re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict.

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The new Ukrainian Commander in Chief has announced his intent to go on the offense:

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Things have been going so well for Ukraine that they are.....
Changing their entire tactical philosophy?

If things were going half as well for Ukraine as you tell us they are, no chance on earth do you think about going on the offensive.

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Could you post the map of the Kupyansk theater from Rybar? Then the ISW map?

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They are very close now though they were not during Ukraine’s successful counteroffensive in December. Neither one has been updating it regularly I assume due to the fog of war. Both agree Ukraine controls most of the city but the north/northeast is gray zone

Thank you

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They are very close now though they were not during Ukraine’s successful counteroffensive in December. Neither one has been updating it regularly I assume due to the fog of war. Both agree Ukraine controls most of the city but the north/northeast is gray zone

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If the British assessment is anywhere close to being accurate - hell, if it's a third of that - then the Ukrainians have gone and turned Kupiaansk into a death trap for the Russians and are using it to bleed them white. They are simply going to make sure to hold on to what they have, scream that the Russians are 'so close to taking it' and let the Russians keep sending men in there to die. Don't expect this city to change hands any time soon.

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Curious that no one has brought up it's pre-war population of about 25,000. Apparently thats very relevant information.

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How so?

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China was outmaneuvered by the US and let down by Russia in the operation in Venezuela, @peterfrankopan writes in The Times.

Russia understood that a US invasion of some sort into Venezuela was inevitable, and withdrew its diplomatic personnel from the country.

On the other hand, China's Special Envoy for Latin America has met with Maduro just hours before Maduro was captured. Not long before that, foreign Ministers of China and Venezuela spoke on the phone. The Chinese Minister spoke of solidarity with Venezuela.

Reportedly, Russia did not share its insights on Venezuela with China.

China gave Venezuela billions of dollars in loans in exchange for oil, and it has been receiving about 4% of its imported oil from Venezuela. China also invested about $9 billion into a petrochemical plant in Venezuela. Now, the return of these sums is doubtful.

This, as Peter Frankopan writes, the question of whether Russia is indeed a good and reliable partner for China is being asked more and more often.

"Russia’s willingness to ignore the UN charter, to rely on military force as a first resort and to use the threat of nuclear escalation and coercion as diplomatic tools sit uneasily with China’s preferred self-image as a stabilising power that works through institutions, rules and long-term balance," the author states.

Last week, China made a deal with Canada. Might it be possible that China is starting to see that there are more reliable and reputationally more sound partners than Russia?

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Xi, wake up and smell the coffee.

You'd have to ask someone else..I think it's only a factoid that can be used to contextualize things for people not familiar with obscure Ukrainian cities.

Frigid Kyiv kindles a high-tech plan to keep Russia at bay
AI-powered air defense could counter Moscow’s greatest advantage — and keep Kyiv in the fight.

January 20, 2026 at 8:00 a.m. ESTToday at 8:00 a.m. EST

“We have a clear plan about how to stop Russia in our skies,” Fedorov said in a meeting Sunday in the defense ministry’s headquarters on a quiet Kyiv side street. A few minutes later, he signed an agreement with the U.S. defense software company Palantir to build an advanced AI “Dataroom.” It will use the millions of bits of sensor data and imagery that Ukraine has gathered over four years of war to train AI systems that can predict Russian attacks — and then guide cheap, autonomous interceptors to defeat them.

“It’s not about us winning, but about us becoming unconquerable,” said Andrii Hrytseniuk, chief executive of Brave1, a technology incubator that has coordinated Ukraine’s astonishing battlefield innovation with drones and AI. “The war stops when the enemy realizes that its political goals cannot be achieved,” he argued.

I traveled here with Louis Mosley, a Palantir executive vice president who since 2022 has overseen the company’s attempts to help Ukraine fight an “algorithm war” against Russia. If the new Dataroom effort works as planned, six months from now, Ukraine will have the framework for a nationwide system of autonomous air-defense missiles that could finally make Ukraine’s cities safe from Russian attack. (The Post paid my share of the cost of the trip.)

The Dataroom project illustrates a crucial variable in this war. In its desperate attempt to fend off Russia, Ukraine has developed what may be the world’s most innovative defense-technology sector. Fedorov embodies this drive. He’s just 34, dressed like a tech bro in a simple sweatshirt. But back in 2022, he convinced President Volodymyr Zelensky to seek help from Palantir and Starlink, and launched a project known as the Army of Drones.

Another champion of using technology aggressively has been 40-year-old Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, the former chief of military intelligence, who Zelensky just elevated to head his presidential administration. This tech savvy is a big reason Ukraine has survived the onslaught from the much larger and more powerful Russia.

Brave1 coordinated this technology push. When the war began, Ukraine had just seven companies making small drones; a year later, it had 70, and today there are 500 — producing millions of aerial drones annually, according to Hrytseniuk. Another 280 companies are developing autonomous ground vehicles — unmanned tanks, in effect. In 2022, nearly all of Ukraine’s attack strikes were from artillery; today, nearly 90 percent are by drones.

The war has produced an extraordinary arms-industry boom: Brave1 told me Ukraine’s defense manufacturing capacity has surged 35-fold — growing from $1 billion in 2022 to an estimated $35 billion in 2025. The defense ministry authorized more than 1,300 new models of domestically made weaponry for service in 2025, a 25 percent increase over the previous year.

Though Ukraine has fought Russia to a stalemate on the ground, its biggest weakness has been air defense. Relentless Russian attacks have destroyed power and heating plants and other critical infrastructure. Ukraine wages a brave nightly battle against as many as 1,000 missiles and drones, but the attacks have made life miserable for civilians. The Dataroom interceptor project is an attempt to create an air-defense shield to end this nightly onslaught.

“No country in the world has the experience of defending itself against air attacks on the scale Ukraine is facing today,” explained Fedorov in an email Monday. “In learning how to counter these attacks, Ukraine is building … the next generation of AI-enabled air defense.”

Ukraine defenses must be cheaper than Russia’s attacking drones and missiles. And they must operate instantly, nationwide, to respond to attacks more quickly than humans could. That’s the system Dataroom is building using Ukraine’s library of data to train its AI system to recognize an incoming attack and target it with precision. The AI software will be integrated with homemade interceptors built by Ukraine’s ever-expanding defense tech sector

“We will be trading pawns for rooks,” says Hrytseniuk. The “Octopus,” for example, costs just a few thousand dollars, but Ukrainian officials say it can reliably hit Shahed attack drones costing much more. The Octopus has a radius of nearly 200 kilometers and can carry electro-optical, infrared or thermal targeting sensors — which will be trained on AI to recognize attackers. The cost ratio means Ukraine can keep sustain its defense against the Shaheds.

Washington Post