There is a good deal of evidence pointing to a couple of conclusions:
i) Neither the Russian public, nor the average Russian soldier, are at all enthusiastic about this conflict.
ii) The Ukrainians are fighting far harder than the Russians expected, and the average Ukrainian soldier is fiercely committed.
The Russians don’t appear to have a significant number of PoWs, whereas the Ukrainians have captured at least one unit in its entirety. After the initial few hours of chaos, Ukrainian units have held, whereas Russian units are showing signs of a real desertion problem. The loss rate of AFVs has to be far above expectations.
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Bad news. Breakthrough just now. West of Kiev:
Or a while ago, reported it a few posts up, but situation deteriorated.
It is rather bizarre to watch two opponents with near identical doctrine fight it out. Russians holding a significant reserve and using it to crush the forces revealed by the counterattacks is exactly what their doctrine calls for, but the Ukrainians already know that.
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I know…
But it’s so hard for the Ukrainians, if they concentrate, well the missile capabilities and EWAR Russia holds in reserve for such a purpose. Rough.
The Ukrainian defence appears to have anticipated the Russian first phase. Their counterattacks were timed around darkness, but appear to have pulled back their mobile forces not much after midnight, presumably to get clear of the Russian counterstrike of the second phase. It won’t be much fun to be the Ukrainian grunts on the ground, but they will dig in, and it appears they are packing a significant number of Javelins and similar.
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I remember when I was a kid, a bee stung me and there was a small swell on my arm. So my Mum came to me and started scolding, ‘naughty bee, bad bee, how dare you sting my son.’
Ya as if the bee cared and will never sting again. The bee has done damage and will do it again.
Thats what sanctions are.
Pretty sure we just there saw an ISKANDER detonate 
It was an aircraft ! Must have been large !!
https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1497043910073495553
Rob is still open to it being an Iskander:
https://twitter.com/NotWoofers/status/1497043529469673472
Some salt needed on hard numbers as always.
Update on the downing. The aircraft was Ukrainian…
Ouch:
This guy and everyone else there, died…
Video of the communication of those heroes with the Russian war ship:
https://twitter.com/NotWoofers/status/1496990787539595280
https://twitter.com/Caucasuswar/status/1497095521110011904
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I disagree, to be honest.
We went somewhere, we just ended up back where we started, as we almost always do.
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A Singaporean ex-actor, Ix Shen, now living in Kyiv with his Ukrainian wife said this
“I will not be able to live with myself if I just take off and go on my own. I can just trek to Poland or Hungary if I need to. But then I will not be able to live with myself because I didn’t stick around to help. So my main focus is just to help in any way that I can and help my family, friends, neighbours, to everybody to survive this situation,” Ix said.
I feel so helpless and shit. I will probably never understand how people in those situations feel. Why can’t people just be contented with living in peace?
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As always, The Indian govt and Modi only do proactive work when it comes to boosting their image for votes and pandering to NRI’s
The thing that will be almost as horrible to see in the next few years is how little by little this atrocious action will be conveniently forgotten and the incremental, and eventually complete, normalisation of the relationship with Russia will resume.
As an aside, I don’t hear much about sanctions being applied to Belarus, who seem to be complicit.
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