In case anyone wanted to see these guys in an image with more than 4 pixels.
And the full quote is: "Shotguns such a diverse platform. They are used by hunters, breachers, and sad musicians everywhere." Which was a moment with a pause before moving on.
In my experience, people with "bad GPS" tend to disregard the GPS directions because they think they know better. Once they are good and lost, and the GPS is freaking out and frantically trying to reroute is about when they start to complain that the GPS is useless.
I don't think this is about taking territory in and of itself. This is about forcing fighting to happen in conditions favorable to Ukraine.
Russians have to pivot forces and organize offensives against this. Offensives in new areas are harder and more complex to put together with conscripts. The Ukrainian forces have caused a chaotic situation, and they seem to be leveraging that as hard as possible to cause casualties.
This also seems to be Ukraine finding a good use for all those tanks. After the failed armored offensive early in the war, it seemed Ukraine got skiddish about trying again. This seems like a more successful use of tanks offensively.
I assumed naturally they did bring AA, but the fact that AA of a force on the move is able to apparently overcome the ability of Russia to deploy air power in any significant way on its home turf is really something.
What does the creation of a multi-national state owned search engine have to do with Google? I presume nations have the resources to do that all on their own.
What would you suggest the Google search engine be allowed to do to profit as a business?
Peeling off Russian forces is exactly what Ukraine has already done with this force. I believe it was entirely the point.
Russia is forced not to ignore this for numerous reasons, and it forces them to attack to expel the Ukrainian forces. Successfully attacking with conscripts is a more difficult proposition than defending.
Ukrainian forces inside Russia can continue to force the confrontation by advancing into undefended territory and/or launching limited small scale attacks to be a constant wound inside of Russia. Ukrainians have already been conducting these attacks on reinforcements on their way to stop the main Ukrainian forces.
All the while Ukrainians inside Russia can refuse to assault defended positions. Which is exactly what they did initially. They bypassed the heavy positions and refused to engage in heavy force on force assaults. Instead as local defenders they are creating a lopsided local situation.
As an aside, where are Russian air assets? Inside Ukraine the skies were contested, but the apparent inability of air assets to repel Ukrainians from Russian territory with air power is not a good sign for Russia.
Why counter attack (with the majority of forces) right away? Russians have shown poorer abilities when organizing offensives compared to defending. The incursion into Russia by Ukraine forces the Russian military into attacking. This is as opposed to sitting behind a thousand minefields in unmoving lines inside Ukraine.
Ukraine can set up elaborate layered defenses and enjoy the defensive advantage to grind up more Russian military assets. This also gives Ukraine opportunities for small detachments to hit the Russian reinforcements on the move, which is something they've already been doing.
Russia has undeniably made gains. Avdiivka is comparable in size to the Russian territory taken by Ukraine. Except it took Russia a year and 30,000 casualties and hundreds of armored vehicles losses. Ukraine's push into Russia has happened over days and Russia still hasn't pivoted with a coherent response.
Spoilers!