At this point, this seems more like a question of when instead or if Ukraine retakes its lost lands. For Russia to win at point, either the West would have to bend or Russia would have to mobilize big time, and at this point, I'm not even sure Russia has the equipment to mobilize. I mean, they can just barely equip what they have in Ukraine now, so what are they going to do if they have even more troops to equip? I'm kind of leaning towards the outcome of this war depending entirely on the West not bending, and even then, the US alone might be able to supply Ukraine sufficiently for it to win, so even Europe bending might not change the outcome.

Keep up the good work! Couldn't keep up myself if it wasn't for your groundwork.

And thats being generous to the Russian side, since the most dramatic advances were made in only the last 4 days.

Russian front is collapsing faster than Afghanistan last year. ?

I find this amusing. The wikipedia page for the Battle of Izyum records both the first and second engagements.
It took 4 weeks for Russia to dislodge Ukraine back in the spring.
And how long did it take Ukraine to boot the Russians back out? A single day. XD

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Izium_(2022)

In other news, here's a chimpanzee in Kharkiv riding a bicycle:

Thought you should all know that.

Anyone know what they say? I can't read chinese.

An interesting memo from the Russian Finance Ministry waas leaked by Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
In essence, the Ministry wants more money for compensating dead soldiers:

361.4 billion rubles have been paid to the families of the deceased
For each fallen soldier,it's 7.4 million rubles
In total,this gives 48,759 confirmed dead
Missing and DPR + LLR soldiers are not counted

If true, that means the Ukranian estimates of 52k soldiers killed are pretty much spot on. (The Ministry numbers certainly don't include Wagner deads as those people "don't exist" officially).

So my earlier suggestion that Ukraine would seek to chip away at them until they forced Russia into a mass retreat like what happened around Kyiv has proved to be accurate.

The only place that stands out as being possible in that regard in Crimea. Not really any other areas directly tied to the outcome of this conflict. Places like Transnistria, Abkhazia and South Ossetia might be politically vulnerable but technically speaking they aren’t part of Russia, even from Russia’s view point.

There are a few places in the Caucasus region that might consider independence but I’m not sure if there are mass movements behind them at present. Ironically the one that made the most noise about it (circa 20 years ago) was Chechnya.

Shush don't give Russians any idea of how a potential counter attack in the south could play out.
It is proven that even open source intelligence laymen are more capable in military strategy than russian command.

Ukrainian soldiers: "Yeah, more tanks!"
Ukrainian mechanics: "Oh give me a break already..."

So the Russians had more than enough high value targets, given all the vehicles and amunition depots they had to abandon. Yet they chose to strike civilian infrastructure instead, only to further terrorising common people. Whelp, guess everybody has their priorities... ¯_(ツ)_/¯