SleepyShepherd 🇺🇦

[SleepyShepherd 🇺🇦 @ShepherdSleepy]

@tropotropotropo I'm really curious what specifically about Sci-Fi caused this lol

[SleepyShepherd 🇺🇦 @ShepherdSleepy]

@itschrysolite Lifting the heavy circles makes the anxiety easier to deal with.

[SleepyShepherd 🇺🇦 @ShepherdSleepy]

@NukeFoxx @coyVRC I've had an artist or two say they didn't respond to me because they thought I was a bot so it's entirely possible!

[SleepyShepherd 🇺🇦 @ShepherdSleepy]

@kaioatt Congrats on the 1000 followers!

[Kaioat @kaioatt]

🎉 1,000 BLUESKY FOLLOWERS RAFFLE 🎉

Winner gets a full-body fully rendered artwork!

To enter:
Like + Repost + Follow
Comment your character’s ref sheet

Any gender + species allowed (Muscles preferred)

Winner will be announced same time, next week (August 6th, 12am BST)

[SleepyShepherd 🇺🇦 @ShepherdSleepy]

@Newberrychucks I would absolutely love a sketch slot if still available

[SleepyShepherd 🇺🇦 @ShepherdSleepy]

@PlayStation Is there not something you'd like to address?

[Malcontent News @MalcontentmentT]

/RANT ON

You know, if someone told me in 2022 the fastest path to 500K followers on Twitter was copypasta from Telegram, vagueposting, not retweeting and taking other people's work, and just grabbing the analysis of others, changing a few words, and making it our own, I wouldn't have built relationships, hired journalists, bought satellite images, and spent countless hours with people smarter than me and the team, for 33.6K followers doing real journalism.

Ya - I'm salty this afternoon - again. Why? Because a lot of what we assessed, through discussion, arguments, research, and analysis from different sources, is coming to fruition.

Our 2022 prediction that Russia wouldn't be able to kick-start its civil aviation industry and Putin's goal of 1,100 aircraft by 2028 was delusional

Our end-of June 2022 analysis that Russia's combat potential had reached a culmination point after the Luhansk Oblast offensive, and the only effective fighting force left in the Summer of 2022 was the Wagner Group that was fighting for control of the Svitlodarsk Bulge at the time

Our analysis of the situation in southern Kharkiv from June to September 2022, and our repeated assessment to watch the western flank because Ukraine was actively setting conditions for something major - one day, when the Russia-Ukraine War ends, we'll finally be able to share why we had so much insight in the Izyum region and how much more we knew versus what we shared

Our October 2022 analysis that Yevgeny Prigozhin and Sergei Shoigu were on a political collision course of wills that would inevitably end with one of them being thrown under the bus by Putin - we just didn't see the Prigozhin Insurrection coming and the decision to stop it less than 48 hours after it started

Our 2023 economic analysis and prediction that the Russian economy would hit a brick wall by the end of 2025 if the Russia-Ukraine War did not end, and not wavering from that analysis

Fighting August-October 2023 accusations that Zabrina Zabrinsky was a "Russian agent" and we were so stupid that we hired a known Russian, and protecting Zabrina from the false accusations so she could focus on her work

Our February 2024 analysis that Ocheretyne was the key to Pokrovsk, and our in-depth report on what would happen if Russia gained control of the settlement, including the directions of attack, the order of when key defensive points would fall, and where Russian forces would get bogged down after a series of relatively rapid advances

Our 2024 analysis that Russia's use of VBIEDs and the development of FrankenIFVs was not a sign of innovation, but the first signs of a decline

Our October 2024 analysis that Ukraine's operational goal in Kursk was political, and not military - to prove that attacking Russian soil would not lead to the use of CBRN weapons, in the hope that Ukraine's allies would allow deep strikes into Russia

Our November 2024 analysis that Oreshnik was just a lightly modified RS-26 Rubezh and the later analysis when more information became available that the kinetic warheads had the equivalent destructive power of Russia's 240mm mortar with even less accuracy

Our Christmas Day 2024 analysis of Ukraine's published casualty figures against leaked information from Russia, with credit given to Mediazona/Meduza/BBC for part of our analysis, that Ukraine's daily casualty figures are shockingly accurate

Our early 2025 analysis that the combat potential of the individual Russian soldier had peaked and was now in a long-term decline

Our dismissal of Russia's repeated 2025 claims that all of the Kursk Oblast to the 1991 border had been liberated - it still hasn't - yes that's pedantic, but it's true

Our early 2026 analysis that Ukraine's SEAD/DEAD in southern Ukraine and occupied Crimea was part of a larger operational plan, and not just random strikes on poorly operated air defense systems

Our March 2026 analysis that Russia had reached an "inflection point" of national decline because everything has come together to drag the country down

Our early May 2026 analysis that Russia's fuel crisis would be much worse than 2025 - if anything, that analysis was too conservative

Our analysis from 2 days ago that Ukraine was not attacking the Crimean Bridge because the operational goal is for the Russians to start using it to go home

And we stand by our assessment of Kostiantynivka. Russian forces will consolidate gains in 75% to 80% of the city by the end of the summer, and then be stuck for months trying to capture the remaining 20% to 25%. And as we wrote a few days ago, due to Moscow's false capture claim, even that may be too optimistic for Russia.

We also stand by our assessment that if you're waiting for a 1917-style economic and political collapse in Russia, you're going to wait forever.

And when we get things wrong, we admit our mistakes. For example, in August 2024 when Russian forces first entered the eastern edges of Toretsk and consolidated their gains, we called for Ukraine to withdraw from the city. Our argument, Ukraine couldn't afford another attritional urban war like in Bakhmut, and there was defensible territory at the city's outskirts. That assessment aged like warm milk on a summer day.

We admitted we got Russia's loss of Starlink wrong, declaring it would only cause short-term problems and that Russia would adapt within 8 weeks.

We admitted that our initial assessment that Ukraine's localized offensive in the Pokrovske AO was tactical in nature had understated Ukraine's operational goals, and did a further analysis. In other news, Ukraine has unraveled one year of Russian advances, almost to the day, in 5.5 months with significantly fewer resources. Our initial assessment that by advancing on the northern flank of the Huliaipole AO, Russia's offensive would slow, was partially correct. The loss of Starlink and Russia's fuel and logistical crisis have also contributed to the fighting west and southwest of Huliaipole becoming positional.

And some of our assessment will be left for historians to decide. We maintain that as costly as the defense of Bakhmut was, it was the right decision. We strongly disagree with how that defense was conducted. Had Ukraine withdrawn to Chasiv Yar in February 2023, Russian forces might very well be fighting for control of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk today. Yes, we know this is a very controversial take.

When we've made mistakes in our SITREP, we have called it out with an Errors and Omissions section.

Some people would be very surprised if they ever saw our client list and the consumers of our reports.

Long nights and days wondering if key contacts that went dark had died. Sobbing when my wife walked into my office on April 1, 2022, looked at me and asked what's wrong, just minutes after we finished our analysis of photos, videos, and satellite images from Bucha. Screaming for joy and sobbing privately after a key contact who hadn't communicated with us since May 2022 escaped the occupied territories in December 2022 through Soledar. Through SOLEDAR - in December 2022. Not to mention the repeated near heart attacks Zarina gave me in Kherson.

But on Twitter? I guess that isn't good enough. Because although the truth matters, most of the time the truth is really boring. I hate writing sensational headlines for Google News and Newsbreak, but that's what gets the clicks.

If you want to support independent journalism, a team with a track record of getting a lot more right than wrong, that does its own analysis, and an organization that practices ethical journalism by retweeting instead of copypasta, and providing credit when we use OSINT and public sources to feed our analysis, give us a follow.

The team doesn't think that's a lot to ask for.

/RANT OFF

[SleepyShepherd 🇺🇦 @ShepherdSleepy]

@Throwaway894567 @BigGayFurryLove Good Work, the channel that posted this, is a satire channel. This was not meant to be taken in a serious light.

[SleepyShepherd 🇺🇦 @ShepherdSleepy]

@sia0lena The accuracy of this is both scary and scarily impressive

[SleepyShepherd 🇺🇦 @ShepherdSleepy]

@DianaVilliers1 No one in this discourse has ever heard of an R value and it hurts to read.

[SleepyShepherd 🇺🇦 @ShepherdSleepy]

@JJunkWarrior None of those are exactly gonna stop you, but certain issues can get frustrating if new roadblocks keep cropping up.

Linux is a lot better than it used to be, but man it was annoying when I kept running into issues when all I wanted to do was set up a Folding@Home PC.

[Fubar🇨🇦 @Captain_Fubar]

was really looking fordward to this game, but I found out today that the Dev is a pro-russian chud

[SleepyShepherd 🇺🇦 @ShepherdSleepy]

@1followernodad Can confirm that the stories I read, and disliked, have been extended memorable in all sorts of ways. Granted the teacher we had was also expecting some extremely detailed discussions so not all blame is to be laid on the books.

[SleepyShepherd 🇺🇦 @ShepherdSleepy]

@CamoBarks Really aesthetic build dude, well done!

[SleepyShepherd 🇺🇦 @ShepherdSleepy]

@garbadorr Cannot tell you how many pieces I've seen that have a useless signature and I can't find the person

PLEASE make it legible

I want to follow and appreciate artists damn it

[SleepyShepherd 🇺🇦 @ShepherdSleepy]

@alleybleakcat Looks to me that it's AI generated.

[SleepyShepherd 🇺🇦 @ShepherdSleepy]

@WaddleDurrr Oh that would be super cool! Go for it!

[SleepyShepherd 🇺🇦 @ShepherdSleepy]

@Vivi_Fae All creators have their signature styles and tells. I'm not sure what to tell him lol.

Just keep doing what you're doing. All the respect to folks who make vatars for us to enjoy, I wouldn't know where to start on any of it.