🇺🇦 No major offensives on either side. The fighting hotspots are Kharkiv, Mariupol, Mykolaiv, Kherson, and Severodonetsk
🇺🇦 Ukrainians are returning to the streets as the operational pause continues. One Ukrainian said he never thought he would be so glad to see traffic.
🇺🇦 Ukrainian farmers are sharing tutorials on how to tow military vehicles with their tractors. “Its morning and you’re preparing for some field work. But then you notice foreign military equipment has been abandoned in your field” (Pictured)
🇺🇦 Russia lost 13 aircraft yesterday. 5 UAV, 4 missiles, 3 airplanes, and 1 helicopter.
🇺🇦 Patron the dog has discovered at least 150 explosive devices (pictured)
🇺🇦 Russian propaganda begins a campaign to justify the use of nuclear weapons
🇺🇦 China state media is telling its citizens anti-West Russian messaging (pictured)
🇺🇦 As the dust settles on Phase 1 of the invasion, one of the bigger sub-stories to emerge is the looting. Some notable highlight stories:
1) a Russian soldier removed his armor chest plate and replaced it with a looted MacBook, and was later k1lled.
2) A Russian truck full of looted washing machines was destroyed
3) A soldier named Yevgeny Kovalenko is making headlines for sending just under 1,000 lbs worth of looted goods from a post office in Belarus back home to Russia
4) Russian troops looted highly radioactive war trophies from Chernobyl. (Business Insider)
🇺🇦 Russia has forcibly deported 674,000 Ukrainians to Russia. The source is Russian state media, so exact numbers may be dubious. I personally believe they are doing this to fix their population gaps and severe demographics shortages
🇺🇦 Russian forces are stretched so thin that they’re forcing retired military to join again. They’re looking to people who were active since 2012. When Russia says it has a million-person military, they included these retired people in that figure. Their real military (in the western sense of actively trained and supplied) was closer to 5,000 people.
🇺🇦 Germany seems to be getting some cold feeling helping Ukraine. I haven’t been following this thread much, but that’s the general news trend. I’ll start paying attention to this more.
🇺🇦 The theater-wide operational pause is ongoing. It might last weeks. I don’t think it will last months because of the May 9 soft deadline.
🇺🇦 Either way, this has caused a slow news cycle, which I’m sure is a giant relief to the beleaguered citizens.
⚠️ If you ever hear anyone say “What about America…” in an effort to redirect attention away from Ukraine and onto America, that is called “Competitive victimhood” and the associated meme is *always* created by Russian-backed media. Russia has three primary propaganda efforts directed at the West, and that’s the third.
⚠️ Note: War happens fast and even high fidelity news needs a ton of corrections after the dust settles.
⚠️ Note: I’m getting lazy with my citations and I apologize. It’s all the same sources as it’s always been…NATO planners, official statements, major news, other open source researchers, people who send me leads, reputable pundits like Aaron Parnas, Kyiv Independent, etc. Thank you especially to CP Scott, former Army and former NATO planner.
⚠️ I started a substack newsletter to accommodate the individual emails requests. Feel free to subscribe!
I enjoy these interesting posts. However I do see several typos? On the data?