Reisner's view of the front: "Trump's demand is immoral and unacceptable"

ntv.de Reisner's view of the front: "Trump's demand is immoral and unacceptable" 1 hour • 5 minutes reading time Ukraine cannot continue to fight without military aid from the USA. But President Trump is first ringing in "payback time" for the past three years. Colonel Reisner explains to ntv.de why it is so difficult and urgent for Europe to position itself in the chaos, and where Ukraine can show success. Markus Reisner: We continue to see - and I know I'm repeating myself - massive Russian attacks. But the Ukrainian army is still successfully delaying the advance. If you look at the long front line, from Zaporizhia up towards Donetsk and Luhansk, there is the city of Kupjansk. Here, north of the city, the Russians have managed to form three bridgeheads across the Oskil River. Here, combined with an attack from Shebekino, they could manage to break a large piece of territory out of Ukraine. The Russians are trying to carry out a kind of flanking movement from two sides, a pincer movement, and after weeks they might finally succeed in breaking the pocket. Just like they did at Kurachowe: that was a massive pocket about 30 to 40 kilometers deep, which has now fallen entirely to the Russian side. You have to imagine the possible pocket north of Kupiansk as a rectangle. The narrow side is about 30 kilometers, the long side measures about 120 kilometers. Whether it will end up being occupied by Russia is an open question. But from their point of view, this area is the most suitable operationally for trying. The biggest challenge for Ukraine at the strategic level continues to be generating available soldiers. This is also clearly visible in the Kursk area. Here there is a whole hodgepodge of different Ukrainian units in combat. At first glance it looks very powerful, but the units are simply extremely thinned out in some cases. The General Staff is trying to bring in forces as quickly as possible. But currently a Ukrainian battalion of 500 men only has a maximum of a third of that available on average. On Sunday night we had the incredible number of 267 Russian "Geran-2" drones flying into Ukrainian airspace for the first time. These are attack drones the size of a Mini Cooper. On Monday night there were still 185 drones. The Russians are now producing these drones in two factories. So we must expect that the Russian army will carry out 200 to 250 drone flights per night in the future. This increases the saturation effect for the Ukrainian air defense enormously. ... with the intention of further destroying the critical infrastructure in the interior of the country. But let's also take a quick look at the Ukrainians' successes: west of Pokrovsk they managed to regain possession of part of the interrupted supply line with the help of massive attacks. Perhaps you remember: The Russians had occupied the town of Kotlyne on the important railway line towards Pokrovsk. The Ukrainians have recaptured the town and also carried out a successful relief attack south of Pishane. They were thus able to make up a few square kilometers. The Ukrainians are under massive Russian pressure there. The Russian army is constantly pushing them back, and an important Ukrainian supply route is increasingly under fire. This makes it difficult for Kiev's army to hold on there. The fierce fighting continues. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Selenskyj is now offering his own resignation in return for NATO membership. In the past few weeks, since Donald Trump took over the US presidency, I have seen a massive deterioration in the Ukrainian position. It ranges from the offer of a land swap to the current offer of resignation. This announcement seems very ambitious to me. But it is clear that the Trump team is working flat out to achieve a result. In my view, to achieve a result to the detriment of Ukraine. Macron wants to appeal to Trump's conscience In line with the content of the agreement, Trump has demanded that for every US dollar that the USA has spent on Ukraine so far, two dollars should be returned. This should be in the form of mining rights to resources - rare earths, oil, gas. Ukraine is to transfer 50 percent of its resources to the USA for private commercial exploitation. 50 percent because the other half of the deposits are in Russian-occupied areas. Security guarantees were not included in the agreement for the time being, the American Treasury Secretary made that clear. That would be a radical sell-out, a catastrophe. Trump's demand is immoral and unacceptable.