rocketman

3 days later, another 6 ships. 
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-18/ukraine-s-risky-bet-pays-off-with-ships-streaming-to-its-ports
Article from Bloomberg a few days ago noted a similar volume shipped this month compared with the first month of the UN brokered Black Sea grain deal, and that included at least 9 Panamax vessels, the largest size vessels that normally ship grain, indicating insurance brokers are willing to risk retaliation by Russia. 
 
 

Locals reported about loud explosion in area of Berdiansk airport

(from Kriegsforscher twitter)

Another TOS-1 departs for the afterlife with a TRULY spectacular boom. I wonder what they have to threaten the crews of these things with to get them to even go near them. The guys behind this one, perhaps the people charged with making such threats? Any way I am guessing they will double the follow distance to the next one, if they aren't to concussed to do anything besides drool.

Apologies if this is more Gaza War than you want on the thread, but it seems VERY relevant. feel free to remove it if needed. If the Israelis just allowed Spike missiles and other tech that they have already sold to various European militaries to be sent to Ukraine, It would have a non trivial impact. If they send Ukraine the full military sales catalogue and tell them to order whatever they want....
Edit: Then we get to the fascinating question of helping Poland and Ukraine set up production lines.

If they get 12,000 across, and a bridge up,  they will find some more. They don't have to be the worlds best troops to shoot up supply convoys and artillery parks. Brilliant timing with several Russian brigades, and the operational ammo reserve being burnt to a cinder at Aviidka, and the ATACMS panic just good and started. Brilliant timing for a convincing fake, or the real deal either one.

We need to wait several days and not jump out to conclusions, but it seems there will be weak advantage of non-right parties that in theory can create a government if manage to agree on it. Still there is a lot of procedural and dirty tricks (including forming minority government) that PiS can do if wants and we are very early in the polling. Probably it will take 2 days to know results.
Worth to note, that for Ukraine it means nothing new. Resources are already given up or depleted, PL is firmly in NATO camp anyway and every party is stounchly anti-Russian. Only small, far-right Confederacy tried to build their capital on free-market and often anti-Ukrainian sentiments, but, despite serious worries of reaching up to 15%, they seem to fail miserably, finishing barely above the 5% threshold. Society did not accept their "sceptical" UA rhetoric and suspicious "eastern" connections of several  of its more  crazy members (anti-vaxers, paleoliberals and similar kind of guys). Which is perhaps most important here; their partition in government could in theory change county's internationals stance.

Water is incompressible. The force from an underwater explosion is transferred more or less directly through water with minimal loss of energy. As such, a near miss underwater produces nearly the same effect as a direct hit.
A small surface drone with a similar sized payload does less damage because a portion of the energy from the explosion is transmitted through the air, which cushions the blast by virtue of its compressibility. Thus, the best place to hit a ship is below the waterline, where there is no air.
Additionally an underwater explosion will generate a bubble as it pushes water outwards. The bubble eventually collapses, and as it does so the water that takes up the space no longer supports the ship. In certain scenarios where a ship is heavy enough and there is a large enough bubble, the ship will bend as the bubble collapses. This is referred to as "breaking the back" of a ship. The impact of this is somewhat mythologized and often gets blown out of proportion, but is nonetheless noteworthy because at the end of the day it's extra stress on a ship that wouldn't be produced with an above water explosion.

Could not agree more loudly (we should start a podcast...seems to be the rage).  The fundamental question every one needs to ask when seeing an phenomenon in this war is:
What does this do to the options?
Unless it shifts options in favour, or against a side, then it is likely "just an effect".  Effects stack up eventually forcing decision (even negative ones), which are the roadmaps of options.  But options are bigger than any tactical action or exchange...until they are not.  So, and this goes for the "Ukraine fanbois" and "Doomsday Club", the question we need to ask every time we see something is the one above.  Are Ukraine's options expanding, sustaining or shrinking?  Are Russia's?  How does "this" matter to those options?
If we see an RA attack, well does it actually indicate an increase in Russian options spaces?  Does the attack yield better operational options?  Is all it doing is trying to sustain the options the RA already have?
We need to stop seeing an event through narrow lenses of "killed" or "ground taken/lost".  Past troop numbers and equipment.  Is it decisive (in either direction)?  Does it impact options?
Here I agree with Steve.  Avdiivka is the RA sustaining options, at best.  The UA offensive has not yielded options expansion...that we can see.  Have they eroded the RA enough that opening up another offensive is an option?  I do not know.  Evidence is that the UA operations have not yielded a fundamental shift in their options, but are they compressing the RAs?  Have they compressed the RA military options to the point that Offense is off the table?
I will leave that to you guys to discuss and figure out, but I do recommend keeping that lens and metric in mind before we make any sweeping judgements on any given event.

We haven't advanced an inch, and we can't treat all the wounded really screams sucess doesnt it.

They were just absolutely obliterated, even their own propagandists are saying it was a disaster.  Yet again, another offensive action that leads to massive losses for nothing.  Exactly what did they learn??  
I was hoping for more nuanced analysis, but Ohh well.  

Or maybe it shows that RU decision makers are really, really f-ing stupid?  Like w endless waste of men & material to take Bakhmut?  Like every other offensive they've tried this year?  They have basically gained nothing while burning out huge resources. 
UKR hasn't gained much territory, but at least they are working toward something important -- cutting major landbridge east-west supply lines.  If UKR can just get another 20km then RU in serious trouble -- but can they get another 20km??  But instead of ensuring this doesn't happen, RU burns up its reserves in pointless disasters.

https://www.defensie.nl/actueel/nieuws/2023/10/13/nederland-doneert-extra-patriot-raketten-aan-oekraine
NL will (also) deliver more Patriot missiles for the winter. Fwiw at significant cost of own operational strength.

Interesting sounding tech/software, which if I understand correctly could be installed on existing crows and link them together forming a distributed network for defense against drones.

At least the X guy had the decency to admit he is a novice.  His analysis is a bit of a mess.  The objectives he lists are really all over the map (literally and figuratively).
I think it has been termed “The Death of Expertise”.  Social media, and now AI, has lowered the cost of information to the point that one no longer needs to demonstrate proof of work.  The problem is that information is not knowledge.  The ability to take information, or as we have gone on about - negative information (things that should be seen but are not), and synthesize it into knowledge based understanding is not something one can do with a Twitter account.  It takes years of study to create the critical analysis frameworks and foundational understanding that allows one to take new information and understand it in context.
We see this “college boy, eh?” type of thinking in vulnerable sectors of society.  Those that were not afforded the opportunity to gain expertise can now appeal that condition.  Further expertise can be wrong - that should probably be the first rule of experts.  In fact an expert will know they are wrong before anyone else.  Being an expert is not about being right all the time, it is about understanding what we know, what we don’t know and why.
So we have people who are facing enormous uncertainty and are compelled to try and solve that.  They form information spheres they trust and then use that to try and understand better…to be more certain.  It is what we have been doing here since Day 1 - world went nuts, we seek certainty in community.  Problem is when a community is built on biases or skewed perceptions.  We have walked that precipice on more than one occasion on this very forum.
In the end, it is not about “shut up and take what I say as gospel”, in fact any community that is doing that is probably toxic.  It is about clear and objective analysis of facts, due diligence in self-monitoring and correction and proof of work in making analysis and synthesis happen.  Everyone and anyone may contribute to this community, but it must contribute.  Signal not noise.  Not for me to judge noise, the meritocracy of the community (and moderators) do that for us.

Belgium expects to use $2.4 billion in tax on frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/belgium-expects-use-24-bln-tax-frozen-russian-assets-fund-ukraine-2023-10-11/

Oh goody, that kid showed up.  Russia is “still there” because they dug in behind minefields and won’t leave, hardly the high water mark of military performance.  The UA defeated the initial invasion.  Created conditions for a Russian operational collapse, twice.  And are now working on a third.
Any chance you could be curious somewhere else if the sum total of your contribution is questionable, incited claims and pointing out that Jesus wasn’t really born on 25 Dec?  Asking for a friend.

Avdiivka after next strike. Reportedly the city in fire and smoke, Russians try to hit all mulistorey buildings in the city
Both UKR and RUS point out unprecedented level of artillery and MLRS strikes, a wall of fire, not seen since summer 2022. Russian milblogegrs with triumph shouting "Here where all our shells! Likely they were gathered here from all front sectors!" 
UKR soldiers told about just enormous number of Russian infantry, that's imagimation allegedly almost  all reservers were thrown here. I even think maybe Russian offensive on Kupiansk and Lyman direction are bogus actions and real heavy strike Russians made on Avdiivka direction
UKR sources refuted Russian claims that they captured Berdychi village and claimed we repelled five heavy attcks. Reportedly only for this day Russians lost 10 tanks. About hour ago was a claim about Russian jet was shot down, but no confirmation. Russian aviation today acted with completely impunity - alas, it's usual thing for Avdiivka direction.  
Backbone of Avdiivka defense is 110th mech.brigade and 129th TDF brigade of Kryvyi Rih city  - they are on northern flank and the city itself; and 53rd mech.brigade on southern flank. Also one separate rifle battalion, 501st marines battalion of 36th marines brigade and mobile groups of "Omega" National Gurd special force brigade and groups of 3rd SOF regiment. Against them - multiple number of mobiks motor-rifle regiments and DPR units. 

There wasn't much reaction to the Svalbard comms cable incident either last year
https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/security/2022/02/unknown-human-activity-behind-svalbard-cable-disruption
Should always remember that quip Lenin made about bayonets when dealing with Russia. Push back with steel when they probe.

story develops 

https://www.jordskjelv.no/meldinger/seismic-signal-detected-in-vicinity-of-gas-pipelines-in-the-eastern-baltic-sea 
Seems the world is too desensitized and busy with other crises to notice Russia blow up active energy and communication infrastructure of two NATO countries.

Few points in reaction to your post and several others:
1) European support for Ukraine is instinctive and not diminishing.  There are hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian children being educated in European schools - voluntarily - for 20 months already.  They even go "home" on vacation this summer while their European school was out.  Now they are back and learning hard.  The long war Putin has engineered with his mines and trenches and bloody sacrifices is working in fact long term against the russian interests. 
2) When Ukraine wins Europe will be there with reconstruction and investment - this is where EU at least is best in class.
3) Militarily we all need USA, as we have for 70 years.  Personally I doubt that USA will wobble on support for Ukraine.  If anything the current talk in USA reflects a trap being set for the Republican Party and also an echo of the assumption several months ago that a Ukrainian victory was going to be like a walk in the park.  Support for Ukraine is a wedge issue that might divide and destroy this current iteration of the GOP.  Every Republican I know would die for the values Ukrainians are dying for today.
The situations elsewhere in the world are telling that the Obama hug and love approach does not work.  We are now in an idealogical conflict between liberal values and authoritarianism that goes way beyond Ukraine.  
4) Militarily Biden still has another year and a bit to be Commander in Chief.  I back him to stick to his guns.
 

Lucky UKR tank crew - Russian soldier hide in the house and shot RPG at the tank, when it faced the gun in other side. But the projectille ricoсheted from the pillar and then tank destroyed this house.
 
 

A lot of western politicians greatly over-egg the whole "death to..." thing. It's a common rhetorical flourish in Iran, and if there's one thing that Iranian culture is known for it is over-the-top rhetorical flourishes. If you ever take a taxi in Tehran, and the driver say to you that you were such charming passengers that there is no fee for the taxi ride, he isn't being literal. It is just the first move in the game of tarouf where people try and out-do each other in comically over-the top generosity and politeness, before eventually settling the bill as expected. Very little in Iranian dialog is to be taken literally. 
So there are crowds on the streets (when the government asks for them) shouting "Death to America" sure, but during some economic protests there are also plenty of people shouting "Death to Hizbollah" (due to the amount of money Iran was spending on supporting Hizbollah and Syria, while economic conditions for normal Iranians were bad), and "Death to taxes" (and even "Death to traffic" due to congestion). It's just a colloquial phrase for expressing disapproval, not to be taken literally.
Of course, the Iranian leadership are not fluffy bunnies, and are quite willing to get thousands of people killed in pursuit of minor political aims. And they'll quite cheerfully export death and murder, and (like everyone else) do whatever they can to improve their military and access to the most powerful weapons they can. But honestly, they're not trying to destroy the west (or the world) in some apocalyptic frenzy. They are mostly trying to become the dominant regional power and defend their own security (remember the Iran-Iarq war?), whilst trying to navigate the millenium-plus old Sunni-Shia divide (which has given the Shia, understandably, a lot of sympathy for the underdog and the victims of a double-cross), and defend the Shia populations in other Arab countries.
China also ins't trying to usher in the apocalypse. Their primary goal is to not have their economy be subject to the whims of the US Navy. China depends on maritime trade from its east coast (despite the best efforts of the belt and road initiative to create alternative routes overland to Asia, Africa and Europe). And the reality is that that trade only exists at the forbearance of the US Navy. China doesn't want to have to depend on American good will for its prosperity. It wants to have a strong enough navy (or at least enough area denial capability) and enough control over the first island chain (Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, Indonesia) that it is the power that gets to decide what can sail in the south China Sea, not the US. It wants to be able to guarantee its own naval trade access and coastal security. Of course, that pretty much guarantees conflict with the US, Japan, Taiwan if they try and push that capability (arguably Indonesia and the Philippines would be more amenable to political solutions in the event that the Chinese navy was genuinely competitive with the USN in deep water). 
Russia at the moment is the odd one out - they don't seem to have any rational goal that corresponds to reality in any meaningful way. They just want as much non-Russian territory under their control as possible to act as an expendable security buffer, but have chosen an approach that is achieving the opposite of that.
But these countries aren't working together to some common goal. They are each pursuing their own goals, and using 'friends of convenience' where it happens to align with their own goals.