I had a family event this evening. I spent the past two days cleaning and prepping for it. I’m fried. As such, tonight’s update will just be your daily Patron.
40 mortar and other "arrivals" were in my native Chernihiv region today. I'm not afraid of the sound of explosions because of my work. But a little girl wrote to me at night: "What just exploded?". I asked where she lives now, and find out that it was just thunder. #dogpatron pic.twitter.com/52HYPTXiYy
— Patron (@PatronDsns) July 5, 2022
Cheers 😝 pic.twitter.com/Th3v1Ca909
— Patron (@PatronDsns) July 6, 2022
And a new vid from Patron’s official TikTok:
@patron__dsns Ех, ці спокусливі сни…🤤🍦 #песпатрон #патрондснс #славаукраїні
The caption translates as:
Eh, these tempting dreams…🤤🍦 #pespatron #patrondsns #slavaukraini
We’ll resume normal updates tomorrow night.
Open thread!
Alison Rose 💙🌻💛
Patron is just the bestest pupper.
Hope you had a nice evening, even if you are worn out from it.
I saw this earlier and it made me want to break stuff:
“Reluctant.” Gee. I fucking wonder why.
Subsole
Thanks for all you do, Adam. Hope all is well with you.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Come think of it; a dog with a talent for finding crappy Russian duds before the kill someone is the perfect metaphor for this vile war.
Spanky
Following Cole’s post, this can have only one meaning
Adam L Silverman
@Spanky: Nope, definitely not that.
Adam L Silverman
@Subsole: All is good. Thanks for asking.
Carlo Graziani
By personal propensity, I tend to read “prepping” as kitchen-prep.
Hope it was that, and that the family event does that.
(As I recall I owe you some porchetta-making records. A friend of mine actually made a video of one that we made last year, but memory lapsed…)
Ivan X
That is one good dog.
Chetan Murthy
@Alison Rose 💙🌻💛:
I don’t mean this in a bad way about UA but: Ukraine *will* return to the negotiating table, even in full knowledge that RU will again negotiate in bad faith and renege murderously on any supposed “agreement”, whatever it is. B/c they need to continue to convince/assure their supporters (== “us”) that they’re looking for an end to this war. Too many in the West are lily-livered or (what’s worse) co-opted by Russian money. It is what it is.
Geminid
I found some drone news in a Jerusalem Post article based on reports by Politico and the website DefenseExpress. The new aid package the U.S. is supplying Ukraine includes over 500 “Phoenix Ghost” loitering munitions:
The Phoenix Ghost’s 6 hour loitering time is an improvement on that of the Switchblade drone which can fly less than one hour.
Another JPost article also caught my eye. It reported on a method Ariel University researchers had developed to predict earthquakes from changes in the ionosphere. The researchers claimed 80% accuracy for predictions 48 hours ahead, in a peer reviewed article for the journal Remote Sensing.
Geminid
@Chetan Murthy: In the case of grain shipments, Ukraine did not negotiate with Russia directly but rather worked out a “mirror agreement” with the UN and Turkey, who negotiated a mirror agreement with Russia. And while the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry immediately blasted Russia’s bad faith after the missile attack on Odesa,
David LaBorde, senior research fellow at the International Food Research Institute, is not throwing in the towel. He noted that:
From the Washington Post July 24, 2022
Carlo Graziani
@Geminid: The earthquake thing is cool. Did the article explain the physical basis for the coupling between tectonic activity and ionospheric signals, or is it purely empirical?
(If the J Post doesn’t explain this, and if Remote Sensing isn’t providing access to the article and there isn’t a preprint version, I can take a look and report back, but author names would be helpful to find the srticle).
Haroldo
@Carlo Graziani:
Free access.
Remote Sensing is the bees’ knees.
Carlo Graziani
A comment on the operational tempo of the war in the Donbas: despite press bombast by Shoigu last week that new offensives were imminent in Donetsk Oblast, it now seems clear that Russian operations are running on fumes. Based on the Ukrainian and UK MOD updates and daily ISW campaign assessments, artillery strikes are either followed up by weak and easily-repulsed infantry thrusts or not followed up at all (and the HIMARS attacks on artillery ammo dumps are having measurable effects on artillery fire rates, as the Russians move those dumps farther from the front lines).
It really does look to me as if having fully emerged from the constrained urban battlespaces of Sievierodonetsk/Lysychansk into open country, the Russian manpower dearth is now unignorable. They don’t have enough riflemen and tankers to take objectives, and pounding the countryside with artillery doesn’t have the same military effect as levelling cities, their usual favorite tactic of winning with artillery.
So the war in the East is almost certainly stalled. HIMARS is really too expensive an option for effective counterbattery, so the Ukrainians will have to be provided with a large-scale, accurate, inexpensively-munitioned counterbattery capability to finally take away the Russians’ only remaining weapon and take back the Donbas. I don’t really know what that capability would be, or whether it would come from the US or from another ally.
Meanwhile, in the South, the Russians are, I would say, very over-extended, with thrusts more than 120 km from Kherson over the Dnipro. They now have, once again, separate, weakly-mutually-supporting theaters that they are running as going concerns, which is reminiscent of the situation that they corrected before they liquidated three of their initial advance axes to focus on the Donbas. They’re obviously trying to launch spoiling attacks against a Ukrainian offensive to retake Kherson anticipated soon (my bingo card: new moon, Thursday July 28, at civil twilight end, 8:51 pm local time, 1:51 pm EDT).
I think it’s likely to be an eventful week.
Carlo Graziani
@Haroldo: Thanks. Interesting. Apparently the existence of that coupling has been known for at least a decade. Very cool.
randal sexton
@Alison Rose 💙🌻💛: Also, Padrons are the best Pepper. Pimenton Padrons that is, don’t settle for those wannabe shishitos.