I’m 95% sure you’re right.
As @Love_Rhombus says, 95% sure.
Putin’s point is that he can threaten and the West will probably back off. Then he can threaten again and the West will probably back off again. Putin cannot win a nuclear war. But he might well be able to win a game of nuclear threats.
He’d win not because a rational Putin would attack the West. But because an irrational or cornered Putin might. People commit murder-suicides all the time. This could become the same psychological scenario just played out with larger numbers.
Remember breaking news, lets not go too far into conjecture.
The lack of significant territorial gains has been painfully obvious. Ukraine will need significantly more mine clearing equipment before there’s any way they can advance. I did see more equipment in lists posted here in the past week.
Ukrainian forces are still trying to advance. This report details their recent efforts.
Link Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, August 18, 2023 | Institute for the Study of War
President Zelenskyj and his wife will be landing in a few minutes on Flyvestation Skrydstrup where the Danish F 16 fighters are based. Crown-princess Mary, the Prime minister , the foreign minister and the minister of defence is meeting him. I guess it means that we are committed to donating some F 16s to Ukraine.
Denmark and the Netherlands to supply F-16s to Ukraine:
To add to Putin’s international failures their Moon mission just crashed. Normally it wouldn’t matter but he seems to react badly to failures. If the lead scientist disappears that will be an indication of his state-of-mind.
Comrade Direktor Dubrovsky, your plan for a parachute-retarded landing on the Moon was … unsound. Please stand on the outlined trapdoor over there.
I’m confused. Surely Luna-25 is now on the surface of the moon, no? Sounds like a successful landing to me!
I’m a bit sad, as I’m a fan of space exploration and would like to see all such efforts succeed. I have witnessed lot of Ukrainian schadenfreude on Twitter today, though, and I don’t begrudge them a bit of it.
In news more relevant to the war, a rumoured Ukrainian drone attack yesterday on Soltsy airbase in the Novgorod region 650km inside Russia has been confirmed to have caused minor damage to a Tu-22 strategic bomber. This is one of the aircraft used to launch cruise missile strikes on Ukraine.
I’m not sure why Russians keep posting BDA reports for the benefit of Ukrainian intelligence, but it seems they quite reliably do.
I don’t think this was posted in this thread (or I missed it). The US changed its policy at the G-7 summit in Hiroshima.
is it just me, or do I have a different concept of “minor damage to a Tu-22”?
was it “minor”, b/c the airbags did not employ?
on a more serious note: impressive what those “helicopter” drones can do in terms of “damage” per $$$ spent. Very efficient - I think that those will have a huge impact in future conflicts.
(I probably start a spin-off thread on this b/f the mods come with pitchforks at me… 
)
/s
Hidden as off-topic. What Exit?
“Just get us on the ground.”
“That part’ll happen pretty definitely.”
Moderating:
OK, I thought everyone would move on. Enough on Luna-25 and the Russian Space Program. It barely touches on the Invasion.
Here is the thread for it: The Great Ongoing Space Exploration Thread
post deleted after seeing mod direction
“Minor damage” is a joke about the Russian MoD habit of downplaying the results of Ukrainian strikes.
Note that at this point the only source for the Soltsy attack being a quadcopter drone is the Russian MoD, which lies. I mean, in the very same sentence that they said it was a quadcopter, they also described the plane as damaged rather than destroyed. If it was a quadcopter the attack had to have been carried out by saboteurs from somewhere nearby, as quadcopters don’t have anywhere near the range to hit Soltsy from Ukraine. If the attack was launched from Ukraine, it will have been one of the fixed-wing drone varieties. We really have no idea how this attack was carried out. Heck, maybe it was just an incident of careless smoking.
Glorious plane of Mother Russia is supposed to look like that.
Possibly a larger, long-ranged drone (with satellite communications), that carried the quadcopter close and deployed it, and served as a communications relay?
Or, of course, perhaps locals, whether Ukrainian special forces who infiltrated that far, or Russian resistance.
It is an interesting yet disturbing sociological question about how whole societies, or at least the dominant part of them, can succumb to evil.
Once the enemy is rendered non-human you can count on your citizens treating them about the same as they do chickens or cattle. Laugh at their deaths, happily participate in their factory slaughter, and even eat them.
It should be noted that the Institute for the Study of War do not agree with this:
The hope was that the Ukrainian counteroffensive would be one of maneuver warfare, but the Russian minefields and extensive defensive works have meant the Ukrainians have had to shift to a strategy of attritional warfare, although progress in terms of territorial gains has not stopped, just significantly slowed. It is not a stalemate.
In terms of attrition, while it is unknown how reflective the Oryx count is of the actual loss ratio, over the last month, their main abacus counter has Russian equipment losses numbering 604, with Ukrainian at 309.
Here’s a failed Russian assault, with the loss of at least two tanks and two infantry fighting vehicles: