3 days later, we have 90 new Russian trucks and vehicles hit by the Ukrainians, which means that the targeting rate is now around 30 a day.
Contrary to what I have sometimes read, the mid-range strike campaign is not slowing down and is not suffering from the Russian adaptation thanks to an increase in the number of drones used.
I cannot map or gather screeshots for the next 7 days, but the trend will be visible with my next 10 days update (next sunday).
Israel is not a client state. It is a sovereign, independent, and powerful nation.
Its strength has never depended on any foreign leader, it comes from its own people.
While the partnership with the United States has been valuable, Israel has never been a burden. It has delivered massive contributions to American technology, medicine, cybersecurity, and defense, far beyond what most Americans realize.
At a moment when America is facing deep internal and external challenges, turning against one of its most capable and loyal allies is not just shortsighted, it is self-destructive.
Those who believe they are weakening Israel by attacking it are actually weakening America’s own interests.
This is a very strange war, probably one of the strangest I've ever studied or witnessed.
Off the top of my head I can name about 20 glaring strangeness — about Ukraine and about Russia alike — that defy any reasonable explanation.
Most of those strangeness will have to wait until the war is over, but one — about Russia — I'll go ahead and name.
Russia's death toll is approaching half a million, and by the time you read this, it may have already reached or surpassed that mark.
Losses can sometimes be justified if they yield dividends — but that's not the case with today's Russia or the war it's waging.
I genuinely cannot understand why, after the failed take Kyiv, Russian leadership decided to grind its army year after year, head-on, into Ukraine's most fortified and defended lines.
History has rarely, if ever, seen anything like it — a massive army taken and methodically, year after year, smashed against a wall for minimal gain.
Someone might push back: Ukraine, too, attacked head-on into the most fortified positions in 2023.
True — but after getting burned, Ukrainians drew lessons. What followed was the Kursk operation (a change of direction), robotization, a search for new military solutions.
And before that came the Kharkiv offensive, the defense of Kyiv, the liberation of Kherson through bridge-cutting and encirclement — and much more.
Ukraine's strangeness lies elsewhere — but certainly not in operational art. There they've demonstrated what any cat knows: touch fire once, don't touch it again.
And don't blame Soviet-era generals — even Soviet generals understood and could apply not just the ABC's of military art but higher concepts as well.
But forget the generals — even stranger is why the army itself goes along with it.
Fine, the soldiers — they're terrified, ground down, and cowed. But what about junior and mid-level officers?
Don't questions occur to them — elementary, basic questions — that with a front and theater stretching over 3,000 km, with directions that are either poorly defended or vulnerable, choosing again and again, year after year, the most heavily fortified theater and axis is, to put it mildly, a deliberate strategy to destroy your own army?
The Ukrainians have been slowly falling back all these years, methodically building new lines while simultaneously destroying and grinding down the Russian army.
Looking at that half-million dead, the thought creeps in — the one some Z-bloggers themselves have written about: that this isn't a war, it's a human sacrifice.
Calling it a war in any genuine sense is indeed difficult — because what Russia is doing is simply not how things are done, even when you're Soviet-trained and don't know how to fight.
Because if a man picks up a sword and starts stabbing himself with it — piercing his own hands and feet — you wouldn't say: well, he just doesn't know how to fence — Soviets, you understand...
A lot of lyrical prose has been written about this, and even more clever arguments and attempts to explain it rationally — but all of it misses the point.
The Kremlin is hundreds of people if you count only the very top, and thousands if you include the rest of the apparatus — plus the General Staff, plus senior and junior officers — that's tens of thousands of people.
And not one of them had the basic thought that you cannot smash an army to pieces and burn hundreds of thousands of men alive, head-on, directly into the enemy's fortifications?
The only case we've seen where someone tried to break out of this sacrificial meat grinder was Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner group.
How that ended is well known — but what's not clear is why everyone else is fine with all of this.
And this isn't about humanism — it's about basic utilitarianism. You need an army, an economy, equipment — especially if you have ambitions.
And Russia has them.
But Russia is hurtling toward the abyss and shows no sign of stopping — and fine, the leadership are idiots — but why is everyone else okay with it?
History knows many wars — successful and unsuccessful, justified and not, long and bloody, fast and short — but the war the Kremlin is waging today is not just stupid, senseless, and bloody. It is also profoundly strange.
Чергова масована атака рашистів на Київ. П’ятеро загиблих, багато поранених, серед них малі діти. Також варварський повторний удар по Харкову. Загинули рятувальники, які ліквідовували наслідки обстрілу. Співчуття всім, хто зазнав біди і втратив близьких.
Також росіяни атакували Києво-Печерську лавру – горів Успенський собор.
Кадри охопленої полум’ям давньої християнської святині – ще один доказ геноцидного характеру розв’язаної росією війни проти України: вони прагнуть знищити наш родовід, нашу ідентичність, нашу культурну спадщину.
Цілеспрямований удар по Лаврі - це злочин проти християнської віри та усього світового православ’я. Підла сутність росії – у тактиці випаленої землі, яку окупант постійно відтворює. Під час Другої світової чекісти вже руйнували Успенський собор, але незалежна Україна відновила святиню.
Удар по Києво-Печерській лаврі – свідчення безпорадності й убогості, які прогресують у кремлівських коридорах. За весь терор, який скоїла росія, міжнародний тиск на неї мусить зростати.
Ми все відбудуємо та змусимо агресора заплатити за злочини.
As a result of Russian strikes on Kyiv tonight, the building of the Assumption Cathedral of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra caught fire.
In addition to drones, Russia is hitting Kyiv with dozens of ballistic missiles; civilians are under attack, as in previous times.
The chaotic nature of the strikes resembles agony: not knowing how to respond to Ukraine's precise and painful strikes, Moscow is flailing its fists in a blind frenzy.
I see Ukrainian channels and theologians already writing: demons and antichrists.
There is nothing to add: as you wage your war, so shall you be remembered.
Russia will be remembered as the killer of Ukrainians, a mass killer of Russian speakers, and a destroyer of Christian shrines.