Will Putin Invade Ukraine?

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Ukrainian troops have reportedly driven the Russians away from Kherson International Airport in Chornobaivka, a military/civilian airport, and infamously the site of so many attacks that it got its own Wikipedia article

39 attacks, a comically large amount of attacks in such a small time.  It has arguably seen more death than a Futurama suicide booth, and used with similar intent.

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Reports have this as not a calm and orderly retreat, but a panicked rout.

Retreating Russian forces were hounded by artillery fire and disorderly river crossings were no doubt fraught.  A HIMARS strike destroyed the pontoon bridge near the now-destroyed Antonivskyi Bridge.  It's unknown if anyone was on it at the time.

Currently, Russia can only be said to definitively control a small slice of land north of the Dniper river.

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Man, this is a fast-developing story!

Apparently, Ukrainian troops made it into Kherson to try their world-famous watermelons. 🍉



There's lots of footage of civilians greeting and hugging them.  It's quite sweet.

There's also footage of Ukrainians flying their own flag and tearing down Russian propaganda posters.  That sort of footage will no doubt be part of future world history curriculum.

Over a dozen towns in Kherson region have been liberated, afaik Kherson City itself is also liberated, as is virtually all of Mykolaiv region.  The Russian-occupied portion of Ukraine, which peaked at roughly 25%, has dwindled down to roughly 18% (and dropping fast!).  Truly, a historic day.

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Why we fight

Slava Ukrayini!

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Why we fight

Slava Ukrayini!

Ukrainians are super motivated. Putin's soldiers complain they don't even get paid the rubles they are promised. Isn't that the dictator's handbook rule no. 1: Pay your muscle well?

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Russia says they didn't leave a single piece of equipment behind.

Well, here's a helicopter they left behind

Damaged blade, but that can be replaced.

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Russian kia has reached 80k after yesterday's 810

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Zelenskyy is working on building a fleet of 100 drone boats

Lithuania has pitched in

The previous attack used about a dozen drones, iirc.  And while the full extent of the damage is unknown, we do know that at least one missile cruiser and a couple other ships were substantially damaged if not sunk.

We also know that it struck a nerve because Putin tried (and failed) to scrap the grain deal in response, ridiculously demanded that Ukraine guarantee the safety of his military fleet, and launched a missile attack on civilians in some sort of twisted revenge.  Also afaik, there have been no new missile attacks from ships, which is very interesting.

If Zelenskyy launches another drone attack, this time with much more drones at his disposal, that would be the end of the Black Sea fleet.

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Want to hear a Russian joke?  The Kremlin says that Kherson is still Russian

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As the frontlines shift further and further south, new artillery targets come within range, with explosive results.

Ukrainian forces hit such a new target: the Chaplynka airfield, about 60km from the edge of the frontline

What's really fascinating about the southern front is that only two roads (read: supply lines) head south to Crimea.  So if one or both are threatened, that could be really, really bad for Russian troops in Crimea...

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Ukrainian unit turkey shoots Russian armored vehicles near Pavlivka, Donetsk

And yes, the vehicle is front gets instagibbed and the vehicle behind them keeps going straight ahead, presumably attempting to drive by the fresh wreck as if nothing happened instead of scattering or retreating or literally anything else that could improve their survivability.  Over and over again.  Some major NPC energy there.

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Black Sea fleet stuck in port since drone attack, doing little else

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Almost every business and country has, to some extent, a culture of lying.  White lies, telling the boss what he wants to hear, etc.  But Russia has taken this to a whole 'nother level.  And dictatorships, by their very nature, promote a culture of lying (if you give the dictator bad news, you die) and because the dictator has all the power and very little truth, this leads to disastrously bad decisions due to a poor understanding of reality.

A common criticism of democracies from authoritarians is that democracies collectively make poor decisions due to everyone having a say and the average person generally not having much knowledge of the situation.  Well, that problem is certainly not solved in authoritarian regimes, only exacerbated.  Instead of a bunch of people with poor understanding, there is a single person with an even worse understanding due to institutional lying.  And instead of many people making a bad call and changing their position in the future (either through changing their minds or through successive generations), we have a single guy making a bad call and maybe changing his mind somewhere down the road or maybe not changing his mind ever and two or three generations have to suffer through it.

In the case of Russia, small exaggerations from the frontlines pass their way to generals and eventually to Putin himself, and by the time he gets it, the reports bear little resemblance to reality.  In fact, lying becomes more intense the further it goes up the foodchain.  While Private Conscriptovich risks getting shunned for telling the unvarnished truth, Army General Olig Oligarchov and his whole family will definitely die in a particularly brutal fashion if he tells the unvarnished truth.  Putin, armed with these definitely 100% true reports, then micromanages the army's next move - to utter disaster.  But state propaganda spins the hell out of it to make it look like a success.

This is why you sometimes hear bizarre tales from Russian media or individual people that Russia is destroying both Ukraine and NATO mercenaries in Ukraine (in reality, only a small fraction of NATO hardware makes its way to Ukraine and Western countries tend to not rely on mercenaries as heavily as Russia, so this is exaggeration and projection), that the Ukrainians are so desperate that they're drafting Polish women (methinks they saw some polish equipment and some women soldiers and let their imaginations run wild), or that Russian defeats - if there are any - can be chalked up to Ukrainian supersoldiers.  Fictional inputs -> Fictional outputs (just ask the Republicans)

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Cell phone service has been restored in Kherson

TV/radio broadcasts have also been restored.

Rail lines are currently being repaired.

But much of the city's infrastructure still lies in ruin.  Thankfully, Ukrainian forces have been rushing water and food and medicine to the newly liberated city.

The only reported Russian presence near Kherson city today has been some bodies washing down the Dnieper. 🌻