Mamoulian War

Very big fish in Russian General staff was KIA near Popasna. And there are rumours, that even bigger fish went belly up with him as well.

After pretty long break from gaming, I have finished my first playthrough of Heroes of Might and Magic from GOG. At the beginning I have picked the Warlock hero and after 697 of in-game days, I defeated the Dragon City in the last scenario. The game despite being so old, has still a lot of charm and I've enjoyed it most of the time. Unfortunately the not so bright AI does put some stains on the experience, but few of the scenarios would be probably very difficult, if it was any smarter.

Allegedly the 35th Army, the perpetrators of Bucha massacre, has been almost completely annihilated near Izyum. And here is a translation pretty sarcastic post by Russian Military blogger, who described how the situation around Izyum looked like for this army... It's pretty sad state. It pretty much confirms, that a lot of units of Russian army are dependent on crowdfunding from common Russia... https://wartranslated.com/russian-35th-combined-arms-army-izyum-is-destroyed-by-its-own-command/

20% of Severodoneck, which was lost during last few days, is back under Ukrainian control.

I was just quoting the analysis from the video I've linked. The guy has given me enough plausible reasons, why this outcome might be a possibility in the near future. He was talking about situation in 70's, when to steep prices of oil meant much less oil sold, due to very steep decrease of demand for oil, and in the end, they lost more money, than they gained form the price spike at that time, if I understood that correctly. What does not zerohedge mention, is Venezuela. The country with one of the biggest natural stockpile of Oil, which does not produce almost anything due to the sanctions. And already two months ago Biden and Maduro were already in talks about lifting the sanctions for more oil. And I bet my hat, that they will find a way, how to proceed with the deal before the **** will hit the fan even more. 🤷‍♂️ On the other topic, the ISW report, I've linked up has one very interesting mention, which I forgotten to mention, but which says a lot about the bad situation on Russian side of the conflict, and might shows a sign, that the situation will sooner or later shift more favourably to the Ukrainian side: "Russian private military company servicemen from Wagner also refused to participate in combat, leading to a significant lack of advances on the Izyum axis."

Yesterdays ISW report on the war in Ukraine was pretty terrible for Russian soldiers. Absolute lack of medical supplies are causing extreme issues for treatment of soldiers in the field. Most of the medical professionals who were sent to Izyum area, are already dead, and the new recruits do not have enough knowledge to perform, what is needed. To much amputations, and the new recruits are not willing to go to Ukraine when they are up for their rotation, which pretty much stops the rotations required for the refreshment of their fighting capabilities and a lot of Russian soldiers are on the bring of physical and psychical exhaustion, because they were not rotated out of the battlefield as required. Pro Russian military bloggers are blaming that again on stupidly incompetent Russian Officers... https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-june-3 So it looks like the Russian plan to out-attrition the West has pretty big flaws right at the most important places... EDIT: Oh also, the Ukrainian Army did took a lot of area back inside and around Severodonetsk, and obliterated a lot of Russian units. They managed to get the most important roads in the north east of the city, and put a heavy blow to Russian GLOCs. IMHO, this is not something which will probably last long, but currently it is very heavy blow to Russian logistics and they had to retreat. Mostly thanks to the fact, that Lysychanks over the river is on the high ground, so Ukraine has extreme advantage for their artillery units. And they are using it to the maximum extent. Also, Ukraine has slow but steady progress around Kherson - Mykolaiv - Dnipropetrovsk Oblasts borders, and repelled every Russian attempt to retake the positions, which they lost since May 28th. EDIT2: UA aviation also conducted a lot of airstrikes against Russian positions around these areas ( )

AFAIK, she is already in Kyiv with her schoolmates, she studies acting. Thanks for bringing that to my attention, I ahve not noticed it, as I am pretty fluent in German language, I have not even searched for the subtitles Despite that, Russia is already producing 1 million barrels per day less, according to Deutsche Welle, which already cost them ****load of money. And here is also an analysis, why the prices of Oil will not stay very high for long, because in the end, this is not in the interest of Saudi Arabia. Therefore, there is a prediction, contradictory to yours, that as soon as OPEC reaps enough profits, they will up their production, to get it into the more bearable price area, just to avoid, what happened in 70's. Nevertheless, the Eastern Europe, with the exception of Hungary are the biggest contributors of military and humanitarian help to Ukraine. Simply because we know, we will end up in even bigger **** than now, if we will have Russia as our neighbour again... AFAIK, wheat export is not sanctioned. Only fertilizers.

Warhammer 2022 goodies for free on GOG. Including Warhammer 40K: Chaos Gate. Old school WH Xcom-like. I can only recommend it https://www.gog.com/en/game/warhammer_skulls_2022_digital_goodie_pack

Also I forgot to answer one part of the question, she had here for some time some a friend from University, and other girl from the same University. But they moved few weeks ago to UK, because they both were directly for Mariupol, the second girl's father was even killed by Russians, despite they being at some point during this conflict in Crimea , so there was nothing left to return to for them back in Ukraine. Our "kid" wanted to go at first to UK with her as well, but her desire to finish her education won in the end. She sometimes met some other UA "kids" around the city, but she spent most of her time alone, as she was pretty big kind of introvert.

Finally the best youtube channel, I follow, which covers the war for Ukraine, started to cover it in English. It is the channel of Austrian Army, so it is very professional, and neutral channel, which covers successes and failures of both sides equally. A lot of the info I have shared in the past, was based on their assessments. If you know German language, and want to have more detailed and unbiased look on what is going on, I really recommend to watch some of the past videos, as well. And another looks at why Russian Army under-performs so much, by another guy, which I find has very good research behind his videos. Beware, it is 1 hour long video 😄

Also, while Russians are pushing with all of their available force to gain political goals of seizing Luhansk Oblast, while loosing hundreds of soldiers weekly, Ukraine continues to push to achieve tactical goal of liberating west bank of Dnipro in Kherson Oblast. "In the Kherson region from the direction of Dnipropetrovsk region, the Armed Forces have already liberated more than 20 settlements - the head of the Kherson Regional State Administration Gennady Laguta" https://t.me/ukrinform_news/72339

As I said some weeks ago, the logistics is currently less in favour for Ukrainians like around Kyiv, so at some point it possible, that the UA soldiers can be some time without enough weapons/ammunition to fight. But I presume, it is not as catastrophic as Russian propaganda is trying to depict it.

what language do you speak with each other, I assume English? - (Slovak, Ukrainian, Russian, English - Ukrainian is in some way close to Slovak, but she is from Russian speaking family, and me and my wife learned Russian language at secondary school. I use mostly English, my wife mostly Russian) did the student have family who stayed in Ukraine or were her family also refugees - (they family stayed almost two month at home in Dobropillia in Donbas, after Russian Army moved away from Kyiv and started Donbas offensive, they moved to Krivyi Rih. Her brother is "available" for mobilization in Kyiv. So in the end, they are refugees, but they are still in Ukraine) who paid for the food and other costs and if you paid was it expensive - (We have 7 EUR a day reimbursement for 1 person from government, but the girl started to work 1 about 2 weeks after she moved to us, so we were sharing most of the costs, but more of the costs were of course on the side of me and my wife. I would not say that it was expensive, but I think some Slovakians with worse income than our family might consider it expensive) what did she use to do during the day, did she have friends and or other Ukrainians that she associated with - (First two weeks she tried to explore the city, then she started to work, and two weeks, before her leave, we bough her cheap guitar, so she spent a lot of time learning the instrument 😛) And then did your family get on with her? I know it sounds weird but what was it like, did she use to talk about the war? - (We tried to not talk with her at all about the war. Only very very occasionally when we were all outside and talking about all the stuff. My wife had pretty good relationship with her, but she did not talked much to me. She said that she does not understand my English, but you never know 😄)

I bet, after some negotiations, there will be some solution, how to make it a part of the Lend Lease. As we found out, how to exchange our S300 for new Patriot.

Nope, she went back to Ukraine this Saturday. But in the meanwhile, me and my wife "adpoted" one 17-years old dude, who would like to study IT here. 😁 And or laws demand, that students under 18 years need to have an "supervisor" in Slovakia, if his parents are abroad. But go ahead, ask your questions.

Well, this is expected in the aftermath of every single conflict on earth, not only in Ukraine. The good news is, that Europol and responsible people learned hard lesson from Yugoslavia aftermath.

And looks like that helicopter news was misidentification

Little bit more on the Officer losses of Russia:

Yesterday Lithuania has announced, that as a first country in the world is completely Russian Free on energy imports. No more gas, oil and electricity imports from Russia.

Also, here is pretty interesting interview, which pretty much confirmed, what I was "thinking about aloud" last few days in this thread

This one is pretty implausible... from the department of to good to be true 😛

Little bit more on the Harpoon deals by Ukrainian sources. Probably overestimation, but even if that statement is 50% true, this is pretty big deal, and all the wheat might be able to get out of Odessa soon... Also yesterday report of ISW was very interesting, and pretty much confirms, that the Ukrainian tactics of waiting for Russian implosion, although greatly costly, works. More and more pro-Russian bloggers are talking about the mismanagement and incompetence of Russian officers, which has catastrophic consequences for already shaken servicemen and officer morale... Well this is what you get, when you assign your promotion based on how much are they up in your ass, instead on how competent they are "Ukrainian forces are also suffering serious losses in the Battle of Severodonetsk, as are Ukrainian civilians and infrastructure. The Russians have concentrated a much higher proportion of their available offensive combat power to take Severodonetsk than the Ukrainians, however, shaping the attrition gradient generally in Kyiv’s favor. The Ukrainians continue to receive supplies and materiel from their allies as well, however slow and limited that flow may be. The Russians, in contrast, continue to manifest clear signs that they are burning through their available reserves of manpower and materiel with no reason to expect relief in the coming months. Evidence of eroding military professionalism in the Russian officer corps is mounting. The Ukrainian Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reported that Russian commanders are attempting to preserve military equipment by forbidding drivers from evacuating wounded servicemen or providing supplies to units that have advanced too far.[1] Refusing to risk equipment to evacuate wounded personnel on the battlefield—other than in extraordinary circumstances—is a remarkable violation of core principles of military professionalism. Such behavior can have serious impacts on morale and the willingness of soldiers to fight and risk getting injured beyond their own defensive lines. ISW cannot independently confirm the GUR’s report, but commentary by Russian milbloggers offers some circumstantial support for it. Russian milblogger Alexander Zhychkovskiy criticized the Russian military command’s disregard for reservists on the deprioritized Zaporizhia Oblast front. Zhychkovskiy reported that Russian commanders trapped lightly-equipped infantry units in areas of intense Ukrainian artillery fire without significant artillery support and did not rotate other units through those areas to relieve them.[2] Zhychkovskiy noted that Russian commanders are responsible for high losses and cases of insanity among servicemen. Another milblogger, Alexander Khodarkovsky, said that Russian commanders are not sending reinforcements in a timely matter, preventing Russian forces from resting between ground assaults.[3] Waning professionalism among Russia’s officers could present Ukrainian forces with opportunities. Russian morale, already low, may drop further if such behavior is widespread and continues. If Russian troops stuck on secondary axes lose their will to fight as the Battle for Severdonetsk consumes much of the available Russian offensive combat power, Ukraine may have a chance to launch significant counteroffensives with good prospects for success. That prospect is uncertain, and Ukraine may not have the ability to take advantage of an opportunity even if it presents itself, but the current pattern of Russian operations is generating serious vulnerabilities that Kyiv will likely attempt to exploit."

And sorry for triple post, I have just noticed it now. It looks like, that after a very long time of stalemate, the Ukraine started at least some small scale counteroffensive in Kherson Oblast. https://t.me/lumsrc/1589

The ones, which make big bad kaboom. On a more serious note, Danes have RGM-84A. According to some site, which about which credibility I have no clue, it is possible they get some mix with other variants from other countries as well. But the deal is done by the Denmark.

Bacause we are now paying for 60+% of our gas to Norway and Croatia and other Netherlands in USD/EUR. The last 30+% we got from Russia is also payed in USD, because all of our Gas import is performed by state owned company, which gives us much better leverage, than private companies in the west, which must obey their shareholders as well. And if they turn us off, we have already enough gas stacked to have a chance to survive this winter. So we have now 1 and half year to find a way, how to substitute the last 30+%.