Jimmy_D

Seems there’s starting to be a shift in tone from Putin‘s mouthpieces. Meanwhile the security situation in Russian occupied areas is obviously much better now, as they’ve decided that the referenda to join Russia are back on. None of which Russia currently completely control. Maybe they can get the Ukrainian army to take care of part of it so everyone can vote. Seems the real reason is that it’d mean “Russian territory” was occupied, giving Russia an excuse for full mobilisation, and also making it legal to send conscripts in under Russian law. Between fears in Russia over mobilisation, and the measures propping up the Russian economy against sanctions starting to crumble, the stock market has reacted badly there. It’s certainly a risky strategy. Full mobilisation wouldn’t help much. Russia’s command structure has been severely hit in Ukraine, and with it their ability to effectively train new troops, and on top of that it’d be unbelievably unpopular, with the vast majority of recruits being unwilling conscripts that’d be even less effective. On top of that, by “annexing” currently occupied territory, Putin risks making himself appear increasingly weak, as it’d effectively mean “Russia” itself was occupied, and there would be nothing Russia could do to get it “back.” On top of that, it also removes any sense that Ukraine moving to liberate Crimea would be escalation, since Ukraine would already be on Russian claimed territory.

Lost with a poor performance against a bunch of utterly detestable cheats, but only because of an offside goal.

Did Hasenhuttl piss in Carragher’s cornflakes or something?

Swear these Villa cheats must moonlight at the bowling alley. As pins.

VAR useless yet again.

They’re the literal definition of stupid evil. Targeting civilians has galvanised resistance against them, both within Ukraine and internationally. Europe have gone cold turkey on Russia’s biggest export, and Russia won’t be getting those sales back. Sweden, Finland, and to a certain extent, even Switzerland have abandoned neutral stances. It’s alienated their allies, to the point that even China have been carefully navigating to avoid overtly supporting the invasion. Even militarily, they’ve been using weapons they have limited stocks of, which they can’t produce at the moment, on targets that do nothing to weaken Ukraine’s military. Russia turned up at the start of the war with 45000 body bags and mobile crematoriums. They didn’t have those because they thought the war would take months and they would need them for Russian troops. It’s no wonder that peace talks never had any chance of succeeding, or that Ukraine’s troops have been so motivated. They’re paying a terrible price to stop Russia, but they’re making that sacrifice to stop the genocide of their people.

Safe to say Izyum can be listed as liberated. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-62899474 Ukraine really did strike gold when they elected Zelensky, underestimating him will probably turn out to be the biggest mistake Putin ever made.

Ah, sorry, I was specifically referring to public dissent against Putin from other politicians in office. You’re right of course that there’s been protests by the public, even since they’ve been cracking down on it.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-council-faces-dissolution-after-call-putins-removal-2022-09-13/ Further indications of dissent spreading. Still within Putin’s ability to control, for now at least, but considering that any public dissent would have been unthinkable before the invasion…

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.