Huba

If we, as the collective West are up to supporting Ukraine till it achieves all it's military goals, then I absolutely agree we should, and this is would be the best outcome of the situation I could imagine. But if we're. not up to it, and the peace will be forced upon Ukrainians at some point (perhaps autumn 2023)l, Simoyan's initial terms sound not that bad, despite it's XIX century reasoning.

That is true for the territories occupied in 2022/23, but for the Crimea and Donbas. ? UA would like to get these back (especially Crimea)l, no doubt, but these surely are more negotiable than the land bridge/ Luhansk oblasts. I honestly wish the UA to regain these, hell, even getting the Belgorod and Kuban would be great - but these are hardly realistic, at this point at least.

Not an acceptable way to think of that for you or me, but still relevant for somebody learning history in Russian high school - and this is the the recipient of Simoyans TV show. But if you remove the XIX century aesthetics, the Simoyans hypothetical terms are quite reasonable.

No discussion here, this narrative is straight from the cabinet wars era, but it's what the Russkie propagandists peddle to their serfs. However silly this sounds to us, it is more or less in line with what we here think the ultimate outcome of the war will be, i.e. negotiated peace that will settle the Crimea/ Donbas situation.

I'll just sneak in this post in haste while The Missus is sleeping So from my perspective, what's really crucial for Ukraine is the NATO membership, or at least security guarantees that will assure that Russia will not try the Invasion 2.0 in the few upcoming years. These would ideally include some tripwire NATO/ guarantors force on the ground making sure that the cost of renewing hostilities for Russia will be absolutely unacceptable. Second sine qua non requirement is that the peace deal to be acceptable as permanent for the UA side, assuring that they will be OK to proceed with the rebuilding without further territorial demands. In other words, be it better or worse, the peace deal has to be acceptable as nominally permanent for the Ukrainians. If that is achieved, the nominal NATO and UE membership process can proceed at it's own relevant pace. I'd think that NATO membership would be much more important short term, because without sufficient security guarantees the rebuilding process can not reasonably start. When this is assured, UE membership should definitely proceed at the pace that assures the interests of both the Union and the Ukrainian state. The moment UA formally joins the European Union is practically irrelevant. In case of Poland, it took a decade before we fully joined all the UE mechanisms (for example, the regulations pertaining to acquiring the real estates by foreigners). It's already clear that there's no other way for UA than integration with the EU and when the particular step in this process takes place is not that important; what counts is adamant assurance that there's only one outcome of the membership negotiations, and that the process itself is beneficial for both EU and UA. It is way to early for both NATO/ guarantees and UE membership details to be worked out at this point, but it seems that the consensus is already in the works, the main obstacle for the practical discussion being the territorial situation after the peace is made. Below is an excerpt from Simoyan's TV show. While she says that the "Western Ukraine" should be under the Polish control (really not something anybody in PL is considering, but perhaps something more acceptable to RU viewers), here is a deal she proposed in her latest TV appearance: "US should encourage Ukraine to sell it's occupied territories to RU, in exchange of a considerable sum, including war reparations. Many wars were concluded this way. After that, the unified Ukrainian state would be more stable, and in time be able to join the UE and event NATO." This unofficial offer obviously assumes holding to the present territory control situation, but if UA Spring Counteroffensive succeeds, I think it would be a great starting point for the actual peace negotiations.

The Orange One says that if elected president, he would end the war in Ukrainein 24h, but apparently by” ending” he means „winning”. He still scares the Bejezus out of me.

The UAV being used in this video is WB Electronics FlyeEye (at least according to the WB spokesman who shared this video). A great illustration of the advantage dedicated military drones hold over the commercial ones - the devil is in the datalink robustness.

First Slovakian MiGs are already in Ukraine, and it seems they were flown there instead of being dismantled and towed/ trucked. Another red line crossed and still not WW3. Also, while it's definitely not my area of expertise, the hardpoints visible at 0:28 looks rather suspicious, not very soviet at all.

Russian drone armed with downwards-facing „Claymoresky” mine. Scary stuff…

Here's a detailed breakdown of the Slovakian weapons package for Ukraine: - 10 MiGs in flying condition - 3 MiGs without engines - spare parts, ground equipment, fuel for the aircraft - 2 Kubs + radar (not sure if launchers or batteries) - 200 missiles for the Kub Info from Artur Micek

A reasonably convincing article, suggesting that the recent strikes against RU SAMs are the work of new drone, perhaps the mysterious Phoenix Ghost:

This is being talked about ad nauseum since at least 8 months, but it seems it is about to bear some fruits at last. My guess is that this time was spent on integrating as many western weapons as possible. There was even some talk recently about AIM-120, which I guess would mean a new radar. We shall see, it is a very interesting gossip. Slovaks reportedly want to keep 1 airframe as a museum piece, and some of PL MiGs (the ex-DDR ones) are more likely to be used as spare parts donors due to their very poor shape and potential re-export limitations.

AFAIK the claimed 70+km range is achievable when dropping the bomb at the altitude of 15km, but it will cover half of that distance when tossed from a pop-up maneuver by an low flying aircraft. This seems to be the most logical, safest way to employ these weapons in the UA context.

JDAM-ER are reportedly being used in Ukraine for a few weeks already. The Drive quotes Gen. James Hecker, head of USAFE. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/winged-jdam-smart-bombs-are-now-operational-in-ukraine And a first video that probably shows their use at the frontline:

Germany pledged to provide quite a bit of minefield breaching equipment recently, including remotely controlled mine ploughs: https://www.defenceleaders.com/news/germany-delivers-ukraine-4-minenraumpanzer-mirpz-keiler-mine-clearing-armored-vehicles https://www.shephardmedia.com/news/landwarfareintl/clearing-the-way-mine-ploughs-for-ukraine/

I'm not sure that's how "mechanized logistics" should work...

New update from Mateusz Lachowski. He's not in Bakhmut itself, but nearby, and is in contact with soldiers in the city: - UA recaptured parts of Jahidne in the yesterday's counterattack, overall UA situations has improved - he has confirmed information that blowing up the dam was done to facilitate the counterattack - there still is one road to the city that isn't blocked by the russians - there is bloody fighting everywhere - UA has to counterattack more, or withdraw from the city soon, this hasn't changed

Lachowski is confirming that this is more or less what's going on, though he does not mention if he's on the spot, or just repeating other sources: Also, it looks like there might be some connection between the reported counterattack and UA blowing a dam yesterday to flood the exact area through which RU have to move to/ from the cauldron:

These are "twitter experts", there's no way they will link their sources But in general Artur Micek is quite reliable, and reportedly has some contacts on the ground. But given Wolski is also posting this, it has to be present on some more mainstream Telegram channels too. This narrative seems to be picking up on the Twitter at the moment, I'll post the primary sources as soon as these are revealed there.

Ukrainians are reportedly counterattacking across mos of the Bakhmut front, not only in the north, but also in Krasne and eastern part of the city itself. Reserves are being committed by the UA side. Caution is of course advised on these claims, but it looks quite good: Also, to add an insult to the injury, the kessel that is being created is shaped just like a thingy:

Other twitter aggregators seem to agree that this is the situation at the moment, see @Beleg85 post above for example. Here's the latest map from Artur Micek who we often quote here: It looks like Bakhmut is about to fall, hopefully UA withdrew the forces already, their track record in this type of operations is very good up to this point.

Biden is speaking in Warsaw now. There wasn't anything specific announced yet, but damn this guy has the energy!

Putin finished with some nuclear sabre-rattling: - he won't follow through with the New START - NATO inspections of RU strategic weapons are now "absurd" - he accuses US, UK and FR of working on new nuclear weapons and intentions to test them. If that happens, RU will conduct nuclear tests too - he reiterated that Russia won't be the first to conduct nuclear strikes on anyone

Yup, there's hardly anything relevant to the war so far, and it's already an hour and a half. He smacked "the rich" for associating with the West a bit, and encouraged them to invest their fortunes in Russia. Overall, the "economic self-sufficiency" and "sovereignty" seems to be the main topic, he speaks about road development and such. Juche tones are definitely audible. At this point though I think that his main goal is to bore everyone to death.

Vladimir Vladimirovich is speaking live. At the moment nothing special, words "Nazi" and "West" are being repeated quite often.