LongTimeLurker

The Ukrainians appear to be moving east again in the Kupyansk area: a quite graphic clip of very dead Russian soldiers accompanies this tweet. The info appears to be coming from Ukrainian and Russian language sources rather than Western ones, which is what was happening during the recent big advance.

Not liberated: Most of what is being put on twitter this week is highly suspect.

There was plenty of skepticism about this claim of a Ukrainian advance near Kherson yesterday: But maybe it happened after all?

Russians take out a dam with cruise missles to disrupt the water supply in Zelensky's hometown and wash away some pontoon bridges used by the Ukrainians further south. Vlad is clearly not taking the setback in Kharkiv oblast well.

A gas pipeline from Russia to India would be tricky to do given the geography (Himalayas) and geopolitics (Afghanistan and Pakistan otherwise) involved. With China the big question mark would be how quickly green hydrogen takes off over the next decade to store energy from renewables and balance production with demand. Once that's fully up and running, and it's on the brink of starting to ramp up, you no longer need natural gas to back up wind turbines and solar panels.

Croy used to be a mining village. Twechar close by was similar but Rangers aligned. All depended on who the mining company hired when the pit was opened basically.

After all kinds of weird and wonderful tweets in recent days such as this one describing imaginary offensives: an attack on Lyman does actually appear to be happening: and this town may be the key domino that needs to fall to facilitate further advances by the Ukrainians.

Referred to as the Almond chord in rail enthusiast circles and has been actively explored as a possibility in the past: The other potential advantage of building this is people in Fife being able to travel to Glasgow by rail without having to go into Edinburgh as far as Haymarket.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novorossiysk

Was the latter until last week, but now after a major advance in the north of Ukraine by the Ukrainians there are some indications that the former will happen over the next few months unless the Russians make some major changes.

Still lots of tweets like this appearing but not much in the way of photographic or video evidence provided for it over the last day or two: Unlike what was unfolding last week so it may only be an imaginary twitter offensive.

What NATO hasn't sent so far is western tanks and fighter jets. Instead Eastern European countries sent their old Warsaw Pact weaponry in exchange for receiving more modern western weaponry from the United States, Germany etc. If the calculation starts to be that Ukraine will likely be able to regain its 1991 borders and deter Russia from ever trying something like this again with a bit more help on weaponry maybe that changes and they start to be viewed as a future NATO member rather than as a proxy to be used to give Vlad a good kicking on the way to some eventual territorial compromise. What lies ahead is so radically different from conventional wisdom in late February that it probably is still very much a work in progress. People like the guy in the clip never believed we would reach a point where we would see what is unfolding now.

This guy's attempt at pronouncing the names of Ukrainian cities is horrific but interesting to see how somebody who analyses stuff like this for a living simply didn't see something like the Kharkiv offensive coming: Have to wonder what changes we'll see in NATO's approach once more people like him who help shape elite opinion start to believe firmly that the Ukrainians will win in the aftermath of what unfolded last week.

Meanwhile in Kherson if the Ukrainians are to be believed:

Whether or not the Ukrainians are advancing into northern Luhansk oblast is probably the thing to keep an eye on today along with Snihurivka in Kherson oblast:

Andriy Melnyk was recalled to Kyiv recently: https://newsrnd.com/news/2022-08-22-andriy-melnyk--recalled-ukrainian-ambassador-leaves-germany-on-october-14.SkfDa5tlJj.html But does appear to still be the ambassador at this point.

Also lots of talk at the moment from normally sensible information outlets (i.e. not the likes of tpyxa news that are often for light entertainment purposes only) of the Russians leaving Svatove in Luhansk oblast:

Significant if accurate, because this is one of Russia's main fortresses near Kherson:

1000 Iranian drones that could take out HIMARS have been hyped up to be what the Americans would refer to as their Hail Mary pass, but it's not clear they were ever even delivered rather than a scare story floated by the pro-Israel lobby to try to scupper Iran's nuclear deal negotiations with the West.

Wouldn't be surprised if this happens eventually given the predicament Russia is in with many of its best troops on the wrong side of the Dniepr with no bridges available:

Looks like there was no deal made on what happens east of the Oskil river in Kharkiv oblast: But my guess would be that the Russians got to withdraw from Izium in exchange for leaving lots of territory further north without a fight.

Russia appears to be completely withdrawing from Kharkiv oblast west of the Oskil river. That should mean the shelling of Ukraine's second largest city will now come to an end and life there can normalise to the extent it can right now anywhere in Ukraine:

The Donetsk airport stuff eventually was ridiculed: But there does still appear to be some sort of move actively underway to take back the main towns of Severodonetsk raion:

Think a lot of the rumoured 10k+ soldiers at Izium probably got away because they had at least a day or so when it was already obvious what was about to happen and there were still viable escape routes in place.