LongTimeLurker

Focus of Ukrainian efforts might be shifting to Kherson oblast: but it's no doubt best to keep the Russians guessing on that so they can't concentrate their forces too much.

It's too bad the guy felt the need to do this when 300,000+ other guys in his position figured out a fourth course of action and made a run for the border. Edit: didn't see the post immediately above before I hit send.

Chechnya is de facto independent with a large annual subsidy to Kadyrov's patronage network used to bribe them into not pushing to make it de jure and providing troops for Russia's imperial escapades when needed. He's always going to play the uber-patriot in other words but if the gravy train ever stops...

Guess it looked like they were heading for a victory though before the first red so it's not all doom and gloom. Elsewhere:

We'll see if twitterspace is getting completely carried away on rapid Ukrainian advances again: Is advancing inside large towns really their MO at this point rather than methodically surrounding them?

The Ukrainians lost the hydroelectric dam at Nova Kakhovka over the Dniepr on day one and did not take out key bridges that could have slowed the initial rapid near encirclement of Kyiv. That points strongly to not expecting an all out invasion beyond Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts where most of the Ukrainian army was stationed at the time. Local territorial defence units defended cities like Kharkiv, Chernihiv and Mykolaiv much better than the western military experts on the TV news expected or it would have been game over. At this point Vlad doesn't have much to show for what happened after the initial two weeks after the initial element of surprise was gone. The capture of Mariupol was a fait accompli by then so it's only really the Popasna-Lysychansk-Sieverodonetsk-Kreminna portion of Luhansk oblast and the area of Donetsk oblast near Bakhmut to show for all the Russian lives lost since then. Pretty much everything else has been rolled back and now that Izium, Kupyansk and Lyman have been liberated holding onto that is going to become more challenging because the railway lines from Belgorod have gone as supply lines.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ilovaisk#Government_forces_retreat_and_massacre We'll soon find out how true this is:

Meanwhile back at the ranch:

Not fully clear what is happening around Lyman:

Guess that's a no where negotiations are concerned:

...and there's always been a feeling among many Russians that the Bolsheviks should never have included those lands in the Ukrainian SSR:

Ignoring the sociopaths who want to derail the thread this advance of the Ukrainians east of the Zherebets river would be significant if accurate: The geopolitics of the next few decades will be decided by the outcome of this conflict and there is a very slight chance of nuclear weapons being used soon after the annexation process is announced so feel no need whatsoever to justify taking an interest in this.

Battle of Halbe time near Lyman?

Around Lyman the word appears to be that the northern road in to Drobysheve is now cut off at Stavky, while to the south Yampil may or may not have been liberated with the road in now mined. ...but Vlad is about to annex Donetsk oblast so the Russians obviously have nothing to worry about.

Really? They kept going on Nordstream II after Crimea had been illegally annexed and most of the Donbas coalfield occupied to form the DNR and LNR knowing full well that the rationale behind it was to cut Poland and Ukraine out of the equation completely as transit states for natural gas. Poland and the Baltic states told them for years that what they were doing was crazy and pleaded with them not to go ahead. When the war was just about to start RAF flights to give the Ukrainians the weapons they needed were not being given permission to cross German airspace. If Kyiv had fallen in three days what do you think would have happened with Nordstream?

Does war or SMO make any practical difference at this point? My money's on naw it disnae. The mobilisation apparently is less partial than initially spun and they can basically already take whoever they want on pain of a 10 year jail sentence Stalin and the gulag archipelago style. Problem for Putin is that if Nordstream is completely toast (yet to hear if the fourth leak reported today took out the remaining NS 2 pipeline that was said to be undamaged yesterday) Ukraine and Poland control most of the remaining pipeline inventory to central and western Europe. They will both choose freezing this winter if need be, so his leverage is largely gone. In other words he is annexing parts of four oblasts while losing fossil fuel sales to the EU before he has time to pivot effectively to China on pipelines and with the lend lease programme yet to ramp up. If he ordered the divers in under the Baltic he is monumentally stupid but after what happened on Feb 24th it's not safe to assume he is a rational actor.

None are fully under control of Russia although Luhansk oblast is > 98% controlled.

Something to bear in mind when genocide is discussed:

Elsewhere:

Except it takes the wind out of the sails of populist demonstrations in Central Europe to have governments negotiate with Vlad to get it flowing again... ...the first bit of this tweet is the main reason Russia can't be discounted.

...including small Baltic ones like Latvia who NATO has no plans to actively defend if invaded only to recapture later which falls into aye that will be right sort of territory. Not saying it was the Latvians my money would actually be on the Poles if it wasn't the Russians or Americans. The key point is that it doesn't just have to be the two post-WWII superpowers. There are several states in that part of the world who believe they are facing an existential threat right now similar to the late 1930s and may not be willing to disappear off the world map so meekly this time around or make another broadcast like this and wait 50 years to be free again after major powers with treaty obligations failed to come to their rescue:

Meanwhile further east:

Don't think it is as clear cut as that. The whole point of spending billions on Nordstream was to avoid having to pay transit fees to Ukraine and Poland. Ukraine had a history of neglecting to pay for Russian gas and threatening to stop transit to Europe when presented with the bill. That's why Germany under Angela Merkel was willing to do business with Vlad where these pipelines are concerned. The problem with Bluestream and Turkstream is that the Balkans can also be supplied by Azerbaijan via Turkey and possibly in future Central Asia where Turkey has pan-Turkic ambitions. Erdogan and Putin are not friends. Beyond all that the timing is certainly interesting: Have to say that if you are faced with a nutter who is about to flagrantly break international law by annexing about 20% of Ukraine through fake referenda, a concerned state with interests in the Baltic Sea area sending in some diving teams to remove a lot of Vlad's possible future leverage over Germany is a course of action that is completely rational if it can be done with plausible deniability.