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Welcome to my newest update on Putin’s War in Ukraine. We are now 36 weeks — 254 days — since Russia launched an unprovoked attack on Ukraine. My last update can be found at Putin’s War, Week 35. The Lull Before the Next Storm. There has been some action, but the crappy weather has slowed things down. Also, both sides are somewhat tired after a punishing summer’s campaigning. I look at this period as the break when the fighters have returned to their corners. Two significant items have been covered outside this update. First, the Pentagon is beefing up the...

Russia has just finished a Potemkin referendum conducted in the illegally occupied Ukrainian oblasts (provinces) of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson (see Vladimir Putin to Address Russia; Annexation of Ukraine Provinces and Mobilization Seem to Be on the Table). The “voting” began on September 23, and the question is whether those provinces wish to be annexed to Russia.There are complicating factors. All four oblasts are on the front line of a war between Putin’s invading army and the armed forces of Ukraine. Many, if not most, of the residents, are refugees. The voting began within 48 hours after the announcement....

Here we are, 26.5 weeks into Vladimir Putin’s 3-day cakewalk to Kiev. I haven’t done this in a while (last update Putin’s War. Week 21. New Weapons Change the Battlefield in Ukraine’s Favor but Are They Stronger Than European Cowardice and Stupidity?) because not a lot has been happening if you aren’t in a trench in Donbas hoping to make it through an artillery barrage.The big news today is what might turn out to be a Ukrainian offensive developing in Kherson Oblast. We’ll get to that after the preliminaries.Politico-Strategic LevelA lot of action has taken place at this level, but...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has removed his objections to the applications for NATO membership submitted by Sweden and Finland, guaranteeing those two previously unaligned nations will join the West’s bulwark alliance against Russian aggression.In May, Sweden and Finland announced they would ask to become members of the NATO military alliance. This was an unprecedented step that even the threat of the USSR had not been able to accomplish (Finland Announces It Will Join NATO, Sweden to Follow, While Moscow Makes Its Usual Threats). Vladimir Putin’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine did accomplish what Joe Stalin couldn’t in no small...

Early Monday morning (local time), explosions rocked two oil tank farms in Bryansk, Russia. Bryansk is about 250 miles northeast of the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, and less than 70 miles from the Ukrainian border.The tweets below are presented solely for the purpose of illustration; the opinions and conclusions expressed are those of the writers.🔥2 huge fires in Bryansk. Tank base and possibly militaryTanks at the tank farm are blazing, the regional government said. pic.twitter.com/v6nWIyU7WX— Chebureki Vibes (@PelmeniPusha) April 25, 2022Unverified claims right now: Oil terminals (storage tanks). Makes total sense – lots of them in Bryansk and probably consistent with...

Very few parts of Russian society have drawn more interest than the so-called “oligarchs.” These are incredibly wealthy men with political connections to Putin’s inner circle because, in the totalitarian kleptocracy that is Russia under Vladimir Putin, if you don’t have political ties to Putin’s inner circle, wealth doesn’t bring you power; it brings you a one-way trip to a Siberian labor camp. The first generation of Russian oligarchs emerged from the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, whose state control over the economy began to loosen under Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika, or restructuring reforms. Gorbachev’s successor as president, Boris Yeltsin,...

Putin’s War, the invasion of Ukraine, is about to enter its third month. What was widely expected (at least by Western experts) to be a 72-hour romp ending with Volodymyr Zelensky in exile, another Putin puppet in Kiev, and a victory parade in Kiev is turning into a slugging meatgrinder.The map below depicts the war on a day-to-day basis since February 24. Gray areas reflect areas that are not firmly under the control of either side.The Russian army invaded Ukraine 57 days ago. This timelapse shows the movement and control of Russian forces across Ukraine over those 8+ weeks. Please...