Oh dear…

Taras Chmut of the Come Back Alive project warns that Ukrainian society needs to wake up and pay attention to failures and that discounting Russia's ability to try an operational breakout somewhere in Donbas is dangerous.

Drodzy Państwo, Biorąc pod uwagę obecną sytuację na froncie, chciałbym przedstawić kilka kluczowych obserwacji, które wpływają na to, co obecnie widzimy. W lipcu odbyłem mój dziewiąty wyjazd studyjny na Ukrainę. Poniżej przedstawiam syntetyczny obraz sytuacji po obu stronach

This week is starting off quite bad for Ukraine, just as Trump and Putin are set to meet in a few days.

Situation north of Pokrovsk - Myrnohrad salient is deteriorating rapidly with Russian forces rapidly infiltrating past Ukrainian lines at a depth of roughly 17km during the past three days. Forwardmost Russian units have reportedly reached the Dobropillya – Kramatorsk road T0514

We are still talking about a penetration rather than a breakthrough as the operational implications are still limited. However, should the Russians manage to widen the penetration and exploit it further, the situation may turn into a operational breakthrough.

Subtle

Are they being tasked with killing the rats? What even is this?

Ahead of the summit, I want to draw your attention to this series on whether Russia can continue this war. Spoiler: it can.

My baseline since 2016 is that the party faithful are naturally Russia hawks and need constant reprogramming to keep from returning to that instinct. Trump lets up a couple months, they go right back.

"Western media are on the verge of completely losing it," Maria Zakharova, Russia's foreign ministry spokeswoman, wrote. "They spent three years telling everyone Russia was isolated, and today they saw the beautiful red carpet laid out for the Russian president in the US."

What “agreements” were just made?

Sanctions on Russians military logistics fleet - no match for drones it seems!

If Russia doesn't want Ukraine in NATO, can't be trusted to back off and cannot conquer Kyiv it will eventually end up with European troops in Ukraine

Trump actually thinks Russia would ever, short of catastrophic defeat, allow Western troops in Ukraine? This turning into a game of who will tell Trump something he doesn’t want to hear first and pop his bubble.

A very lucid thread - agree with it almost entirely. At a stretch you might hope Putin has come to believe it is time for strategic decisions to stop. In that case he might bend and Russian position will be revealed as negotiation tactic. But as stands can’t see how it works.