LongTimeLurker

This is moving from the sublime to the ridiculous: Maybe somebody got confused between the Severodonetsk raion (local region and the next step down in local government terms from an oblast) that includes Kreminna and Lysychansk and the town itself. If true, must be sickening news for the families of all the Russian soldiers that died like flies taking this place.

Things might also be starting to unravel in Kherson oblast. The Ukrainians have been trying and failing to take this village for many weeks: The road you can maybe just about make out in the middle of the map is the Russian's main supply line to a long string of small towns further north and the probable reason why the Russians were so keen to hold on to this place.

This map shows quite nicely why they might want to move quickly to Kreminna:

There has been talk of Putin bypassing the army chain of command and providing the orders for units to follow Adolf at the end of WWII style. Have seen the less than fully PC word "moron" used in one of the more lucid pro-Russian twitter accounts to describe him after what he appears to have pushed for in Kherson, i.e. move 20,000+ of his best troops over a very wide river when his enemy has demonstrated the capacity to destroy all the bridges over it.

This was the first relatively big town Ukraine lost in the Donbas after Vlad ordered the retreat from Kiev and the north and a focus on securing the territory of the two breakaway republics he had recognised. The Ukrainians would probably need to secure that area first before it would be sensible to make a move for Svatove further north. When I posted about Svatove this morning I didn't think it would enter the mainstream discourse anything like this quickly but was something that would still be a week or two away minimum.

The conspiracy theory is they are retreating to try to get to a point where a deal can be made but I think it's probably just a case of their press-ganged soldiers from the DNR and LNR breakaway states and also some of the less eager troops from Russia proper no longer wanting to fight and calling it a day.

...they better reach Svatove quickly if they are going to do that: once you get this far east there is genuine pro-Russian sentiment among a lot of the population and many of these people will probably be viewed as collaborators by Zelensky & Co.

Russian soldiers in Svatove started posting the guy on telegram to tell him it wasn't true but time will tell I guess. Meanwhile further south in Luhansk oblast: thought they gave that city up surprisingly easily after what preceded it with Severodonetsk, Hirske and Zolote but no doubt it made sense at the time and maybe they knew it was always going to be relatively easy to roll back in again from where they withdrew to when conditions improved.

Quite possibly but one of the sources was a Russian war correspondent apparently:

Reports that Donetsk airport has been liberated seem a bit farfetched after all that happened there with the so called cyborgs post-2014: but maybe many DNR forced recruits have simply had enough at this point in an ARVN after the Americans left South Vietnam sort of way.

Found this snippet from the real Igor Girkin about the Oskil river mildly amusing: If Izium and Lyman have really been surrendered/abandoned the next big logistical hub the Ukrainians would probably go after if they really go for broke is Svatove in northern Luhansk oblast:

Also talk of the Ukrainians moving further north from Kupyansk today towards the Russian border: Guess if your enemy is in complete disarray you keep going if you have the capacity to do so rather than giving them time to regroup and resupply?

The Ukrainians do appear to have taken the western half of Kupyansk yesterday because this is the city's main municipal building: will be interesting to see if this is really what's happening around Izium:

The monarchy doesn't actually do anything meriting all the attention it receives. Beyond resenting there being no fitba this weekend because we're all supposed to be grief striken over a 96 year old finally popping her clogs I find the best policy is just to ignore royal hatches, matches and dispatches and let all the weirdos who want to either go completely gaga or seethe to their heart's content over it.

Late 60s hippy music sounded better in Serbo-Croat when sung by a Hajduk Split fan:

This would have been viewed as entering the realm of fantasy a week ago: but that's one of the most mainstream Ukrainian sources.

Now the Ukrainians are reported to be going after Lyman to the southeast of Izium: and that basically repeats the script of something the Wehrmacht did to the Red Army back in 1942 apparently:

Latest Ukrainian twitter pic is alleged to be from outside the former Russian HQ in Kupyansk that had a visit from HIMARS missiles a few days back:

Think this provides further evidence for the above being the case:

Seems too good to be true but quite a few tweets like this are popping up at the moment: guess this was so far behind the frontline until a couple of days ago that the Russians would not have prepared strong defences but this town is so strategic it's hard to believe the Ukrainians can just drive in.

The translator software used to generate that appears to have done something strange. The cyrillic letters in the original are the initials in Russian for the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

We'll see how accurate this turns out to be (twitter and telegram sources have been known to spin false narratives) but if true, the problem the Russians will have is that there is a very long reservior running south from near this town on the Oskil river that blocks a huge chunk of occupied territory from easy resupply/escape with the only possible crossing points all either already destroyed earlier in the war when the Ukrainians retreated or now in easy HIMARS range. The twitter account being quoted isn't actually the infamous Igor Girkin but a Ukrainian parody account that tends to highlight important info from Ukrainian and Russian language sources on what's happening.

Would Garry O'Connor have been in the Selkirk team in the Scottish Cup?