This is going to be a comprehensive post, covering latest events from a number of sources. Take your time and don’t skip – you may miss something.
My thanks to Andrei Martyanov for providing the best map I have seen so far (see below) in his first blog post today (Kherson Is Taken.) – which is a couple of days out of date (but he has been to a wedding) and he was obviously catching up with events – and I will give his other posts a mention below. The map is a publication of Readovka News (read their About us and User Agreement). This appears to be a very useful new site within the Russian news-space.
‘Shoigu said that the operation in Ukraine will last until the goals are achieved’ – Readovka News
“…until the goals are achieved”, means ‘as long as it takes’. It is good to see that Russia is determined to see this operation through. No short-cuts, no drop-outs, no easy let-offs. It will be accomplished when all Russia’s previous demands for security have been met – and not before. Which sort of makes the discussions between Russia and Ukraine ongoing as I write, merely a ‘show willing to talk’ event, because neither party is yet ready to bring this to any sort of early conclusion – unless I am very much mistaken.
But having said that, much of the hard work of bringing about such conditions (satisfactory to Russia – Ukraine’s needs being secondary to that) has already been achieved. Just take a look at the map – after reading some genuine narrative as to what is going on inside Ukraine (i.e. ignore all BS from MSM – and all MSM is BS).
Russia has liberated at least a third of Ukraine (as Martyanov says – ‘To Give Some Impression Of The Scope.‘) and hass broken out of the southern region to head north and west a) to meet up with the northern pincer (is it all right to use the word ‘pincer’ or is that too close to ‘blitzkrieg’ for comfort – either way it is happening and it is a fast moving encirclement), and b) to join forces with Russian troops protecting Transnistria – eventually cutting off all coastal access to Ukraine. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? A continuous land-bridge from Russia (via a newly minted ‘Novorussia’) all the way to Moldova and Transnistria. Personally, I can’t see Russia giving any of that back to Ukraine – at least not without firm guarantees for the independence of the whole of that region and the Donbass.
Then, with Poland wanting back its old territories in the west, Rumania too, there won’t be much left of Ukraine, except what it started with many years ago – as a region of ‘border country’ (the meaning of ‘Ukraine’).
I want to include a report from Izvestia news here because it gives Russian count of destroyed Ukraine military equipment for the first time. They use the term ‘shot down’ in the English translation version, which is a little misleading. It is a count of tanks and other hardware and I think even the Ukrainians would not boast of possessing any flying tanks. ‘Shot down’ should be read as ‘destroyed’.
‘Ukrainian Armed Forces equipment shot down in the Donbass was removed from the copter‘ – Izvestia News
Interestingly, and I will finish with this (I could go on, there is much that is being revealed if you care to look), one of the first actions undertaken by Russia (to prevent external interventions I think, and to reduce opportune quick escapes by criminal elements) was to take control of Gostomel (or Hostomel – I haven’t quite worked out why ‘G’s and ‘H’s are somehow interchangeable) airport , the main international cargo airport west of Kiev. The airlift operation was carried out using 200 helicopters without a single casualty.
‘The Ministry of Defense stated that there were no losses in the Russian Armed Forces‘ – Izvestia (That post does not appear to have a url of its own so will need to scroll down a little way.)
While I am making personal observations, it is also a personal puzzlement to me why ‘Donbass’ sometimes has only one ‘s’ and, at others, two ‘s’s? My education is obviously not yet complete.
Not Something Else 
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