Russian invasion of Ukraine

Did not have Ukraine taking out a sub on my bingo card

Where do you see this?

Sevastapol last night.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_submarine_B-237

An admiral, impressive

The Ukranians are saying that they timed the attack to coincide with a planned meeting of senior staff thanks to Russian informers.
Even if the bit about the informers is not true, I'm assuming that it will trigger another wave of chaos in Russian leadership as they try to uncover the moles and replace the lost senior personel.

Beggars belief that they were all still having big joint meetings in ordinary well known military office buildings. Still pretending like they aren't actually at war.

A local air defense system was destroyed and the back up HQ was hit a few weeks ago, a submarine was hit in dry dock down the road days before - yet they still decided to continue having big senior meetings in the ordinary HQ building. Mind blowing incompetence.

Mind blowing incompetence.

Could incompetence by the deceased or could also be purposeful sabotage by a Ukrainian collaborator(s) who can influence those decisions. And the surviving Russian brass have no way of knowing which it is.

Russia now releasing footage claiming to show he is still alive, guess the truth will come out in time

thanks to Russian informers.

That must be the coolest job in the world. Figuring out which Russian top guys to falsely attribute assistance to. Along the lines of "Thanks Medvedev! Looking forward to working with you in the future".

A quite amusing argument breaking out over Margarita Simonyan's suggestion that Russia should drop a nuclear bomb over Siberia to show strength or whatever. Siberians are understandably pissed and the gulf between Moscow and the ethnic minorities in the East just got a lot wider.

Ukraine finally got ATACMS missiles very quietly and used them last night on a Russian air base

https://apnews.com/article/atacms-ukraine-longrange-missiles-5fd95f32449d14da22b82d57d6ccab22

Amazing ROI

https://twitter.com/sternenko/status/1715324089533870475

That stuff is impressive but FPV racing drones chasing down individual soldiers is absolute nightmare fuel

Damn that packed a punch. What’s the Ukrainian text say?

59 BRIGADE DESTROYED SUNFLOWERS WITH YOUR DRONE 💥

Yesterday, during the repulse of Russian assaults in the Avdiyiv direction, the titans of the 59th brigade hit the Russian TOS-1A Sontsepok flamethrower system with a KAHOVKA drone and destroyed it!

From the detonation of thermobaric munitions, the Usatnov itself, worth over 15 million dollars, exploded.

An incredibly cool result!
Let's buy another 100 drones for the 59 brigade!

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I know I shouldn't be surprised at this point but Russian tactics never fail to surprise, spend months accumulating material and resource and then just throw it all away, repeatedly chucking everything at fortified positions and expecting a different result day after day.

https://time.com/6329188/ukraine-volodymyr-zelensky-interview/

Duration of the conflict starting to take a toll on recruitment, corruption, public support

Russia lost 10 tanks in a renewed assault on Vuhledar:

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/72nd-brigade-repels-russia-advance-132500840.html

Coupled with heavy losses in Avdiivka (which has been under attack for 9 years) it's clear that Putin is desperate for a victory to brag about when he launches his re-election campaign.

re-election campaign

Wave-through surely?

He'll have killed off half of his voters by then.

What have voters got to do with Russian presidential elections?

I don't have a source here, but from what I am reading and hearing Putin still needs to do kind of well in the elections. He's got a very very heavy thumb on the scale, but his still not at the stage where he can outright manufacture a result without consequence.

A victim of his success to some extent. He has crafted a voter base who only responds to simple and absolute truths, such as Russia and the West being locked in an eternal struggle, the gays are coming for your kids, Putin the only man who can lead Russia and so on. Once one of those pillars start to wobble they're all going down. You've got yourself a mikado pile of inflexible axioms and his own people might just go for the next tough guy.

That’s one way of putin’ it. I suppose that when you can put up your own sock puppet opponents and have the instruments of the state harass, obstruct, imprison and murder any actual opponents, there’s no excuse for not knocking it out of the park.

What have voters got to do with Russian presidential elections?

It's all about optics. Any Russian with half a brain knows the elections are rigged but they will remain obedient so long as the supreme leader appears strong.

For an example of how strong Putin is look at what happened in Dagestan. It's a Muslim majority republic yet the airport rioters got off largely scot free (a handful were given jail sentences lasting a few days). A stronger punishment could have led to an uprising in the region. All the more reason then for a meaningful battlefield victory to bolster Putin's position.