Jimmy_D

One possible explanation for (some of) the unexplained deaths could be suicide. From what I’ve read, care for mental health issues in Russia is extremely limited. That said, I’d be extremely surprised if it was the explanation for all of them.

The bad guy in American films.

We may be closer to the end than we realise at the moment. Between struggling to find volunteers motivated even from the most desperate sources, and Russian logistics being unable to deal with their current level of troops, it’s unlikely even full mobilisation would make any difference at this point. Withdrawing would be humiliating for Russia, and Putin, especially if they need to give up Crimea for Ukraine to accept it, but it’s the least worst option they have. Unfortunately I don’t see them seeing it that way, they’d rather be able to blame troops running away as rock-bottom morale is likely to see events like Kharkiv repeated.

Reports that Russian troops in Kherson are in the process of surrendering. Hope that goes as smoothly as it can. This past week has been incredible.

Appears to be genuine, based on comments that it’s on their social media. If it is, it appears that political dissent against Putin might be starting to be voiced more.

It’s dehumanising Ukrainians. Repeat it often enough and any and all measures taken against them, including war crimes, will be seen not only as acceptable, but justified, in Russia at least. The Internet and access to non-Russian news sources dilutes that somewhat, among some Russians at least, but it’s still depressingly effective. On lighter note, Ukrainian troops finally ran into some stiffer resistance in Kharkiv.

The tone definitely seems to be changing on Russian state TV.

Sounds like Russia have reacted to their humiliation in Kharkiv by committing yet another war crime and launching an estimated $80M of missiles at power infrastructure. Power is already being restored in most places about an hour later. I reckon they’d have had it done in 45 mins, but it is a Sunday after all.

Well, yes and no. Russia’s decision making has been severely hampered by losing a huge portion of their command structure, and there’s no way to replace that experience, but losing them in the first place was more a symptom of Russia simply not using NCOs. A combination of not using NCOs and poor lines of communication meant that they had to move officers towards the front lines to speed up decisions. There they were in range of Ukraine being able to target them.

Indeed, any sort of fire control that further isolates Kherson and Zaporzhzhya would be extremely helpful. It may also be that events in Kharkiv and Russia’s reaction to them have already left Russia weak in Mariupol and Ukraine are already reacting to that. In any case, whatever Ukraine hit next will be on the back of excellent intelligence and extremely likely to succeed. The speed of decision making that Ukraine have demonstrated has cut Russian command out of the fight in Kharkiv. That generally takes hours because Russia has no NCO corp and all the decision making is centralised. By the time they were feeding any decision back down it was already too late.

There’s a lot of speculation towards Mariupol, some from Russia that there’s a build up of Ukrainian troops towards that direction. It’d be a massive tactical, strategic, and symbolic gain to liberate it. I can’t imagine that it’d be as quick as Kharkiv Oblast, Mariupol is likely still better defended. Ukraine have specialised in being unpredictable, so it wouldn’t surprise me if they end up making some noise to make Russia react in some way, and then manage to exploit a weakness that gets exposed by that.

Seems Russia are retreating from the entire Kharkiv Oblast. I guess it’s an attempt to create a line for Russia to hold and stop the cascading rout in the North East. I think Ukraine are likely to try and keep up the momentum, if they can keep moving at even a fraction of this rate, it won’t take much to break Russian morale in other areas.

Moscow city centre closed off. I’m assuming it’s related to preparation for Moscow Day celebrations but I’m not entirely discounting the possibility of that being the line that Russia are falling back to…

Russia’s Wagner mercenary group not too impressed judging by the response they put out.

Rumours floating around that partisans raised a Ukrainian flag overnight and Russia started retreating before Ukraine forces even got there.

One of Ukraine’s biggest problems at this point is genuinely going to be dealing with the sheer number of PoWs they’ve been capturing.

Reports emerging that Russia have retreated from Kupyansk and it’s been fully liberated. It’s a huge development, it cuts off the entire North East of Ukraine from Russian resupply.

Kherson wasn’t a feint. It’s a massively important strategic location that Russia can not allow to fall back to Ukraine, the only major city that’s fallen to Russia, critical to their land bridge to Crimea and Crimea’s water supply. Russia are defending it because they need to, and even with throwing everything they have into that defence, it’s not enough. Ukraine have trapped a huge number of Russian troops without regular resupply and between attrition and surrenders are taking them out of the fight. By itself it’s a massive success for Ukraine. Kharkiv is more the result of reacting to Russia’s reaction to Kherson, than being the original target. They’ve obviously been ready to take advantage of any opportunities that presented themselves elsewhere. It is connected, in that part of the reason for Ukraine making so much noise about Kherson was that they knew that would draw in reinforcements from other areas of the front to somewhere they knew they could achieve a level of control over, where they could pin Russian troops into a massively disadvantaged position, but Russia leaving their biggest logistics hub in Ukraine so weakly defended can’t have been something they were counting on. Splitting their assault forces was a risk for Ukraine, albeit a well calculated one. They obviously had solid intelligence on Russian defence, and Ukraine do have thousands of troops in reserve as a result of UK and EU training. We’re starting to see now the benefit of Ukraine’s patience. For months they’ve been concentrating on making any progress Russia made as expensive as possible, and making full use of any capability they have to target Russian logistics. It’s like a boxer that’s been targeting body shots for a few rounds, and Ukraine are starting to be able to cause Russia several problems at once, with Russia not fully able to deal with any of them.

Blimey, apparently genuine. Like you say, they’re putting their lives at risk to show that sort of defiance. It could be an indication that Putin’s grip on power is just beginning to weaken though. Any way you look at it, this invasion is becoming more and more of a disaster, with Putin having his name indelibly stamped on it, and that’s starting to become clear even to the Russian people subject to constant propaganda. If they’re killed (or die in mysterious accidents) it’ll be yet another drop in the bucket of “this isn’t adding up” for the Russian people now. I suspect that’s part of their calculation in putting this out. Takes incredible bravery.

Not as consistent as we (or he) would have wanted, but when it was going well he scored some cracking goals for us, most memorable of course the fourth at Fratton Park. Few goals have celebrated as much as that one was!

Queen from 25 to 96, truly a life of service to the country. The respect she’s commanded on the World Stage is difficult to comprehend, I can’t imagine we could possibly have had a better Head of State than her. She’ll be missed. RIP

$675M package from the US announced earlier this morning. On top of that US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is making a surprise visit to Kyiv and has announced a further $2B of military aid. Meanwhile Ukraine’s counterattack in the North-East of Ukraine has made astounding progress to bring the biggest logistics centre Russia has, in Kupiansk, under fire control. If Ukraine can hold that, between Kherson and Izium, that’s a devastating number of Russian troops cut off from supplies.

I know more about the conflict now than Dannatt did two weeks ago. A lot has happened. I wasn’t laughing at Dannatt, I was laughing at you thinking that what he said then is relevant now. I imagine Dannatt was overly pessimistic about Ukraine’s ability to attack Russia’s dug in positions and retake their territory. I wouldn’t have agreed with him, based on Ukraine’s successes with attacking Russia’s logistics and the materiel supply tilting more and more in Ukraine’s favour, but with the lines not moving, and with attacking a defended position being a different skillset, perhaps understandable. Ukraine’s army now isn’t anything like it was when Dannatt was in charge though. The UK training that new recruits are getting might be getting the headlines now, but they’ve been training with NATO doctrine and tactics since Crimea was invaded eight years ago. Kherson is showing that pessimism to be misplaced. Just from what’s been verified, they’ve reversed weeks of Russian gains in a few days and there are indications things are going even better than that. Ukraine have been going about it extremely intelligently, apparently without the primary objective of retaking territory, but with the primary objective of degrading Russia’s forces in the area. As a result Russian forces have been stretched so thin that Ukraine have retaken some areas completely unopposed. Plans for Kherson’s sham referendum have been shelved. Meanwhile, Kherson isn’t the only place that Ukraine are counterattacking. Putin is again trying to start ‘negotiations’ to stop Ukraine diplomatically. He doesn’t even see Ukraine as a country, so that gives some idea of how things are going that he wants to try anything just to hold what he has now. Also, the mighty Russian army needing to turn to North Korea, because sanctions have closed everywhere else from them, for ammunition that isn’t fully compatible with their weapons, and isn’t manufactured to as high a standard(!) as Russian stockpiles would have been… that doesn’t exactly shout ‘things are going well’. Most estimates had Russian stockpiles deep enough that they would be a non-issue in this conflict, so needing to turn to North Korea is an interesting development. It appears that storage may have gone about as well as the rest of Russia’s logistics.

Supposedly on £10M a year until 2025.

https://www.foxestalk.co.uk/topic/130041-fans-fault-the-defence-is-anxious/ From elsewhere on there, looks like Rodgers either wants to be sacked or knows he can’t be.