LongTimeLurker

...or we can all just try to stick to the topic and ignore people who want to derail the thread. Guess the flying lawnmower drones are the one angle that might help the Russians to keep going;

This guy is normally on the ball but who is likely to run out first? The Russians on missiles when their industries are under sanctions or the Ukrainians with more and more anti-missile systems being supplied by NATO? My money is on the former. Is the reason that the Russians have to send more and more missiles to overload Ukrainian defences not that those defences have been strengthening over time?

It goes well beyond that on occasion into behaviour that is quite clearly socipathic and at times highly distasteful like the way he was hassling the Clyde fan who was visiting Lviv recently for no other reason that being a complete p***k.

Meanwhile back on topic a gas pipeline went boom on the outskirts of St Petersburg and the Russians are skeptical on it being an accident. Wonder if somebody with a -chuk or -enko type surname has paid the area a visit recently with some high explosives. Way too far to be a drone or missile launched from Ukrainian territory.

This result and 1-1 vs Auchinleck Talbot over 90 minutes in the Scottish Cup points to the BUs being able to hold their own against the top end of tier 6 even during a mediocre season in LL terms.

...or you could just ignore his obvious flamebait so he moves on and finds another target for his narcissistic and sociopathic behaviour. Much the same comment is applicable to Sergeant Wilson's patter. Best not to give them the attention they crave.

They probably have the traditional Russian mentality of beer being a soft drink and only vodka qualifying as real drinking. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-14232970

One stray missile landing on a farm very close to the border wasn't going to start a war so people are making much too much out of this. Something clearly aimed at the Rzeszow air base would be a different story.

A reasonably plausible theory on how the Ukrainians could hit Dzhankoy with HIMARS.

Maybe I got a false impression but people in the South of the USA seem a bit more genuine with the have a nice day stuff to me. Places like New York to put it charitably not so much. If you want to experience a place where false modesty is a completely alien concept Japan is definitely the place to go.

Intially thought this was bonkers but have been reading plenty of stuff on twitter that suggests it is difficult for the Russians to hold on here now because it is in conventional artillery range at this point. No suggestion that it's a bridgehead for doing anything else but it's feasible for a relatively small Ukrainian force to hold and prevent it from being used to launch Shahed drones according to these people because the way into the spit from Kherson oblast is very marshy. Guess if the Ukrainians can do this there is the added bonus that it might help open up more of Mykolaiv oblast for shipping.

Suspect the gopnik market in Russia and Ukraine is how Adidas unload any unsold inventory from elsewhere.

Could be worse the RoI does that every day on RTE at 6 pm for the Angelus prayer. Think folk have become increasingly mental about Remembrance day in recent years because the soldiers who actually went through WWI and WWII are no longer around to tell them to get a grip and show some proper decorum.

Canada Coffee & Donuts

Think Stirling Uni still have scholarships for former pro youth players on the go: https://www.stir.ac.uk/student-life/sport-at-stirling/performance-sport/football-men/ That doesn't necessarily take anything away from what the manager is achieving this season but it helps explain why they do a lot better than Edinburgh Uni.

Elsewhere:

Big change made in goal by the looks of things:

From what I understand this airbase is now the outer edge of what HIMARS can visit from near Kherson without putting the vehicles in artillery range of the front line: There is a sizable corner of Kherson oblast that is definitely out of range and perhaps not surprisingly the puppet authorities already evacuated to there weeks ago to a town called Henichesk. If Ukraine had ATACMS everything would be in range at this point but officially at least they only have GMLRS which is the innermost dark blue line.

Not quite all with GMLRS which is why the Ukrainians want the longer range ATACMS for HIMARS which Joe Biden so far has refused. There is a school of thought though that a very limited number may have still wound up arriving courtesy of some other country like Romania and that explains some of the mysterious longer distance strikes into Crimea including the Kerch bridge. Others think the Ukrainians have developed their own long range missile system called Hrim for that in very limited numbers.

Svatove and Starobilsk in northern Luhansk oblast might be the last low hanging fruit that Vlad won't be quite so bothered about holding and might do one of these big retreats from again given that's a sparsely poplated mainly agricultural area with no critical strategic transport links. Don't think you need to be a rocket scientist to work out that taking Melitopol and Berdiansk on the Sea of Azov coast is what Ukraine really needs to do next along with another successful strike on the Kerch bridge if they want to take the whole shebang including Crimea. Think they do need to try to take Crimea back to secure their southern coastline and not have a repeat of this conflict another few years down the line. Russia appears to be actively preparing for when they give that a go: Also could be time now for Moldova to finally request Ukrainian help where Transnistria is concerned now Vlad's troops are safely behind the Dniepr and not as uncomfortably close as they were back in early March when these sorts of maps were appearing on twitter:

If genuine this suggests the Russians don't expect to be the ones repairing the bridge across the Dniepr at Kherson in future:

See there's tweets now that the Ukrainians are entering Kherson city. Hope this old guy is still around to enjoy their arrival:

Think it usually freezes for a bit and that's how the Red Army were able to get across during WWII.