The Kharkiv area: Russia began the day by shelling a market and a hospital in Kharkiv, injuring 21 and killing 2. A third man nearly died, but was resucitated after going into cardiac arrest due trauma caused by the explosion. That in itself is a miracle.
Russia tried to attack towards Pytomnyk again today, and the attack was repelled (1).
South east from Kharkiv, Russia attacked and recaptured Hrakove (2,3). This shows that Russia had to dip into their operational reserves to keep control of this area.
The Siversk area: Russia tried to assault Ivano-Darivka and were repelled (4).
The Bakhmut area: Russia is trying to attack Vershyna from the north (as opposed to previous attacks from the east) and the attack failed (5).
Russia is continues to attack the Vuhlehirska power plant (6) and Novoluhanske (7) but the attacks are crushed by Ukrainian artillery.
Today Russia posted videos of their artillery strikes on Ukrainian positions in Novoluhanske, which showed that Ukraine controls significantly more land than I previously thought so I have moved the line of control.
South of Donetsk: I have labelled both Mykilske (8)and Novomaiorske (9) as under Ukrainian control.
The Kherson area: At some point in the recent past Ukraine must have captured Andriivka (10) because Russia tried to recapture the town today but their attack was repelled (11).
The main thing that any educated person needs to keep in mind at all times is that realpolitik is fake and everyone who believes in it is typically universally wrong on every single word they ever say.
It is especially funny because realpolitik people are almost never experts in any domain, and they get their info from aggregators. And those aggregators know the realpolitik people use them, and as such present info in a way most likely to influence the realpolitik.
They end up just being unwitting amplifiers of misinformation.
Frankly I think the fastest way to end the war in Ukraine is not by sending tanks or by idiotic peace proposals. The fastest way is to set up factories across europe to produce 1000-2000 long range strike drones per day, and launch hundreds if not thousands of drones into Russia every single day until the country collapses. If they think sending 500 drones into Ukraine is a threat, see how they respond when 3000 drones fly into Russia.
With this many drones you can hammer every single factory, powerplant, substation, oil refinery, and mine in russia relentlessly.
Europe had a million drone program, to supply 1 million fpv drones. Fuck fpv drones. Have a 1 million drone program to supply 1 million strike drones. That's your million drones.
The "stupid westerners, sanctions do not work, we smuggle goods in illegally. muahaha, Russia unstoppable" people tickle me. Sanctions are not for stopping goods entirely, they are for increasing friction because the resources you spend smuggling are resources not spent growing
People fundamentally don't understand the purpose of a sanction. Sanctions are not to stop the war now, although they do damage Russia, the real goal of a sanction is long term economic damage to permanently shrink their economic growth on the timescale of decades.
The sanction is basically saying "okay, you're a threat to me today, and maybe I can't do much about it now, but I will shrink you and outgrow you so in 50-100 years you are no longer a threat to me at all". It is a long term play.
The Russians claim they shoot down Ukrainian aircraft the moment the missile leaves the tube, but we're supposed to believe they shot down two Black Hawks on Tuesday and only announced it after Ukraine leaked Black Hawk footage on Friday. These Black Hawks join the 650 F-16s and 450,000 M777s Russia has 'destroyed.'
GUYS. I AM GOING TO POST A VIDEO WHERE I WILL BLUR THE UNIT LOGOS TO SHIT SO NOBODY CAN TELL I STOLE THE VIDEOS FROM THE ARCHIVE AND THEN POST IT TO THE INTERNET SAYING I KILLED ALL THE SPECIAL FORCES
And then media outlets and super smart think tank people all over the world will believe me for some reason and then everyone will be like omg all the special forces died.
Guys I took my division and charged them into combat and while we lost 50% of our armored vehicles and 45% of our infantry are dead, and several of our HQs were destroyed and most of our best officers are dead, we captured a village where 200 once lived so we’re winning the war.
Tomorrow we will send our next division to assault the next village. That one had a population of 1200. Its actually considered a huge city, when you think about it. If we can capture that, we will send our third division to capture the hamlet behind it.