Андрій Вєдєнєєв

NEW: Russian forces in April 2026 suffered a net loss of territory controlled in the Ukrainian theater for the first time since Ukraine’s August 2024 incursion into Kursk Oblast. Other Key Takeaways: The relative decline in the rate of Russian advances may be related in part to annual seasonal patterns. The rate of Russian advances has slowed in 2026 compared to 2025, but the changing character of the war, particularly Russia’s increased use of infiltration tactics over the course of 2025, makes year-on-year comparisons difficult. The Kremlin uses Russian infiltration tactics in part to exaggerate Russian control of terrain. ISW has reviewed and refined its mapping data and methodology, identifying and rectifying some data artifacts that did not affect the visible map geometry but did affect some calculations of area. These changes have not affected ISW’s previously assessed trendlines of the Russian rate of advance. Russian milbloggers identified problems with the Russian air campaign and assessed that Russian forces may not be able to take advantage of reported increased bombing capabilities. Russian forces recently advanced near Novopavlivka and in western Zaporizhia Oblast. Ukrainian forces recently advanced in the Kostyantynivka-Druzhkivka tactical area. Ukrainian forces likely struck a Russian air defense system during their April 30 to May 1 overnight strike against Krasnodar Krai. Russian forces launched 163 drones toward Ukraine overnight.

@KShevchenkoReal @WSJ 70-90%+ of retail/day traders lose money overall

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#Ukraine Die nächsten beiden Monate könnten eine Wende bringen, den endgültigen Übergang der Initiative an die UA. Üblicherweise sind die RU Geländegewinne im Winter geringer und nehmen ab April/Mai deutlich zu. Dieses Jahr melden erste Kartierer ein fast ausgeglichenes Verhältnis der Gewinne beider Seiten für März+April. Besonders auffällig dabei die Situation bei Pokrowsk: Dort lag im gesamten bisherigen Jahresverlauf der Schwerpunkt der RU Angriffe. Grund ist das RU Ziel, den Rest der Oblast Donetzk zu erobern. Die übliche RU Taktik ist es, befestigte Städte zu flankieren und dann von 3 Seiten zu stürmen, so zuletzt im Falle Pokrowsk. Um die Agglomeration Kramatorsk-Slowjansk so einzunehmen, versucht man, wie üblich entlang einer Bahnlinie von Pokrowsk nach N vorzustoßen, um so den Nachschub für Kramatorsk zuz kappen (und zugleich die Grenze der Oblast zu sichern), mit einem ergänzenden Stoß W Liman nach SW Trotz der klaren Schwerpunktbildung sind die Geländegewinne gerade bei Pokrowsk sehr bescheiden und wurden ganz überwiegend bereits Jan/Feb erzielt, seither liegen die RU dort fest; kleinere Geländegewinne haben sie va im mittleren Abschnitt W Siwjersk erzielt, also im frontalen Vordringen 1/3

⚡️ RUSSIA'S WAR AGAINST UKRAINE — MAY 4, 2026 ■ Engagements and casualties below the 7-day average; no confirmed territorial changes ■ Record 7-day losses of land-based equipment, unarmored vehicles, and artillery; highest special equipment losses this year so far ■ Overnight attacks below average (all drones); decent interception rate; yesterday’s daytime attacks added to the archive ■ 11 🇺🇦 strikes reported; 🇷🇺/🇺🇦 strike ratio at 11.2× (30-day ratio improving); 2nd-highest 🇷🇺 drone launches 📈 See dashboard for full data: datastudio.google.com/s/mb2U63_uDUY

Одна із особливостей українських міст Донбасу (та й Запоріжжя) полягає в тому, що вони розташовані в низовинах, поближче до джерел води. Лише деякі міста можуть похвалитися тим, що розташовані на відносному підвищенні, що автоматично покращує умови для побудови їх оборони. 1/

@shashj but please don’t start another war 😏

Arise, agent.

Plunging into an @openclaw experiment.

@ulrichspeck geography is not attacking, policy is

A lot of debates in Europe: who would come to our help if Russia attacked us? There will always be uncertainty, as it was during the Cold War. The best indicator is not what ambitious politicians say but what countries' national interests are.

This month of April alone, Ukraine 🇺🇦 launched 450 (!) successful strikes on Russia 🇷🇺 and occupied territories. Among those are part of the nearly 600 mid-range strikes with FP-1 and FP-2 drones into occupied territories since the year started. 🧵THREAD🧵1/7 ⬇️

The fire in Perm hasn't been brought under control yet. Yesterday, Ukrainian long-range drones struck the oil pumping station leading to two big fires. Today, a new explosion occured at an additional fuel tank. #Russia

@SchullerKonrad you are lucky to get very German way out of it (probably Manfred was German)

That’s why I love Italy.

🎉

@BrianSozzi software itself has no terminal value, the pure AI won’t solve anything. The question is which software companies will adopt AI faster to get a full advantage. The vibe coding or another big model won’t change equation, but has certainly potential to spook investors

Basically Goldman Sachs saying there is another cliff for software stocks to fall off of. From today: "We expect the debate around AI disruption, and therefore uncertainty about many companies' terminal value, will persist for at least several quarters. The threat of disruption will likely represent a persistent overhang until the later stages of AI adoption. In the meantime, disproving this disruption narrative is challenging. For investors to have confidence in the long-term impact of AI, it will require more evidence of where AI is impacting earnings, which could take several quarters if not years."

@burkov you are mixing agent (constrained LLM) with general principle of LLM (probability token generator). An agent has priority out of it’s definition, it relies on rationality of human who created it

If you don't understand this, you will not understand why LLM-based agents are irreparably failing for a general-purpose problem solving. An agent (by the way it was the topic of my PhD 20 years ago) to be useful, must be rational. Being rational means to always prefer an outcome that results in the maximal expected utility to its master/user. Let’s say an agent has two actions they can execute in an environment: a_1 and a_2. If the agent can predict that a_1 gives its user an expected utility of 10, and a_2 gives an expected utility of -100, then a rational agent must choose a_1 even if choosing a_2 seems like a better option when explained in words. The numbers 10 and -100 can be obtained by summing the products of all possible outcomes for each action and their likelihoods. Now here is the problem with LLM-based agents. The LLM is not optimizing expected utility in the environment. It is optimizing the next token, conditioned on a prompt, a context window, and a training distribution full of examples of what helpful answers are supposed to look like. Those are not the same objective. So when we wrap an LLM in a loop and call it an “agent,” we have not created a rational decision-maker. We have created a text generator that can imitate the surface form of deliberation. It may say things like: “I should compare the expected outcomes.” “The best action is probably a_1.” “I will now execute the optimal plan.” But the internal mechanism is not selecting actions by maximizing the user’s expected utility. It is generating a continuation that is statistically appropriate given the prompt and prior context. This distinction matters enormously. For narrow tasks, the imitation can be good enough. If the environment is constrained, the actions are simple, and the success criteria are close to patterns seen in training, the system can appear agentic. But for general-purpose problem solving, the gap becomes fatal. A rational agent needs stable preferences, calibrated beliefs, causal models of the world, the ability to evaluate consequences, and the discipline to choose the action with maximal expected utility even when that action is boring, non-linguistic, or unlike the examples in its training data. An LLM-based agent has none of that by default. It has fluency. It has pattern completion. It has a remarkable ability to compress and recombine human text. But fluency is not rationality, and a plausible plan is not an expected-utility calculation. This is why these systems so often fail in strange, brittle, and irreparable ways when given open-ended responsibility. They are not failing because the prompts are insufficiently clever. They are failing because we are asking a simulator of rational agency to be a rational agent.

⚡️ RUSSIA'S WAR AGAINST UKRAINE — APR 27, 2026 ■ Most engagements this month so far, and far more than expected based on the evening report ■ Casualties and equipment losses well below average; no confirmed territorial changes ■ Relatively few overnight attacks (all drones); interception rate on the lower side ■ 3 🇺🇦 strikes reported; 🇷🇺 MLRS and air strikes above average 📈 See dashboard for full data: datastudio.google.com/s/ly2dKWa4KE4

@JanR210 I don't remember what she posted about the Kakhovka dam

🇷🇺 vlogerka o Tuapse (skrót): - ogromna katastrofa - media i władze milczą - może łagodzą skutki katastrofy? nie. - dlaczego nic się nie robi? - morze, ptaki, owady, zwierzęta i ludzie cierpią - czy przyroda się odrodzi?

@JavierBlas Nothing will explode but without flow the source output should be stopped, which has some long term implications

President Trump seems to assume Iran runs of oil storage in three days (so April 29). My sense is that Tehran has longer to keep storing. He also says when storage runs out, "oil lines" would "just explode." Here, I truly have not idea what he's talking about; rolling my eyes.

@ProfCarlSagan El sueño de la razón produce monstruos

When you fear something, learn as much about it as you can. Knowledge conquers fear. — Edmund Burke

@Number10cat Cat save the King

God save the King

One of the greatest stand-up bits ever, Rowan Atkinson as the Devil is pure genius.

@igorsushko The numbers itself doesn’t fight, russia is spending much more but they are less efficient and wasting way too much human lives, which are expensive especially after they were wasted. The parity between could be achieved with less money, but not only with money

Bizarre headline. Of course €90B is not enough. Russia spends $175 billion per year on the invasion of Ukraine and has unlimited meat they can throw into the grinder. €90 billion over two years is 30% of just Russia's war budget. Ukraine needs at least parity to defeat Russia.