No update today, but your regularly scheduled programming will continue tomorrow.
Links and Stuff
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can, thank you.
Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map, who is an independent youtuber with a mostly neutral viewpoint.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have good analysis (though also a couple bad takes here and there)
Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict and, unlike most western analysts, has some degree of understanding on how war works. He is a reactionary, however.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the Ukrainian warzones.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Yesterday's discussion post.
Russia is making gains around Severodonetsk, closing in on it. Providing Ukraine doesn't retreat like in Popasna, once the city is encircled by the forces coming around from the south, I imagine it'll be another month+ drawn out fight like in Mariupol to take the city.
A little further west, Russia advances through a village as they battle for Lyman. They now seem to have control of the only major road left that leads into Lyman, as the other one has a bridge crossing and the bridge was blown up (and, besides, Russia appears to have now half-encircled it based on reports from locals).
Taking Lyman leaves the road (relatively) wide open to Slovyansk and then Kramatorsk. These cities have a combined (pre-war) population of about 250,000 people, compared to Mariupol's ~500,000. Severodonetsk and Lysychansk had a joint population of about 200,000, and Slovyansk + Kramatorsk, Severodonetsk + Lysychansk, and Mariupol all have about comparable land areas. So a siege would take approximately the same amount of time as Mariupol did I would imagine. Maybe a little less. But still quite a few weeks.
I think the troop numbers, training, and morale were significantly higher when Mariupol started. Russia has enough troops in reserve that they are all properly trained and likely getting reasonable time off the front lines to recuperate. I would imagine this is a large factor in how long things will take.
Mariupol is also on the coast, I wonder if naval support played a big role there and how that not being part of the equation in these places will affect the length of battle.