This is Donetsk Oblast. Oblasts are administrative regions with similar powers and organization to States here in the U.S. or Provinces in Canada.
This is Luhansk Oblast.
This is the CITY of Donetsk in - you guessed it - Donetsk Oblast.
This is the CITY of Luhansk in - you guessed it - Luhansk Oblast.
These two oblasts, along with portions of Rostov Oblast in Russia, makeup 'Donbas': a cultural economic region.
Think Cascadia here in the states or even the Blue Banana in Europe.
To combat Russian forces in Donbas, Kyiv established the ATO (Anti-Terrorist Operation Zone). The ATO itself is divided into numerous sectors: most of which are geographic based.
Some are hyper specific to certain portions of the contact line.
Mariupol - in Donetsk Oblast - is not controlled by Russian forces. Nor is Sievierodonetsk in Luhansk Oblast.
Name dropping 'Donetsk' is convenient from a western prospective, but often incorrect.
On top of it all, thousands of cities all across Ukraine have the same shared names: something rather hard from an English prospective.
Context clues are everything this week!
While I have a captive audience...
STOP PLACING 'THE' IN FRONT OF THINGS. THAT MEANS NO 'THE UKRAINE'.
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And now its gone. Sub-5 minute pickup. Could very well have been a medical evacuation of an American national who was attempting to cross the border into Poland.
A page on Telegram run by Belarusian Railway Workers claims that Russian Military Forces have begun to transfer military equipment into Belarus via four crossings: Osinovka, Zakopytya, Shesterovka, and Ezerishche.
No 'reverse movement' dates scheduled, as of now.
They estimate the transfer of military echelons will continue for the next 2-3 days.
A brief rundown of what we know tonight as @POTUS prepares for highly anticipated call with Putin:
*Intelligence suggests 175,000+ RU troops involved in a massive, three pronged invasion deep into Ukrainian territory.
*Under direct Kremlin authorization, troops could commence offensive activities the second orders are given. Recent reports of freshly established fuel and supply lines only underscores this point.
*Majority of armored units reside in FOBs within 200km of Ukrainian border.
There is, and I cannot stress this enough, an immediate and pressing threat of Russian offensive activities against Ukraine.
Window of time from official authorization and the start of conflict would be incredibly small: far faster than even the 2014 Crimean annexation.
“The Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service has released an annual report on the growing likelihood of Russian troops attacking Ukraine and the Baltic states through Belarus.”
“According to Estonian intelligence, as a result of the 2020 political crisis, Belarus has become a military district of Russia, and now this "Belarusian military district" poses an immediate threat to its closest neighbors with NATO.”