State run media CNN reporting!!!
~~~~~~~~~
Biden officials privately doubt that Ukraine can win back all of its territory.
By Natasha Bertrand, CNN
Updated 12:00 AM ET, Tue June 28, 2022
(CNN) White House officials are losing confidence that Ukraine will ever be able to take back all of the land it has lost to Russia over the past four months of war, US officials told CNN, even with the heavier and more sophisticated weaponry the US and its allies plan to send.
Advisers to President Joe Biden have begun debating internally how and whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky should shift his definition of a Ukrainian "victory" -- adjusting for the possibility that his country has shrunk irreversibly.
---
HERE IS THE END OF THIS STORY. THE ENTIRE STORY IS OVER ON STATE RUN MEDIA CNN, but this last part is too damn juicy for old Dale to leave alone.
Let us proceed...
[[[The hunt for Soviet-era weaponry
As CNN has previously reported, Russia is looking in particular to exploit the gap between how much Soviet-style ammunition Ukraine and its allies have in their stockpiles, and how long it will take the west to provide Ukraine with modern, NATO-standard weapons and munitions that require time-consuming training.
A senior defense official acknowledged to CNN that the Soviet-era stocks are "dwindling," but haven't yet reached "rock bottom." The official said that some eastern European countries still have more they could provide -- but only if they continue to be backfilled by allies with more modern equipment.
The US and its allies, meanwhile, have been scrounging the world for the kind of Soviet-era ammunition that fits the equipment Ukraine already has, including 152 mm artillery ammunition. NATO-standard weapons fire larger, 155mm rounds. But another US defense official told CNN that effort is effectively reaching its end, with almost everything available that countries are willing to provide having already gone in.
Given the prodigious rate at which the Ukrainians have gone through their older ammunition in the bruising artillery fight in the Donbas, the official said, "Soviet-era weapons are being wiped off the earth."]]]