re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict.

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Russia is currently making a big push to take Kostiantynivka. This is what I meant when I said towards the south. Guess it is technically in the middle part of the country but south of the Lyman area.

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Yes, that appears to me to be job 1 for Russia. They are pushing to take Kostiantynivka and continue up the road to the Southern end of the Fortress Belt.

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I suspect that the collapse of the Russian Army will be what ends it.

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Man, we are a long way from posters arguing that Putin was toying with Ukraine and could win the war in a week if he chose to. Amazing how this has changed.

I think the coming mobilization will create multiple problems for Russia's army and Putin.

If it is in fact a broader scale mobilization that pulls in part from more urban populations of St. Petersburg and Moscow, then that will include with it more public visibility and awareness of the problems with the Russian army. This will result in further erosion of public support for the war thus pressuring Putin.

The Army will suffer the same exposure from increased public visibility to the issues that will be created by onboarding, equipping, training, transporting and supporting a massive volume of new troops.

While I do not think this by itself would bring it all down, it will be a few more sticks on the camel's back.

ETA; I fully expect Ukraine to target the troop onboarding and training facilities. Ukraine will want to reduce the quantity of mobilized troops before they ever reach the battlefield. Maygar is probably salivating at the prospects.

WSJ: Ukrainian drone operators defeat US unit during exercise in Germany

Mariya Yemets, Anastasia Prots — 13 August, 14:11

During the Combined Resolve exercise in Germany, Ukrainian drone operators from the Nemesis unit – the 412th Brigade of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces – quickly detected and simulated strikes on vehicles belonging to a US mechanised brigade, demonstrating their advantage in the use of drones.

Source: European Pravda, citing The Wall Street Journal

Details: The Combined Resolve exercise in Germany, held in April and May, showed that the US troops from Texas taking part were unprepared for the capabilities of Ukrainian drone operators.

Under the exercise scenario, troops from a US mechanised brigade were advancing on the positions of a simulated enemy. Sources told the WSJ that the opposing force included Ukrainian drone operators from the 412th Nemesis Brigade of the Unmanned Systems Forces alongside various other units.

The Americans had standard electronic warfare and counter-drone systems. During the mechanised "assault", the Ukrainian pilots easily detected US vehicles and simulated attacks using drone-dropped munitions and FPV kamikaze drones. No live munitions were used, with a "hit" recorded when a drone manoeuvred extremely close to its target.

Ultimately, the attacking force was "destroyed" so quickly that troops deemed to have been hit were brought back into the exercise as reinforcements to keep the war game going.

Meanwhile, the exercise showed that the US drone operators lacked the skills to troubleshoot problems quickly and prepare drones in conditions resembling actual combat.

The exercise scenario was subsequently repeated, and the US troops learned to disperse more effectively, improve their camouflage and make better use of electronic warfare systems.

During subsequent iterations, the Ukrainian drone operators were moved to the other side and demonstrated how uncrewed technologies could be used in offensive operations.

General Alexus Grynkewich, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, said that this kind of training experience cannot be replicated in the United States and that the changes seen after NATO exercises involving Ukrainians are significant.

According to one US source, this was not the first time Ukrainian troops had demonstrated an advantage while training against US forces. In 2023, one US officer involved in an exercise acknowledged that the US already had much to learn from Ukrainian forces about the use of drones and developed a training programme that was subsequently introduced in US units.

Ukrainska Pravda

The reason it's happening this way, of course, is that the Russian concept of victory involves the conquest of the rest of Donetsk Oblast, so their effort is concentrated in the East.

Ukraine is pushing hard in the South, because every kilometer that they are closer to Russian roads linking to Crimea makes it easier for their drones to hunt those logistics vehicles. The Ukrainian theory of victory very much involves consistently increasing the pressure on Crimea.

So just curious how will increasing pressure on Crimea lead to a Ukrainian victory? I understand wanting to get closer to inflict more damage on Russian supply lines, but does most of what Russia supplies its army with come through Crimea?

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My post 2 days ago - "It's pointless to show maps at the small city and surrounding area scale."

This shows exactly why.

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It shows why you shouldn't only do that, it doesn't show that it's pointless. In larger cities those smaller scale maps can actually give you a decent picture of what's happening. We saw that with Pokrovsk and now with Kostiantyivka.

Seems like the consensus for a while has been that Rybar isn't reliable. The "kerfuffle" in here about that Rybar map was more about ISW matching what it showed than it was anyone thinking Rybar is some awesome source all of a sudden.

Credit to them for liberating villages but Oleksandrivka had a pre-war pop of 3k. Seems like Russia has bigger fish to fry elsewhere.

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I think the coming mobilization will create multiple problems for Russia's army and Putin.

If it is in fact a broader scale mobilization that pulls in part from more urban populations of St. Petersburg and Moscow, then that will include with it more public visibility and awareness of the problems with the Russian army. This will result in further erosion of public support for the war thus pressuring Putin.

The Army will suffer the same exposure from increased public visibility to the issues that will be created by onboarding, equipping, training, transporting and supporting a massive volume of new troops.

While I do not think this by itself would bring it all down, it will be a few more sticks on the camel's back.

ETA; I fully expect Ukraine to target the troop onboarding and training facilities. Ukraine will want to reduce the quantity of mobilized troops before they ever reach the battlefield. Maygar is probably salivating at the prospects.

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Agree with those concerns, I'm skeptical of the impact of mobilization because of Russian ineptitude. You can add X number of people to the Russian army, but how to do utilize them to create an actual advantage vs just having more bodies to throw at the problem?

I do think the discussion at times can hover too close to "it's bad for them that Russia is mobilizing, actually" which is mostly cope. The political ramifications are real, but Ukranian strikes deep into Russia and assassinations (whether they actually did it or not, they are likely perceived that way in Russia because of their propaganda operation) maybe have actually bought Putin a little bit more leeway than he would have had otherwise politically.

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Russia’s diesel and gasoil exports crashed in the first seven days of August to just 80,000 barrels per day (bpd), the lowest in many years, as Moscow extended restrictions on diesel exports amid a fuel crisis triggered by incessant Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries.

The multi-year low diesel exports between August 1 and 7, as estimated by data compiled by Bloomberg, are further squeezing the global market of middle distillates, which is much tighter than crude supply.

To compare, Russia last year shipped as many as 1 million bpd of diesel and gasoil.


This year, Ukraine has pursued a relentless drone campaign targeting Russian oil refining infrastructure and oil supply routes to force Putin into negotiating peace.

Amid peak demand season, Russia has been suffering from gasoline and diesel shortages for over three months, as Ukraine’s drone campaign to strike Russian refineries forced many large processing sites offline in the spring and summer.

The slump in Russian fuel supply combined with fuel not making it out of the Persian Gulf to tighten refined petroleum markets much more than the crude market.

Global refinery crude throughputs increased in July but remained nearly 5 million bpd below year-ago levels, at 80.9 million bpd, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its closely-watched monthly Oil Market Report this week.

Global throughputs are now forecast to drop by 2.5 million bpd on average in 2026 and rebound by 3.5 million bpd in 2027.

“Tighter light and middle distillate markets boosted cracks and margins in the Atlantic Basin to record highs,” the agency said.

Even as U.S. fuel exports rose by about 700,000 bpd in July from a year earlier, global seaborne trade in petroleum products crashed by 3.8 million bpd, amid plunging diesel and jet fuel exports from Russia and the Middle East, the IEA reckons.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

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Russian diesel fuel exports Oilprice.com slump to multi year low

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Holy circular logic batman

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Only if you assume forcing someone to make a deal is the same as defeating them outright, which it isn't.

"Batman" is typically capitalized in English, btw. Not sure if a native Slavic language speaker would know that or not