and use guerilla tactics or roadside IED's because of American might, especially in the air and because of integrated digital communications and satellite intelligence. The Ukrainians and Russian separatists, to a large degree, are fighting a WWII era campaign without the sophisticated communications equipment, except at higher staff level. The battalion commanders have mere radio, which as we all know, is not always reliable. My understanding is that the disparate units of the UA, operating apart from each other at a distance of multiple kilometers, have had a problem in maintaining lateral communications, being in touch only vertically with higher headquarters. Nonetheless, when two sides are evenly matched, sophisticated communications often break down as a result of casualties and destroyed equipment, leaving it up to the field commanders to use their intuition to decide what to do next on the basis of limited information. The war in East Ukraine is both fascinating and horrible; a throwback to bold and daring maneuvers between the Wehrmacht and the Red Army.
It seems that whatever the UA is doing is working as this seems to indicate the newly appointed Donetsk leader has been signaling he wants a ceasefire.

However, hours after Strelkov's statement, rebels said they had reclaimed Krasnyi Luch. "According to preliminary data, Krasnyi Luch is cleared of enemy forces. The battle continues on the outskirts of the city and near Miusynsk from the east," read a tweet from the official account of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic.

With Ukrainian forces pressing down on the rebels, the newly appointed separatist leader in Donetsk Alexander Zakharchenko said he was ready for a ceasefire to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe in the city.

“We hope that the international community will influence the bloodthirsty Kyiv government,” he told RIA Novosti.

The Ukrainian government did not immediately respond to Zakharchenko's statement.