Another object shot down by USA over Alaska second time in a week that fighters have been sent to shoot down objects. This one by what I have seen on the news was at 40000ft so around the same height as regular planes. Also described as the size of a small car.
Pure speculation on my part but I have a feeling this is a small unmanned drone aircraft.
Could it of came from Russia this time especially with it being over Alaska?
Right now the world feels like a person smoking in a dry corn field and just waiting for one spark to fall wrong to cause complete mayhem. Scary time to be alive right now IMO.
Just be thankful you're not being sent to the front as an untrained Russian recruit.
Abridged version of post just in.
"Zombies
Even though nothing dramatic has changed the Russians are continuing their attacks, and as expected each wave is slightly larger than the previous one. Especially in Vuhledar.
Why Russian high command believe that increasing the number with 10 percent for each attack would get them somewhere is beyond me, especially since they are shuffling forth exclaiming "must eat brain" along the same forrested path each time.
In Kreminna Russia is still moving forward to the lakes due West at a rate of 200-300 meters per day. The idea is to cut off the northern Units, but Russia has forgotten that the river to the north is fairly small, and that Ukraine is good at bridging.
Currently this is where Russia is making most headway.
Soledar, here Russia has been more or less forced into a standstill due to ferocious Ukrainian artillery fire.
Bakhmut, here Russia are bravely offensing backward to the North and East. The Ukrainian gains are not big, but they are still there.
There are two reasons for Ukraine taking back the initiative here.
The first is that PMC Wagner is no more as an effective fighting force, it is now almost completely subsumed into the Russian regular army.
The second is that Ukraine has pushed in a lot of new fresh units to stabilise the front.
Obviously Ukraine will not go on a full on offensive here, just take some areas to stabilise things, and then go back to just holding the line.
Expect Ukraine to also take the initiative to the south in the next couple of days to push back the pincer arm there.
Vuhledar, well heck... what should I say?
I see in front of me every single great general throughout history sitting drinking beer laughing their arses off in your favourite afterlife. This is probably the closest I will ever come to having a religious vision.
At the going rate Russia is loosing a battalion per every two days here.
Must... eat... brain...
Zhaporizhzhia, here Russia are doing small little skirmishes each day, nothing more.
So, it seems like I was correct and that this is just to pin down Ukrainian forces for now.
Ukraine is though not forgetting that there is a sizeable force down in Melitopol waiting to take advantage if they move out troops to other areas.
So, the army in waiting is sticking around, waiting for their order to push forward.
Depressed Russians
Strelkov has stated that Russia will not be able to take Donbass at all.
Prigozhin is ever so slightly more optimistic, he is stating that Russia can take it in 18 to 24 months, and that they can reach the Dnipro River in 36 months.
Gone are the days of 3 day war...
Anyone noticed that the rate of defenestrations went down 5 weeks ago and is still much lower?
I find this interesting, especially the temporal correlation is notable.
Money
As Konstantin noted yesterday, Russia is now 300 million USD into the Red each day.
At the going rate, without west doing anything, Russia will run out of monetary reserves sometime late summer.
And this is the optimistic version assuming that the G7 + EU does not fiddle some with the Price Cap and lower it another 5USD per barrel.
Khodorkovsky
Everyone asks why Russians do not rise up.
I find this a rather lame assumption since they would end up in prisson until the time is right.
Khodorkovsky seem to believe that the 24th is the date to kick off a mass protest, and has called for Russians across the globe to go out in force and protest.
I mostly see it as an interesting experiment that will yield research data.
Tatarstan
The Bashkir and Tatars are in ever larger numbers refusing to fight and are dropping their weapons.
The Bashkirs are rounded up, but not the Tatars.
In the west people do not know that Tatarstan is a self-governing part of Russia with far reaching autonomy.
They hold separate elections to pick their own government.
It even has the right to hold a referendum to leave Russia.
According to Russian sources the Tatarstani government has sided with their refusenik soldiers and declared that they can go home if they wish.
And, since the Tatars, Bashkirs, Tuvans, and so on, are the bulk of the army in Ukraine this has sent reverberations up the food chain.
In true Russian fashion they are beating the living daylights out of every group, but the Tatars. Not even the Kadyrovites are touching them.
It is still just a gust of wind at the top of the tree... but this could quite easily grow into a storm over the coming weeks, especially since the offensive is going badly, and the Russian commanders are wasting the lives of the soldiers of the far east."
Then this just now.
"Russia set a new zombification record today.
31 BMTs and T-72s drove straight into the Ukrainian artillery barrage...
Due to depletion that is a Russian Mechanised Battalion size.
It was gone in 30 minutes flat, not a single vehicle drove out.
This means that Russia has gone from one Bat every 3 days initially, to a full Bat every day.
They are well and truly destroying their entire army..."