Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Rybar is saying the town has been abandoned. The town is separated by an earth dam with a road running through it (you can make it out in the map below), he claims the dam was exploded and this should slow Ukrainian progress.

Dragging out my expertly drawn map from yesterday I said if Dudchany falls to Ukraine, everything in the blue box will have to be abandoned by the Russians as no road will exist to supply those settlements above the blue line.

I think the position for the Russians changes again, assuming that Dudchany has actually fallen. The entire left flank of the Russian bulge has now been outflanked and supply lines are very difficult, if not impossible.

The Russians surely will need to withdraw to some approximate location behind the red line on the map I've drawn above.

Yes i think they would just be shot down, we have seen lots of footage of them taking out Russian aircraft earlier in the conflict. The Ukrainians would receive good intel if they were launched too.

Thanks for clearing that one up. Again reinforces the original point about sloppy sources

On the one hand, I'm scratching my head as to just how badly wrong Russian intelligence got it when it came to Ukraine's capability. On the other hand, I'm remembering that some people here were predicting that Kyiv had, at most, two weeks before it fell to Russian forces. I kept putting the news on every morning in the first days of the invasion to find that Kyiv had not been blasted to bits by that column of artillery through the night. Even the news channels were putting up infographics describing the 'tale of the tape' between the standing armies, with Russia apparently dwarfing Ukraine in almost every aspect.

It seems nearly everyone hugely overstated the capabilities of the Russian military and underestimated that of Ukraine.

The war has certainly been fascinating in the way it has exposed numerous weaknesses and widespread corruption and incompetence in the Russian state.

Yes, I remember checking if things had gotten worse each day too and being confused by how immobile the russian forces near Kyiv were. It's a pity they made such progress in the south though.

It frustrates me, I just feel enough genuinely important stuff is happening that the waters don't need to be polluted all the time with fake news. But fair enough, different people have different preferences

Surely what happened is that NATO and Western weapons happened? Far as I can see they've made the main difference and Putin did not anticipate that level of support.

That, and I guess the sheer willingness of Ukraine to fight versus the morale problems in a Russian army that probably cares a lot less about Ukraine than Putin does. But without the western weapons there's no way this counter offensive could have happened

That is clearly not the case. There are multiple vehicle types on the train.

Obviously the NATO weapons have made a huge difference to Ukraine's ability to defend its territory, but quite a bit of that was already in the country when Russia first fully invaded. Russia was getting its nose bloodied in the opening days. And the process of arming and training Ukraine forces had been ongoing pretty much since 2014, as is my understanding. So, for Russia to apparently have little idea of A) what the Ukrainians had at their disposal, and B) if Ukrainians were willing to fight and C) the decrepitude of its own armed forces - all of that has to add up as being the most spectacular intelligence failure of this century. Even worse when you consider that Ukraine is right next door. Of all the country's you'd think Russia would have riddled with intelligence agents, Ukraine would have to be up at the top of the list.

It'll be interesting to read a proper history of all this stuff further down the road assuming we evade nuclear Armageddon, and just who did what behind the scenes.

Zelensky was exceedingly diplomatic in his response, most likely in recognition of how extremely useful starlink has proven to be.

It should be readily apparent by now that Elon Musk's actions can usually be defined, in terms of motivation, by what's good for his ego or net worth. In this case it's likely the latter and he's just trying to distract form Tesla's share price being evicerated today by almost -9%.

4 more HIMARS to Ukraine, which will bring the total to 20.

18 more are part of a longer-term plan.

US and Ukraine thinking short and long-term here.