May be. May be not.

One less zog golem. This man was irredeemable. And now he's a red stain on the plain. Fuck 'em.

Now imagine this same video but the background music is "Yakety Sax" by Benny Hill, doesn't hit quite the same does it

It never hit me anyway. Why bother.

Pokrovsk is in the news, but Russia is cutting off Kupiansk from the north and west at the same time. It looks like one big cauldron forming around Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.

Kramatorsk and Sloviansk are the Ukrainian stronghold in the Donbas and most definitely the last cities to fall if Russia takes the whole region. Since we all agree that taking the whole Donbas is the absolute minimum goal Putin wants to achieve, the timing seems to line up pretty well with the start of peace negotiations.


If the dominos in the Donbas fall very quickly from here on out, Putin can use the credible threat of further gains as a bargaining chip in the negotiations.
If the push on Kramatorsk/Sloviansk goes badly, he can demand Ukrainian withdrawal as a key concession.
If Russia is barely able to achieve its minimum objective in time, they can frame a settlement enshrining those new lines as "mission accomplished, this was everything we ever wanted".

They create cauldrons and then funnel traffic to one or two roads. Look at what's happening Pokrovsk/Myrnohrad, no frontal assaults of the actual cities but slowly surround it making reinforcing it harder and movement costly because obviously the Russians know you have the 1-2 main roads left in and out.

You are now seeing a bigger cauldron developing around the Slovyansk/Kramatorsk agglomeration. Once Pokrovsk falls they can just continue to roll up north from that point and cut off Kramatorsk from the west.

https://liveuamap.com/

edit Urban warfare is ultimately extremely costly and i have a feeling Russia wants to avoid huge battles for Kramatorsk/Slovyansk. I think Bakhmut was rumored to have like 50k losses on each side when it happened? Imagine these two cities that are much larger. That's why i think they'd rather surround and slowly starve them of resources/reinforcement first from the southwest.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Aug 14 2025 02:27pm

100%.

Today, Ukraine seems to have stabilized the front at Pokrovsk at least somewhat, so no full-scale collapse like it seemed possible the last couple of days. It's still only a matter of time until Pokrovsk falls.