It's the second biggest one ever for you dirty, dirty content hogs.
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.
Pretty impressive to see how quickly the Donbass front is now progressing after the Popasna battle. I really hope that Zelensky allows his troops to just withdraw from Severodonetsk and Lysychansk instead of allowing 15k troops to be slaughtered needlessly in the inevitable siege soon. I guess that the next target after the LPR completes liberating their entire oblast will be a major DPR operation towards Kramatorsk
There's not a lot of roads left coming out of Severodonetsk. Just eyeballing DPA's map, I can only see one way that doesn't involve going through dirt roads or farmland, which is to go through Siversk and then take the road going southwest. Every other route takes them too close to Russian territory and they'd get bombarded. Of course, they might get bombarded by aircraft anyway.
Basically, if they wanna get out, this week is the week to do it.
also: apparently Russia has just captured Vidrodzhennya, just north of Svitlodars'k, and some surrounding villages. If true, while it is a fairly insignificant settlement, the Ukrainian strongpoints and trenches there have clearly been overrun, or the Ukrainians have retreated. A little further north than that, Russia is 2 km away from Soledar and has control of the road there, which connects to Severodonetsk and Lysychansk. If Soledar is captured and they continue forward to Bakhmut, an entire comprehensive system of tens of Ukrainian entrenchments would then be encircled on three fronts, including behind them, which is not generally what you want to happen. Bakhmut and Soledar are also important places in terms of supply lines.
If those entrenchments collapse, then there's honestly not a ton left for Ukraine in the region. The only big trench system left would be the one near Donetsk city, and there are battles at either ends of its extreme points (i.e. Adviika and Velyka Novosilka) that could fall, or at least be encircled, by DPR forces within the next week or so. After those strongpoints fall...
In all, I would say the above events would take about a month to execute, though it could be half that if Ukrainian positions are sufficiently battered or allowed to retreat, or double that if the Peepee Poopoo weaponry by the West actually makes a difference.
I've seen nothing yet on the proposed attack on Kherson by Ukraine. Not saying it won't happen, but just that if they're gonna do it, it can't be planned for fucking mid-to-late June or it might be too late.
They are withdrawing troops in the Poposna region. The threat of encirclement is almost as potent as a real encirclement. I’m going to expect attempts to withdraw most forces soon because the region doesn’t seem stable enough for now. Maybe the LPR forces could try swinging south to push forces away from Donetsk
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