The plan is also expected to include a tax on hotel stays and short-term rentals, including Airbnbs, floated to be up to $5 per booking. It is expected to raise millions of dollars for the heavily indebted state government across nearly 60,000 rooms available.

The government has argued a tax would boost supply in the long-term rental market, but the proposed move would put further pressure on landlords already struggling to meet fast-rising mortgage repayments.

The proportion of properties being sold by investors has risen steadily through the year, reaching a record of 40 per cent in Sydney in June and a near-record 36 per cent in Melbourne, compared to about 30 per cent of total listings a year ago. Each of these properties sold to an owner-occupier reduces the already tight supply of rental properties.

The Victorian government has already introduced a one-year freeze on rent increases for agreements that started on or after June 2019, a move followed by the Palaszczuk government in Queensland in April.

“Having introduced the one-year freeze … we obviously believed that reform in this space was needed and I am the first to say, in so many different areas, there’s always more work to do,” Mr Andrews said on Sunday.

“You never put a full stop, set and forget. There’s always more that has to be done to protect people who in any market have very little power.”

Though Mr Andrews refused to rule out the prospect of rent freezes and caps or a tourism levy, including on Airbnb rentals, he said the package would also streamline planning decisions to allow “good decisions, faster” and increase supply.

“Everything is on the table,” Mr Andrews said. “There’s a very long list of different policy approaches, different things we can do. We are shortening that list down… we’ll have more to say in a couple of months’ time.

“I think it will represent one of the biggest shake-ups in terms of delivering more housing and more housing choices and options that our state has ever seen.

“As I move around the community I think there’s nothing more important than getting more supply into our housing market, because with more supply, renters, those who want to buy, their parents, families, everybody who’s concerned about housing, will have more options.”

Ray White managing director Dan White slammed the Victorian proposal to introduce rent caps, telling The Australian Financial Review the result would be even fewer properties to rent as more landlords joined the big sell-off of investment properties.

Cate Bakos, who has a portfolio of investment properties and is a buyer’s agent in Melbourne who advises investors, said the proposal would make the rental supply problem worse and would hit mum and dad investors hardest.

“It’s a disaster, a terrible idea,” said Ms Bakos, who is also president of Buyers Advocate Australia. “It will disincentivise investors even further when we already have a supply problem.

Property investor Cate Bakos says capping rents would be a disaster for mum and dad landlords. Eamon Gallagher

“Victoria has been hit pretty hard already. The eviction moratorium was hard during COVID,” she said. “Since then there have been really onerous rental reforms, then we’ve had the extra land taxes added. Things are already difficult and this will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for many who are already struggling with mortgage payments.”

The number of landlords selling because of financial pressure caused by higher interest rates, land tax and council rates have surged in recent weeks.

Ray White recorded a doubling of investors selling at auction to 30 per cent in Sydney this weekend, while investors made up 32 per cent of auction sellers in Melbourne.

Mr White said the Victorian government even talking about rent caps added to investors’ nervousness.

“Portraying them as greedy landlords does not help things,” Mr White said.

Introducing rent caps would create “complete confusion” as each rental agreement was different.

“Some rents are above market rates and some are below. How would you even implement such a scheme?”

Victorian Opposition Leader John Pesutto said the Andrews government had become addicted to relying on taxes, having just introduced $11 billion in levies in the state budget eight weeks ago.

“Victorians are in the middle of a housing crisis and Daniel Andrews’ answer is a housing tax to pay off his Commonwealth debt,” he said.

“Every question seems to be answered by Daniel Andrews with a new tax. This new tax will punish Victorians further. Just eight weeks ago, we had a budget that saw $11 billion in new taxes to plug budget holes.

“A jobs tax, a schools tax, a rent tax, and here we are today looking at a housing tax when Victorians can least afford it.”

Mr Pesutto also said the government needed answers that would boost supply and investment. He warned plans to streamline planning decisions meant shutting out local government from the process when they should be given a say.

“We need solutions that will boost investment in housing, not discourage investment in housing, and a new housing tax is a signal to investors everywhere … that Victoria is not a place to invest,” he said.

“Everybody I talk to from renters to investors, all seem to agree that rent caps and other restrictions will discourage investment in housing supply.

Nearly two months since it began, Ukraine’s counteroffensive remains stalled. By attempting to advance through Russian minefields without air support or adequate anti-air weapons, the Ukrainian military has lost 26,000 men and more than 3,000 pieces of hardware, according to the latest figures from Moscow. In return, Ukraine has captured only a handful of hamlets and villages, while failing to penetrate Russia’s multi-layered network of defensive trenches and emplacements.

The US and its allies knew that such an outcome was inevitable, according to the Wall Street Journal. Citing leaked Pentagon documents, the newspaper claimed that US military analysts counted a “tiny number” of Ukrainian weapons capable of hitting Russian aircraft, and determined that Kiev would face an “inability to prevent Russian air superiority.”

“America would never attempt to defeat a prepared defense without air superiority, but [the Ukrainians] don’t have air superiority,” John Nagl, a retired US Army lieutenant colonel, told the paper. “It’s impossible to overstate how important air superiority is for fighting a ground fight at a reasonable cost in casualties.”

In public, American officials told a different story. “We believe that the Ukrainians will meet with success in this counteroffensive,” White House national security advisor Jake Sullivan told CNN on the eve of the operation. Several months earlier, Dan Rice, an Iraq War veteran who now serves as an adviser to the Ukrainian armed forces, declared that the counteroffensive would “shock the world” with its success.

European leaders were similarly optimistic. Polish President Andrzej Duda, who has been one of Kiev’s most fervent backers, announced in early June that the operation would lead to “the ousting of Russian military forces from all occupied territories.”

Western officials have since downgraded their expectations, and are privately “alarmed” at the lack of results on the battlefield, according to recent media reports. Western governments are therefore at a crossroads, and will soon need to decide whether to commit the massive amounts of arms, equipment, and money necessary to support Kiev in a longer conflict, the Wall Street Journal explained, citing anonymous diplomats.

… leave a smoking social crater, …

The attack damaged infrastructure, houses and other buildings, including some 25 landmarks in the city’s historic centre, a UNESCO World Heritage location. A total of 19 missiles were launched by Russia, including some from bases in Crimea, with air defence able to shoot down nine.

“All these missiles target not just cities, villages or people, but humanity and the foundations of our entire European culture,” Mr Zelensky said, urging strengthened air defence systems or an air “shield” for the country.

One person was killed and at least 21 injured, including four children. Mr Zelensky vowed retaliation, and Ukraine’s defence ministry called the strike “a war crime.”

In its daily briefing, Russia’s Defence Ministry said it had struck targets “where terrorist attacks were being prepared” in the Odessa area and all targets had been destroyed.

Separately, the ministry said Ukrainian reports of a Russian strike on the cathedral were false, and its targets in Odessa were located “a safe distance” from the cathedral complex. It said the “probable cause” of the damage to the cathedral was a Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile.

In a statement on Sunday, the ministry said that “the information disseminated by the Kiev regime about the Transfiguration Cathedral in the city of Odessa being hit by [Russian] high-precision weapons does not correspond to reality.” It added that all Russian strikes successfully hit military facilities in the region that were located “at a safe distance from the temple complex.”

Officials also stressed that “the planning of high-precision strikes against the military and terrorist infrastructure of the Kiev regime is carried out based on carefully vetted and confirmed information” in a bid to avoid hitting the civilian population as well as cultural sites.

The ministry added that the footage from the scene suggests that “the most likely cause for the destruction of [the cathedral] was the fall of a Ukrainian anti-aircraft guided missile.”

The incident could have been caused by the “incompetent actions” of personnel managing Ukrainian air defense systems which Kiev deliberately deploys in civilian-populated areas, it added.

According to the ministry, the Russian strikes overnight successfully hit Ukrainian naval facilities near Odessa that were “used to prepare terrorist acts against Russia” involving sea drones. Officials also claimed that the attack landed on compounds accommodating foreign mercenaries fighting for Kiev.

Photos circulating on social media appear to show extensive damage to the cathedral’s facade, with the floor inside the lavishly decorated building strewn with rubble. The pictures also show the altar smashed into pieces and shattered ceiling murals.

Initially founded in 1794, the Transfiguration Cathedral became the main church of the entire region before being demolished by the Soviets in 1936. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was restored and consecrated by Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, in 2010.

Russian war correspondents reporting on the opening missile barrages against Odessa last week confirm this targeting. When a grain storage terminal was hit, Boris Rozhin (“Colonel Cassad”) reported “an important detail, despite all the tantrums in Ukraine and [NATO], even according to official Ukrainian data, there are no civilian deaths.

Once again, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that with all the wealth of destructive means involved, not a single civilian was killed during the strikes.

– I wish the anti-oil protesters would glue themselves to the ground in the middle of the battle field. After all, those tanks run on gasoline.

– …Large Number of Western Mercenaries Eliminated

Let’s encourage more liberals to join the fight!

– Antifa is definitely welcome!!

– Get outta there! This is not a US fight at all.

– Exactly. Shame the US instigated it…as always.
Disband the CIA now….now that WOULD be a worthy Nobel Peace prize for whichever president had the balls to do it.

– Biden needs to distract from investigating his corruption….

– We don’t belong there.
We never did.

Biden and the others protecting their secret labs and money laundering playground are more than welcome to go there with their families.

They haven’t. Deep and deadly minefields, extensive fortifications and Russian air power have combined to largely block significant advances by Ukrainian troops. Instead, the campaign risks descending into a stalemate with the potential to burn through lives and equipment without a major shift in momentum.

As the likelihood of any large-scale breakthrough by the Ukrainians this year dims, it raises the unsettling prospect for Washington and its allies of a longer war—one that would require a huge new infusion of sophisticated armaments and more training to give Kyiv a chance at victory.

The political calculus for the Biden administration is complicated. President Biden is up for re-election in the fall of 2024 and many in Washington believe concerns in the White House about the war’s impact on the campaign are prompting growing caution on the amount of support to offer Kyiv.

The American hesitation contrasts with shifting views in Europe, where more leaders over recent months have come to believe that Ukraine must prevail in the conflict—and Russia must lose—to ensure the continent’s security.

But European militaries lack sufficient resources to supply Ukraine with all it needs to eject Moscow’s armies from the roughly 20% of the country that they control. European leaders are also unlikely to significantly increase support to Kyiv if they sense U.S. reluctance, Western diplomats say.

The shift in trans-Atlantic political winds, evident in tensions between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and U.S. officials at the recent North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Lithuania, has come as Ukraine’s long-expected offensive appears stalled. Kyiv’s inability to make headway against Russian defenses has persuaded many Western military observers that Ukrainian forces need more training in complex military maneuvers, more-potent air defenses and much more armor.

Moscow’s military, meanwhile, is grappling with low morale because of exhaustion, poor supplies and infighting among Russian leaders, Ukrainian and Western intelligence indicates. Russia appears unable to seize the initiative and attack Ukrainian positions, but its forces remain robust enough to man hundreds of miles of fortifications and large numbers of aircraft, which are keeping Kyiv’s troops at bay.

The situation is a sharp change from last year, when Ukraine’s scrappy and at-times uncoordinated fighters stunned Moscow and the world by halting and then repelling a far greater number of Russian forces from around Kyiv, and then Kharkiv and Kherson.

In those battles, Ukraine used a highly mobile, decentralized defense against Russia’s larger but lumbering ground forces. Moscow made limited use of its formidable air forces, failing to gain air superiority, which in turn allowed Ukrainian ground forces to batter Russian troops and their supplies.

Now, Ukraine is on the offensive against Russian positions where troops have had months to build extensive defenses including minefields, barriers and bunkers. Western military doctrine holds that to attack a dug-in adversary, an attacking force should be at least three times the enemy’s size and use a well-coordinated combination of air and land forces.

Kyiv’s troops lack the mass, training and resources to follow those prescriptions.

“Ukraine really needs to be able to scale up and synchronize military operations if it wants to be able to break through Russian defenses,” said Franz-Stefan Gady, an independent military analyst who recently toured Ukrainian front lines.

Gady said that rather than concentrating forces in assaults involving many units firing volleys of rockets and artillery—supporting simultaneous waves of advancing ground forces—Ukraine is attacking sequentially, with shelling followed by company-level infantry advances. The tactic “often telegraphs to the Russians that they’re attacking,” he said.

The small-scale approach, which is easier for commanders to orchestrate than pushing ground forces under covering artillery, creates its own problems, such as reduced mobility. Safely removing wounded soldiers from the front and bringing in fresh ammunition is more treacherous in company-level operations because the medical and logistics corps are less protected.

Conducting synchronized large-scale attacks is difficult for any armed force—even Western ones with more and better equipment than Ukraine has—because integrating vast numbers of land and air troops in the fast, violent ballet of a frontal assault is enormously difficult.

No Western military would also try to breach established defenses without controlling the skies.

“America would never attempt to defeat a prepared defense without air superiority, but they [Ukrainians] don’t have air superiority,” said John Nagl, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel who is now an associate professor of warfighting studies at the U.S. Army War College. “It’s impossible to overstate how important air superiority is for fighting a ground fight at a reasonable cost in casualties.”

Zelensky acknowledged in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in May that Russia has air superiority at the front and that a lack of protection for Ukrainian troops means “a large number of soldiers will die” in the fight.

Ukraine had hoped to find gaps in Russia’s fortifications, flood troops through, and cause the kind of havoc that its forces achieved last year among enemy ranks. Instead, unexpectedly dense minefields slowed Kyiv’s initial attacking forces, leaving them exposed to strikes from Russian aircraft and rockets.

Russian drones and attack helicopters, particularly Kamov Ka-52 “Alligator” gunships, have proven particularly dangerous. Ka-52s, which are among Russia’s most modern aircraft, can remain far behind Russian lines and rely on targeting data from spotter drones scanning the front. Their laser-guided Vikhr missiles have a range of roughly 5 miles, which is more than twice the range of any portable antiaircraft missiles in Ukraine’s armory.

U.S. Defense Department analysts knew early this year that Ukraine’s front-line troops would struggle against Russian air attacks.

A classified Pentagon assessment from February, allegedly leaked by Air National Guard Airman Jack Teixeira, tallied a tiny number of weapons in Ukrainian hands able to hit distant aircraft and cited the risk of “inability to prevent Russian air superiority.”

Kyiv lacks sufficient air-defense equipment—such as U.S.-made Patriot batteries or more mobile German Gepard systems—to deploy many near front lines. Patriots and other large, less-mobile systems are also vulnerable to Russian drone attacks.

Ukraine’s paucity of battlefield air-defenses and antiaircraft weaponry has allowed Russia to dominate skies along much of the front.

“The Russians are now able to make better use of their aviation assets,” said Douglas Barrie, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think tank in London. “Russia doesn’t have air-superiority over the whole of Ukraine, but from the defender’s perspective, they’re in a much better position.”

Countering Russian aircraft is a primary reason Zelensky and his team have for months lobbied Washington and its European allies to supply U.S.-made F-16 jet fighters. Ukraine has only a small air force of Soviet-made planes and helicopters.

F-16s, which are modern but not the latest U.S. jet fighters, could pose enough of a threat to Russian aircraft that they might be less dangerous to Ukrainian ground forces and civilian infrastructure, according to advocates for providing the planes.

Ukrainian pilots and mechanics are preparing to train to fly and maintain the complex jets, through a coalition of at least 10 European countries. But Biden hasn’t yet given the necessary permission for F-16s to be delivered to Ukraine, and establishing supply chains to support and repair the planes would take months. The soonest F-16s could appear on the battlefield is probably early next year, say analysts.

If Ukraine receives the planes, their impact on fighting would depend on many factors, including the number supplied, the sophistication of their onboard equipment and the weapons systems provided to arm them. Incorporating advanced jet fighters into battle plans is also extremely complicated, requiring another level of synchronization in Ukrainian operations.

Gilday “shared” videos of naval personnel claiming that America was racist and that they were angry. “Being African-American in America is not fun,” an aviation technician claimed.

A lieutenant commander claimed that he had experienced “systemic racism” and “implicit bias”. A white corpsman urged that “we can stand up for change” and declared that, “tomorrow’s Navy will finally stand on the right side of history when we realize that black lives matter.”

“I have become very aware of my privilege as a white person,” a female musician confessed. Then she claimed that “this country has a history of systemic racism” and called for creating a “country that is more equitable and just.”