Thread by @Cicke69

Great thread addressing little known facts about Donbass urban agglomeration and henceforth slower advance of #Russian and #DPR troops ...

by @SlavyangradES (@zastavnyii acc on T)

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Detractors of SMO often complain that the #Russian army advances too slowly. They say the battles are fought over endless villages, followed by an assault on some third-rate towns. "In five months of war the Russians have not taken a single regional center," they say.

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Well, this only shows that our opponents either do not know or have begun to forget what #Ukraine as a geographical area is and what the #Donbass is like.

#Ukrainerussiawar
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Let us remind, and for some it will be a revelation, that the #Donetsk region, being a part of #Ukraine, occupied the 1st place by population among its administrative units, exceeding even the #Kiev urban agglomeration.

#Ukrainerussiawar #Donbass
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Accordingly, the population density of the #Donetsk Republic within the borders of the Donetsk Oblast is about 160 people/km²*. In comparison, the population density in #Chernigiv Region is 32 people/km², #Kherson Region is 37 people/km², and #Sumy Region is 47 people/km².

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These figures are determined by high urbanization of the population, caused by the concentration of a large number of industrial enterprises in the cities of the region. These enterprises accounted for over 20% of the industrial production of the former #Ukraine.
#Donbass
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Therefore, in order to take an objective view of the events, it is necessary to consider the specifics of the region and the of the urban agglomerations of #Donbass as a whole, the first of which is #Mariupol with a population of around 650,000 people.

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Apart from the population, with the liberation of #Mariupol, #Ukraine lost and #Russia gained, not only an important metallurgical centre, but more importantly, access to the Sea of #Azov with a commercial port.

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The next agglomeration that was taken by the #Russian army was the #Lisichansk-#Severodonetsk-Rubezhnoye triangle with the population of up to 450k people. Further, it is necessary to separately mention the so-called #Svetlodarsk urban centre (population of about 32k people).
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Its main asset, in addition to the people, is the Uglegorskaya TPP the largest in the territory of the former #Ukraine. Thus, as we noted earlier, Ukraine has lost not only the most powerful of its nuclear power plants #Zaporozhye NPP, but also its largest thermal power plant
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#RussianArmy has now reached the outskirts of #Soledar, seeking to liberate a string of settlements from #Seversk to #Bakhmut with a total population of about 200,000. The next frontier is the chain of towns from #Slavyansk to Toretsk-combined population of around 430,000.
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To understand the scale of what is happening let me remind you how many people live in other regional centres of the former #Ukraine: Uzhgorod—116 thousand, Lutsk—215 thousand, Ternopol—225 thousand, Ivano-Frankivsk—238 thousand, Rovno—243 thousand.

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In other words, within five months of SMO (Special Military Operation), the #Russian army not only deprived the former #Ukraine of all ports on the #Azov Sea, the most powerful electric power stations, a considerable part of industrial production ...

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The time will come and #Kharkov, #Nikolayev, #Zaporozhye, and #Odessa will also return to their native harbor. In our opinion, they will be able to do this much faster than the other #Russian cities, which were mistakenly separated from their Russian homeland.
by Gleb Bazov
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