Alexander Black

One city suburb. One street. One month. And this list of names is only the people the @nytimes could identify. The youngest was just fourteen years old. This is who Russia is. Europe will never be safe until Ukraine is, and the people responsible for this are in The Hauge.

Things Russia's ran out of this summer: Gasoline Jet fuel Diesel LPG The ability to ship 30% of its harvest. We're at the stage of the Russian fuel crisis that's akin to Wile E Coyote running off the cliff but still not looking down at his feet.

@GeoConfirmed @UAControlMap Interestingly, it seems 'Изумруд' had been docked in the same location for possibly over a month.

Roughly around 44.564728, 37.993238, Gelendzhik, Krasnodar Krai (South-East of Novorossiysk). @GeoConfirmed @UAControlMap

American news media and think tanks are still incapable of coming to terms with how a majority of American voters opted to elect a demented sociopath as their President

@GeoConfirmed @UAControlMap Which, I think, makes this the longest range USV kill of the war to date.

'there were more Russian soldiers attacking Pokrovsk, which is one medium-sized town in Donbass last year, than are in the entire British Army. And so, when people think of it in manoeuvrist terms they're like, “well, maybe you go left flanking”. It's like, “yeah, there's another force there and it's also as big as the entire British Army, right?” There is not empty space here that you can just cut through. These are really large formations and, unless you can inflict a pretty high threshold of damage within a limited period of time, then you're not going to break through.' rusi.org/podcasts/talki…

@99Dominik_ @GeoConfirmed @UAControlMap @AndrewPerpetua Could also be the newest version of the ZSA-Т armoured ambulance, but there's no way to tell from the footage released. So this was me IDing with my gut a bit here.

@GeoConfirmed @UAControlMap @AndrewPerpetua Correction, it was a KamAZ-53949 armoured vehicle. ukr.warspotting.net/view/45892/

A Russian KamAZ-4385 armoured truck was destroyed by Ukrainian FPV drone. 48.346930, 37.462395 Malynivka, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine @GeoConfirmed @UAControlMap @AndrewPerpetua

Don’t provoke Russia’ is the most expensive sentence in European history. Every red line we drew for ourselves — no tanks, no F-16s, no strikes inside Russia — collapsed later, at a higher price. Appeasement isn’t caution. It’s paying more for the same result.

Yeah, well, at least his plan for the Middle East is also falling apart.

Cheliadinove, Kerch raion. Roughly around 45.221111, 36.367278. UAVs flew in from over the Black Sea heading in a North-West direction.

Among Zelensky's main shortcomings as president are his endless favoritism and his carelessness in personnel policy. Ever since 2019, there has always been someone this guy, someone at his shoulder, standing behind Zelensky and quietly whispering things into his ear. First it was the notorious lawyer Andriy Bohdan, then, until recently, the untouchable gray cardinal Andriy Yermak, then someone else. The current situation with the reported threat of dismissing the popular young defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov reminds me of early 2020, when Zelensky suddenly fired his first defense minister, Andriy Zahorodniuk. It seemed that, after a succession of post-Soviet parade generals, the new president had appointed the country's first genuine civilian defense minister in line with the Western principle of civilian control over the military, a man from senior business management. Many long-overdue reforms got underway, there was a clear plan, and anti-corruption watchdogs were quite pleased. But nope -- Less than six months later, Zelensky fired Zahorodniuk before allowing him to finish almost anything he had started. Because he had "failed to prove himself." At the time, however, the circles around the Defense Ministry, the Presidential Office, and the press persistently said that the sudden decision had been pushed by none other than Andriy Yermak, who had become head of the Presidential Office just a couple of weeks earlier and immediately began putting his own people in place and getting rid of those he disliked. After his dismissal, Zahorodniuk insisted in conversations that he had never had any conflict with Yermak, but the press of those years persistently reported that Yermak had convinced Zelensky to throw out the defense minister because he objected to the then-time drama of pulling back Ukrainian troops from the frontline with Russian-controlled militant formations in Donbas. The business manager in a suit was replaced by yet another post-Soviet general from the military bureaucracy, Andriy Taran -- who, during his two years in office became memorable mainly for being unable to string two words together and for constantly failing to complete the state defense procurement program. That is how we ended up with the endless, barely comprehensible carousel of reshuffles, dismissals, and appointments, which people here in Ukraine sometimes refer to as "rearranging the beds in a brothel." And now it is starting again. Fedorov, with enormous progress in Ukraine's digital transformation behind him, has served as defense minister for only about six months. He managed to cut Russians off from Starlink, drone production is booming, digitalization is accelerating, processes are being optimized, AI is being introduced on a massive scale, and there is now a strategy for technological superiority over Russia. And that's it -- Fedorov has already fallen out of favor because the young IT guy did not get along with General Syrskyi and his methods of working. And, according to rumors, Fedorov and his reforms have become a thorn in the side of those who have gotten too used to making very good money from military production. Now Ihor Klymenko, the interior minister and former chief of the National Police, is reportedly being lined up to replace Fedorov. He is remembered mainly for his video in which he boasted about how National Guard recruits are drilled obsessively to make their beds with the sheets aligned perfectly to a string. Every time our Defense Ministry starts climbing even half a head above the stagnant swamp, Zelensky's favorites always pop up and whisper in his ear -- urging him to appoint yet another mediocrity who would be comfortable for everyone, change nothing, and get in nobody's way. That is how we live and fight -- two steps forward, one and a half steps back.

We are ending the illegal Iranian toll on the Strait of Hormuz and installing a significantly more expensive one in the interest of freedom of navigation.

Re-upping this one, since Iran war continues no matter what people say. Not a single issue has been resolved, not a single player thinks their side lost, return to hostilities of greater scale this summer as good as certain.

Both sides lose at an epic scale

This, if true, would go down very badly in Ukraine. Fedorov is widely credited with the recent military turnaround, and if Russia regains momentum Zelensky would be blamed for enabling it by removing a successful minister.

@moklasen Malynivka, the scrap lake of the modern Russian army.

nothing new on the dobropillia front (fighting on this same road piece for 12 months now btw)

These prices are going to slaughter consumer budgets. Yalta is going to be a big outlier but ₽120-₽170 per liter prices are just not doable for a large portion of the Russian population.

The Syrian Civil Defense returned today after a 2-week search & rescue mission in Venezuela following the devastating twin earthquakes. The deployment was their first international mission.

Sorry, but anyone who seriously believes that a sanctioned Russian oligarch from the Kremlin’s inner circle, and one of the biggest beneficiaries of Russia’s war against Ukraine, decided on his own, without the Kremlin’s approval, to publish an article in a Western outlet because he’s some courageous free thinker who genuinely just wants “change” and “respect” for Russia simply does not understand Russia. The desire to find a hero who will “come and fix everything” is extraordinarily naïve.

CCTV footage captures the exact moment Russian guided aerial bombs struck the city of Sumy on July 11. The attack hit a busy area near a road and a public transport stop, damaging residential buildings and local businesses. The death toll from the strike has risen to five people, including a 13-year-old girl. Video: cukr.city; piccolino_coffee / Instagram.