Map of Russian fortification lines on the Zaporozhye front.
The counteroffensive has begun, after a series of failed Ukrainian attacks in the preceding few days. The axis of attack does appear to be towards Tokmak, which is also the strongest part of the Russian defensive line.
From the late night of June 7th/very early morning of June 8th onwards, Ukraine has been sending waves of forces in to attack Russian defense lines. Ukrainian air defense is barely active if at all, with Russian aviation able to freely attack Ukrainian columns going through minefields. We've seen potential glances of Leopards and various western armored vehicles. Russian morale seems high so far.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
Here is the archive of important pieces of analysis from throughout the war that we've collected.
This week's first update is here in the comments.
This week's second update is here in the comments.
This week's third update is here in the comments.
Links and Stuff
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
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. I recommend their map more than the channel at this point, as an increasing subscriber count has greatly diminished their quality.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have decent analysis. Avoid the comment section.
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. Beware of chuddery.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the warzone.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist (but still quite reactionary in terms of gender and sexuality and race, so beware). If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ Another big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia's army.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Last week's discussion post.
but the line didnt even get broken... they just went around through the ardennes
Something the French anticipated, they just fucked up the timing on reorganizing their forces! It's really funny how the pop documentary understanding of this stuff can be debunked by... the literal voiceover of the same documentary lol.
Yep and it allowed the French Army to mobilize and potentially launch an invasion of Germany using the Maginot Line as the starting point. The General Staff however was pretty incompetent and we know what happened.
Hell, even in late 44 and early 45 chunks of the now almost dismantled Maginot Line were reactivated and used by the defending german army with some success, they proved to be a very powerful asset during battles such as Metz. Pretty much all attempts by the Germans to break through the line in 1940 were met with abysmal losses, these were never serious attempts because the line was THAT good.
Nothing potential about it. The French did launch the Saar offensive in 1939 from the Maginot line. It was unsuccessful as the French army just wasn't up to snuff at the time. They were able to retreat back to the Maginot line without the Nazis overrunning them.
clearly, Ukraine must replicate this by going around via Kherson (or that hilarious image last week where Ukraine loops around Russian defenses starting at Belgorod oblast and just marches south and then west and retakes everything)
I have a third idea though - people only think of left or right when thinking about going around fortifications. but there's an entire axis unused here. that's right - we need to bring back blimps and stuff them full of thousands of soldiers, Trojan Horse style. Russia won't shoot it down because they'll be too busy saying "Wow, what a cool blimp!"
at the same time, we use Elon Musk's Boring company to dig a tunnel right underneath the fortifications.
Who wants to start a new grift with me to sell 21st century quantum military tech to Ukraine. These devices are capable of quantum tunneling through Russian *rc defense lines. From there it's just a short drive in a Bradley to reach Moscow
It does seem like reorganising forces is a good time for the enemy to attack. Be in a state of constantly reorganising forces to goad the enemy into attack
this is the best strategy because even though the chernozem is a loamy mess and will collapse under its own weight, the tunnel will be deep enough that tanks can't fire on it because tanks only have ~10 degrees of gun depression. what's that? artillery? well the collapsed tunnel is like a giant trench so you basically get like 40% damage resistance against artillery. we will simply sap entire provinces, we have the technology.
Yes the german army got extremely lucky and did a risky maneuver by crossing bad terrain (for warfare). Its almost like the moment when Germany wracked its navy during operation weserübung , leaving them unable to destroy the british.