An assessment of the battlefield situation in Ukraine
https://www.rsn.org/001/ukraines-cleanu ... -held.html
Against the Russian invasion of Ukraine
Ukraine's missiles and drones reach very far into Russia
Ukraine's reach with missiles and drones into Russia itself is truly impressive
https://www.rsn.org/001/russia-no-part- ... rikes.html
https://www.rsn.org/001/russia-no-part- ... rikes.html
Progress by Ukraine
The Institute for the Study of War is usually pretty accurate.
"The current situation on the battlefield is the best for Ukraine in the last 10 months, - ISW...
"Ukraine continues to strengthen its positions against Russia on tactical, operational and strategic levels.
Ukrainian and British intelligence services evaluate the situation on the battlefield as the best for Ukraine from June 2025.
"The Ukrainian armed forces have achieved tactical successes in the south, which has caused a domino effect on other parts of the battlefield. This forces Russia to calculate between defending against counter-attack and transferring resources to other areas."
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10 ... n__=*b0H-R
"The current situation on the battlefield is the best for Ukraine in the last 10 months, - ISW...
"Ukraine continues to strengthen its positions against Russia on tactical, operational and strategic levels.
Ukrainian and British intelligence services evaluate the situation on the battlefield as the best for Ukraine from June 2025.
"The Ukrainian armed forces have achieved tactical successes in the south, which has caused a domino effect on other parts of the battlefield. This forces Russia to calculate between defending against counter-attack and transferring resources to other areas."
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10 ... n__=*b0H-R
Last edited by Frank on Thu May 07, 2026 11:31 am, edited 1 time in total.
Re: Against the Russian invasion of Ukraine
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/rus ... 52586.html
In Russia, Victory Day Is Starting to Feel Like Defeat
Cathy Young
Tue, May 5, 2026 at 2:32 AM PDT
AS RUSSIA APPROACHES ITS BIGGEST and most sacralized national holiday—Victory Day, which commemorates the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II—on May 9, embarrassing things are happening on the way to the grand parade. Or perhaps not so grand—more on that anon.
Last week, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that the Victory Day parade in Moscow’s Red Square, which for decades has served as a symbol of Russian military power, will be drastically scaled back. Tanks and other military hardware will not be rolling across Red Square; there will be only a column of soldiers and military academy students marching on foot. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov made no secret of the fact that the reason for this decision was the “terrorist threat” from Ukraine—that is, the fear of drone strikes. Victory parades in many other cities are being truncated as well.
But wait, it gets even more embarrassing. On April 27, Vladimir Putin called Donald Trump and, according to the spook-czar’s chief foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, “informed his American counterpart of his readiness to declare a cease-fire for the duration of the Victory Day celebrations.” (While Trump told reporters it was he who “suggested a little bit of a cease-fire,” Ushakov’s comments made it fairly clear that the suggestion came from Putin; the Russian media also reported that it was Putin who broached the idea.) Translated into plain language, it sounds an awful lot like Putin was calling Trump and asking him to lean on Volodymyr Zelensky to make sure Ukrainian drones don’t rain on the Moscow parade.
Elena Malakhovskaya, a host on the Khodorkovsky Live webcast, summed up the situation another way: “In the fifth year of the war, it’s Zelensky who decides whether Putin can appear at the parade on Red Square.”
The drone strike that breached Moscow’s air defenses on Monday is not likely to allay Putin’s fears.
Ukrainian drones have been making Russia very nervous lately, with strikes as far away from the frontlines as Ekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk and Perm—more than 600 miles from the Ukrainian border. The official line voiced by Putin and amplified by his propagandists such as Rossiya-1 “journalist” Olga Skabeyeva, is that Ukraine is resorting to aerial “terrorism” because it is steadily losing on the ground. But that line is getting harder to sell. In the West, even erstwhile Ukraine skeptics such as blogger Andrew Sullivan now hail “the Ukrainian miracle.” And in Russia, even the war-hawk bloggers are increasingly speaking of defeats and “dead-end” warfare.
There’s a reason for the shift. In April, the latest reports say, Russia lost more territory in Ukraine than it captured for the first time since mid-2023. As Brynn Tannehill and others have noted, this spring has seen a subtle but significant shift in the strategic balance of the war. Ukrainian drone production now matches or exceeds Russia’s, and its quality is generally better. Ukrainian unmanned ground combat vehicles are changing the character of combat on the front lines and correcting for the smaller country’s manpower deficit—all while achieving the highest numbers of Russian casualties in any month of the war so far. Ukrainian long-range strikes knocked out some 40 percent of Russia’s oil export capacity just as prices were rising because of the Hormuz crisis, and further strikes have diminished Russia’s already limited domestic refining capacity. Russia’s spring offensive appears to have been blunted even before it began.
As a result, the Kremlin and its sockpuppets have little to brag about. Endless Russian news reports about troop movements and battles around the village of Mala Tokmachka in Zaporizhzhia—prewar population about 3,000, with some 200 residents currently remaining—have become a joke. (No less a figure than Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov has unironically asserted that the “liberation” of Mala Tokmachka would be “a serious step toward accomplishing the goals of the special military operation.”)
Some of the Russian “milbloggers” have always allowed themselves more candid assessments of Russian military incompetence than the official media, probably because their pro-war stance gives them more leeway. But expatriate Russian analyst Michael Nacke observes that the criticism, or the handwringing, has grown far more outspoken lately. What’s more, even members of the Russian media establishment, such as Dmitry Steshin, a reporter for the mainstream Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, are contributing. “The tempo of the offensive has changed,” Steshin said on a recent livestream. “Ukraine is feverishly stepping up its abilities. Their strategy of a wall of drones and an offensive aided by robots has worked.” Steshin also offered “an unpleasant quote” from a Ukrainian POW, reported to him by a Russian source: “He said that you bring a truckload of men to the front lines, and we bring a truckload of FPV drones.”
AWAY FROM THE FRONT LINES, the drone strikes on oil refineries in the Black Sea port of Tuapse have had a devastating effect. The fires, the oil spills, and the release of noxious gases are adding up to an environmental catastrophe. While comparisons to the Chernobyl disaster are hyperbolic, one similarity is that for nearly two weeks, the Russian media maintained a complete silence about the strikes. Then, Putin finally mentioned the Tuapse situation—and promptly minimized it, citing regional governor Veniamin Kondratiev’s assertion that “there are no serious dangers, and people are managing to deal with the challenges.” Meanwhile, video clips of apocalyptic billows of smoke and fire rising over the city and oil pooling on beaches have been going viral. “We get a typically Soviet situation when everyone knows we’re being lied to,” émigré political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin told a Ukrainian journalist. He added that, after so many years of being told that under Putin, Russia was “rising from its knees,” people are becoming irritated that the dictator can’t keep them safe.
Direct criticism of Putin, beaten into submission and silence since the invasion of Ukraine—and the imprisonment and subsequent murder of Alexei Navalny—seems to be rearing its head again, online and even in the streets. And sometimes, people are getting away with it. In Novosibirsk, Russia’s third-largest city, with a population of nearly 1.7 million, a local Communist activist gave a May Day rally speech expressing outrage that draftees who are almost children are being sent to die on the frontlines while the sons of Putin’s top officials, and Putin’s own daughters, are living the good life. (Only about thirty people showed up for the rally, but that’s a lot considering protesters have been jailed in Russia in recent years for one-person demonstrations featuring blank placards.)
Popular livestreamer Vladislav Zhmilevsky recently went after Putin far more directly, juxtaposing footage of the Tuapse fires with a 2024 clip of a smug-looking Putin joking dismissively about Russians who worry too much. “Why the fuck would you say such dumb shit?” commented Zhmilevsky as he played the clip. Pushing his heresy even further, he also warned that Putin was getting people to the point where they would not only rejoice at his death but fervently wish it had happened sooner. Zhmilevsky, as it happens, is a member of Putin’s United Russia party.
And those aren’t the only examples. For instance, the recent drama around formerly pro-Kremlin, pro-war lawyer and blogger Ilya Remeslo, who suddenly started posting strident critiques of Putin and ended up in a mental hospital, has continued since Remeslo’s discharge/release. He even intensified his criticism on a popular webcast (a political soap opera that deserves its own story). Is the repressive apparatus in Russia starved of resources because of the war and spread too thin to crack down on Putin critics? Or could it be that, as blogger Maksim Katz suggests, there’s a tacit signal that “now, this is allowed”? Is Putin losing his aura? Is the relative leniency due, as some think, to infighting between different Kremlin factions?
With the war going badly and greater numbers of Russians able to see the truth and feel its effects, Putin is focusing on his top priority: A leaked intelligence report from a European country says that Putin is tightening his personal security not only because he fears Ukrainian drones, but because he fears an internal coup. Will the “bunker grandpa,” as Putin has long been dubbed by critics, spend Victory Day in his bunker?
In Russia, Victory Day Is Starting to Feel Like Defeat
Cathy Young
Tue, May 5, 2026 at 2:32 AM PDT
AS RUSSIA APPROACHES ITS BIGGEST and most sacralized national holiday—Victory Day, which commemorates the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II—on May 9, embarrassing things are happening on the way to the grand parade. Or perhaps not so grand—more on that anon.
Last week, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that the Victory Day parade in Moscow’s Red Square, which for decades has served as a symbol of Russian military power, will be drastically scaled back. Tanks and other military hardware will not be rolling across Red Square; there will be only a column of soldiers and military academy students marching on foot. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov made no secret of the fact that the reason for this decision was the “terrorist threat” from Ukraine—that is, the fear of drone strikes. Victory parades in many other cities are being truncated as well.
But wait, it gets even more embarrassing. On April 27, Vladimir Putin called Donald Trump and, according to the spook-czar’s chief foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, “informed his American counterpart of his readiness to declare a cease-fire for the duration of the Victory Day celebrations.” (While Trump told reporters it was he who “suggested a little bit of a cease-fire,” Ushakov’s comments made it fairly clear that the suggestion came from Putin; the Russian media also reported that it was Putin who broached the idea.) Translated into plain language, it sounds an awful lot like Putin was calling Trump and asking him to lean on Volodymyr Zelensky to make sure Ukrainian drones don’t rain on the Moscow parade.
Elena Malakhovskaya, a host on the Khodorkovsky Live webcast, summed up the situation another way: “In the fifth year of the war, it’s Zelensky who decides whether Putin can appear at the parade on Red Square.”
The drone strike that breached Moscow’s air defenses on Monday is not likely to allay Putin’s fears.
Ukrainian drones have been making Russia very nervous lately, with strikes as far away from the frontlines as Ekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk and Perm—more than 600 miles from the Ukrainian border. The official line voiced by Putin and amplified by his propagandists such as Rossiya-1 “journalist” Olga Skabeyeva, is that Ukraine is resorting to aerial “terrorism” because it is steadily losing on the ground. But that line is getting harder to sell. In the West, even erstwhile Ukraine skeptics such as blogger Andrew Sullivan now hail “the Ukrainian miracle.” And in Russia, even the war-hawk bloggers are increasingly speaking of defeats and “dead-end” warfare.
There’s a reason for the shift. In April, the latest reports say, Russia lost more territory in Ukraine than it captured for the first time since mid-2023. As Brynn Tannehill and others have noted, this spring has seen a subtle but significant shift in the strategic balance of the war. Ukrainian drone production now matches or exceeds Russia’s, and its quality is generally better. Ukrainian unmanned ground combat vehicles are changing the character of combat on the front lines and correcting for the smaller country’s manpower deficit—all while achieving the highest numbers of Russian casualties in any month of the war so far. Ukrainian long-range strikes knocked out some 40 percent of Russia’s oil export capacity just as prices were rising because of the Hormuz crisis, and further strikes have diminished Russia’s already limited domestic refining capacity. Russia’s spring offensive appears to have been blunted even before it began.
As a result, the Kremlin and its sockpuppets have little to brag about. Endless Russian news reports about troop movements and battles around the village of Mala Tokmachka in Zaporizhzhia—prewar population about 3,000, with some 200 residents currently remaining—have become a joke. (No less a figure than Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov has unironically asserted that the “liberation” of Mala Tokmachka would be “a serious step toward accomplishing the goals of the special military operation.”)
Some of the Russian “milbloggers” have always allowed themselves more candid assessments of Russian military incompetence than the official media, probably because their pro-war stance gives them more leeway. But expatriate Russian analyst Michael Nacke observes that the criticism, or the handwringing, has grown far more outspoken lately. What’s more, even members of the Russian media establishment, such as Dmitry Steshin, a reporter for the mainstream Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, are contributing. “The tempo of the offensive has changed,” Steshin said on a recent livestream. “Ukraine is feverishly stepping up its abilities. Their strategy of a wall of drones and an offensive aided by robots has worked.” Steshin also offered “an unpleasant quote” from a Ukrainian POW, reported to him by a Russian source: “He said that you bring a truckload of men to the front lines, and we bring a truckload of FPV drones.”
AWAY FROM THE FRONT LINES, the drone strikes on oil refineries in the Black Sea port of Tuapse have had a devastating effect. The fires, the oil spills, and the release of noxious gases are adding up to an environmental catastrophe. While comparisons to the Chernobyl disaster are hyperbolic, one similarity is that for nearly two weeks, the Russian media maintained a complete silence about the strikes. Then, Putin finally mentioned the Tuapse situation—and promptly minimized it, citing regional governor Veniamin Kondratiev’s assertion that “there are no serious dangers, and people are managing to deal with the challenges.” Meanwhile, video clips of apocalyptic billows of smoke and fire rising over the city and oil pooling on beaches have been going viral. “We get a typically Soviet situation when everyone knows we’re being lied to,” émigré political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin told a Ukrainian journalist. He added that, after so many years of being told that under Putin, Russia was “rising from its knees,” people are becoming irritated that the dictator can’t keep them safe.
Direct criticism of Putin, beaten into submission and silence since the invasion of Ukraine—and the imprisonment and subsequent murder of Alexei Navalny—seems to be rearing its head again, online and even in the streets. And sometimes, people are getting away with it. In Novosibirsk, Russia’s third-largest city, with a population of nearly 1.7 million, a local Communist activist gave a May Day rally speech expressing outrage that draftees who are almost children are being sent to die on the frontlines while the sons of Putin’s top officials, and Putin’s own daughters, are living the good life. (Only about thirty people showed up for the rally, but that’s a lot considering protesters have been jailed in Russia in recent years for one-person demonstrations featuring blank placards.)
Popular livestreamer Vladislav Zhmilevsky recently went after Putin far more directly, juxtaposing footage of the Tuapse fires with a 2024 clip of a smug-looking Putin joking dismissively about Russians who worry too much. “Why the fuck would you say such dumb shit?” commented Zhmilevsky as he played the clip. Pushing his heresy even further, he also warned that Putin was getting people to the point where they would not only rejoice at his death but fervently wish it had happened sooner. Zhmilevsky, as it happens, is a member of Putin’s United Russia party.
And those aren’t the only examples. For instance, the recent drama around formerly pro-Kremlin, pro-war lawyer and blogger Ilya Remeslo, who suddenly started posting strident critiques of Putin and ended up in a mental hospital, has continued since Remeslo’s discharge/release. He even intensified his criticism on a popular webcast (a political soap opera that deserves its own story). Is the repressive apparatus in Russia starved of resources because of the war and spread too thin to crack down on Putin critics? Or could it be that, as blogger Maksim Katz suggests, there’s a tacit signal that “now, this is allowed”? Is Putin losing his aura? Is the relative leniency due, as some think, to infighting between different Kremlin factions?
With the war going badly and greater numbers of Russians able to see the truth and feel its effects, Putin is focusing on his top priority: A leaked intelligence report from a European country says that Putin is tightening his personal security not only because he fears Ukrainian drones, but because he fears an internal coup. Will the “bunker grandpa,” as Putin has long been dubbed by critics, spend Victory Day in his bunker?
Last edited by Frank on Thu May 07, 2026 12:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Re: Against the Russian invasion of Ukraine
Frank's posting of the Yahoo article says the Russians are nervous about Ukrainian drone attacks on their Victory Day parade May 9, and that Putin himself may not appear for it.
Re: Against the Russian invasion of Ukraine
I didn't have time to introduce this article yesterday, and it actually doesn't say a lot that one cannot read about elsewhere.
The article gives the idea that Putin is very worried about Ukraine attacking the Victory Day parade, which may be true. On the other hand, some Ukrainian Facebookers are saying Putin actually wants a murderous attack so he can use it to justify a general mobilization. That's why he's placing ordinary soldiers and military academy students out front, etc. I'm skeptical of this, but we'll see what happens on Victory Day.
The media personalities and members of the ruling class deserting Putin reminds one of what's happening with Trump.
The article gives the idea that Putin is very worried about Ukraine attacking the Victory Day parade, which may be true. On the other hand, some Ukrainian Facebookers are saying Putin actually wants a murderous attack so he can use it to justify a general mobilization. That's why he's placing ordinary soldiers and military academy students out front, etc. I'm skeptical of this, but we'll see what happens on Victory Day.
The media personalities and members of the ruling class deserting Putin reminds one of what's happening with Trump.
Re: Against the Russian invasion of Ukraine
From Domagoj Franic's Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/domagoj.franic.3
Many russians are leaving Crimea en masse via the Kerch Bridge
Satellite images from yesterday showed a 10-kilometer queue to leave the bridge, with around 1,500 cars in it. https://www.facebook.com/domagoj.franic ... %2CO%2CP-R
Destruction of Russian anti-air defense systems in occupied Crimea continues with unabated vigor. https://www.facebook.com/reel/995620023 ... %2CO%2CP-R
Many russians are leaving Crimea en masse via the Kerch Bridge
Satellite images from yesterday showed a 10-kilometer queue to leave the bridge, with around 1,500 cars in it. https://www.facebook.com/domagoj.franic ... %2CO%2CP-R
Destruction of Russian anti-air defense systems in occupied Crimea continues with unabated vigor. https://www.facebook.com/reel/995620023 ... %2CO%2CP-R
Re: Against the Russian invasion of Ukraine
Tightening the noose on Crimea: https://www.yahoo.com/news/world/articl ... 00654.html
Re: Against the Russian invasion of Ukraine
Ukraine is attacking Russian oil refineries almost daily, and this weakening the Russian aggressor. Here I'm noting last night's attack because of the distance involved (Omsk is 1,700 miles from Kyiv) and because of the refinery's importance. This is what Domagoj Franic says about the latter:
"The Omsk refinery is almost twice the size of the Moscow refinery and is the largest in Russia.
"It is also the only refinery in Russia that produces cracking catalysts – a component on which the secondary refining of oil in other Russian refineries depends. This means that the main catalyst production site supplies a number of refineries, and any disruption in production or transportation creates a chain risk – catalyst supplies at refineries are usually limited to a few months of operation, after which FCC/hydrocracking capacity drops across the country.
"The facility was attacked by modernized FP-1 drones with improved wing geometry and an in-wing tank, which allows for a flight range of over 3,000 km."
https://www.facebook.com/reel/273005005 ... %2CO%2CP-R
"The Omsk refinery is almost twice the size of the Moscow refinery and is the largest in Russia.
"It is also the only refinery in Russia that produces cracking catalysts – a component on which the secondary refining of oil in other Russian refineries depends. This means that the main catalyst production site supplies a number of refineries, and any disruption in production or transportation creates a chain risk – catalyst supplies at refineries are usually limited to a few months of operation, after which FCC/hydrocracking capacity drops across the country.
"The facility was attacked by modernized FP-1 drones with improved wing geometry and an in-wing tank, which allows for a flight range of over 3,000 km."
https://www.facebook.com/reel/273005005 ... %2CO%2CP-R
Re: Against the Russian invasion of Ukraine
More on the Russian fuel shortages - https://www.yahoo.com/news/world/articl ... 26689.html