Ukraine and Friday binge daily update May 23, 2025

In the midst of all our domestic scandals, there is also a war in Ukraine.

And then it’s of course Friday drinks at 6:00:00:01 as usual, and today I probably need a few beers – it’s been an intense week when the parliament asked me to lead the interrogation in the Medin-gate.

Jokes aside (or was it a joke 🧐), I’ve been watching the next Klondike – Angola. As you know, I have one foot there, and now they have taken big steps towards opening up the country and the mining industry. I will come back with a post on the subject – don’t miss it if you want to get rich before you die, send me five thousand bucks and you’ll get the prospectus with color pictures.

I follow daily what’s happening on the fronts, and Ukraine is retreating while Russia is advancing – it’s been like this since the turn of the year, more or less.

A Russian twelve-pointer has declared war on the whole world and set the timeline to a few months. In a broader context, and when the laughter stops, I guess we are in a phase of escalation now, as known.

Houti has also sprinkled some bans on shipping around them, and Iran is on a serious warpath – they have zero plans to follow Trump’s peace plan.

Iran has already had a few bangs in the past two months, so “someone” is having fun targeting objectives, but a larger effort from the USA is probably expected.

No ground invasion as the fearmongers claim, but it’s drones and aircraft, and Iran will probably retaliate as much as they can against Israel before their firing tubes explode.

Then there will probably be a popular uprising when the regime can’t handle the situation, and maybe that’s the USA’s endgame. Yes, Iran bears a great deal of responsibility for the instability in the region, but it’s no secret that Israel ordered this – justified or not is the constant question to grapple with.

We early on picked up that Russia has an offensive strategic reserve to use against the Baltics.

My guess was that Russia needed a ceasefire from Trump to have peace and quiet to be able to attack the Baltics – after all, Russia has been carrying out a (relatively) high-intensity uninterrupted offensive for 1.5 years now.

I assumed they were at a low point, and 99.9% of all experts did too – Russia would consolidate their gains, ceasefire, prolong the discussions, etc.

Ukraine has warned about the offensive strategic reserve, but only recently started describing how Russia will carry out offensive operations in Ukraine this summer.

If we go by Putin’s desire for a ceasefire, he is not the least bit interested in it, and I belong to those who believe that we are facing a period of escalation (again).

Therefore, it seems reasonable to assume that Russia intends to carry out offensive operations in Ukraine this summer.

The fronts are not very pleasant – up near Kupiansk, Russia has passed Oskil and is now spreading out like a very slow fan of dead Russians west of the river.

This threatens the supply to Kupiansk and will likely lead to a retreat from the area east of Kupiansk, which UA still holds.

There are only two crossings at Kupiansk – which are probably within drone range already, and the next one is down at Senkove, which Russia has cut off.

The next crossing over Oskil is a bit south near Borova, where Oskil widens significantly. Then it narrows again with several crossings south of the town of Oskil.

We know that Russia has prepared for an offensive in the area, and the situation is not great for UA. There is a looming risk here that the area east of the Oskil River down to the town of Oskil will be recaptured by Russia, as there is only one supply route over the river – and Russia has another attack vector towards the town of Oskil where the river starts to narrow again.

It’s messy, so here comes a picture.

If the attack vector heading towards the town of Oskil branches out and eventually moves towards Sviatlohirsk, it becomes critical for UA in the area east of Sviatlohirsk.

It’s easy to see how this could develop into a minor disaster as UA is understaffed and low-priority in the area, and Russia has mustered offensive capacity.

In Kursk, it seems that Russia is holding an area inside Ukraine.

In Kharkiv, they have not been driven out, and Putin has recently confirmed that they intend to establish a buffer zone in the Kharkiv and Sumy oblasts.

In fact, in Vovchansk, RU lines run along the Vovcha river, I saw that now.

North of Pokrovsk, RU has made quite significant advances, so Ukraine has preemptively started evacuating Slovyansk and Kramatorsk.

Overall, the fronts are not very pleasant to read about, and those of us who have followed this know that since the turn of the year, Trump has done everything to make it difficult for Zelensky, and I don’t have much faith in the tough trio Macron, Merz, and Starmer.

Yes, Europe is now selling a lot of equipment to Ukraine, but it’s because we get paid for it. Some might call it blood money.

Russia also has some mischief brewing with North Korea’s 11th AC – I guessed that they will take up positions along the northern front, but we’ll see.

The only general Putin hugged at the parade was a North Korean twelve-pointer, and if their efforts had been behind us, Putin wouldn’t have spared a glance at the subhumans from North Korea.

I’m starting to get the feeling that Putin believes he can win this – he has become as superior and arrogant as only Russians can be when they feel they have the upper hand.

Only Russia has carried out offensive operations, and somewhere since mid-April, the terrain has been reasonably favorable.

If Ukraine intends to carry out offensive operations, they should not give away the entire area east of the Oskil River before starting, for example, and right now the pressure is increasing exponentially near northern Luhansk.

Another low-hanging fruit would have been to strike the Russian units west of the Oskil River up near Kupiansk – they are backed by a waterway. Ukraine hasn’t done that either.

Now Russia is starting to threaten the last supply route into Kupiansk.

This is the situation on the fronts – south of Pokrovsk and all the way down to the Dnieper, not much has happened.

We have been deeply immersed in “peace negotiations” since the turn of the year, and in my opinion, Putin has thoroughly confused Trump, but the tough trio isn’t doing much either.

Frankly, I don’t know what Macron, Starmer, and Merz have cooked up here. If Putin didn’t respect the ceasefire from May 12 or didn’t attend the peace meeting, it would have absolutely terrible consequences, declared Starmer, Macron, and Merz – then they disappeared completely.

A question one might want to ask is when these devastating consequences will start hammering on Putin, for example?

Trump, I thought I knew him, then he changed his mind and now there is some kind of fading hope that there will still be peace – and time goes by.

I am of the opinion that Ukraine has received more supplies than they have indicated – and good supplies.

They are supposed to have ammunition and they have apparently sorted out the personnel supply according to themselves.

So why retreat everywhere at the end of May?

If I were to guess, I think a hell of a lot of demands have been placed on Ukraine as soon as Putin made a move in any direction to avoid upsetting him – he seems to have succeeded in playing the whole home team even in 2025.

The only one who doesn’t fall for it – and who also offers to slowly strangle Putin is Zelensky, but he is never taken seriously, Putin managed to talk the West down in the end.

Since I believe we are heading towards a period of escalation, Putin has probably engaged in delaying tactics in the negotiations to buy himself time, right?

Some other questions I have started asking myself are whether China may have started sending LV to Putin to protect targets inside Russia. That would be quite uncontroversial and not an escalation.

They have obviously started sending more supplies and maybe we will see something new when the offensive begins?

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