Short post tonight, as I was quite distracted following tornadoes in my area.
Ukrainian officials have warned that they are in for a few rough weeks. Blackouts are becoming more frequent through the country, including Kyiv, as cumulative damage from Russian attacks and the summer weather are pushing Ukraine's power grid to the maximum. Russia has also launched a renewed push on broad swathes of the front, particularly in eastern Kharkiv oblast and Donetsk oblast. This has provided Russia with a very rare advance by Synkivka, by Kupyansk. Russian troops have advanced to seize positions to its eat, meaning that they may simply envelop the suburb in the future.
Putin made a series of statements today, including some extraordinarily implausible math. He claimed that Ukraine was suffering around fifty thousand military casualties a month (they began the war with approximately 200 thousand active troops, over two years ago). Putin also claimed that Ukraine was taking five times as many casualties as Russia. Working backwards, this means that Putin is admitting to ten thousand Russian casualties a month. Working further from this, using a killed to wounded rate of around one to three (a traditional rate in modern warfare, Russia's has been reported to be worse) and extrapolating to the start of the full scale invasion, we end up with sixty thousand dead Russian soldiers. This is making a lot of assumptions, but incidentally, this is only slightly higher than the number of named deaths that the BBC has been able to confirm. The loose implication here is that this is in fact a figure that Putin pays attention to. Alternatively, his math just incidentally worked out.
Putin also threatened to send weapons to groups opposing the countries which are aeming Ukraine with weapons. However, many of these countries are not involved directly in any conflict, leading to the awkward implication that Russia would be directly arming terror groups, most of which have absolutely no qualms with attacking Russia as well. As for the United States, which is active in multiple conflict zones, it would be a different story. But for countries such as Germany, Denmark, and Romania, this threat isn't really credible.
Zelenskyy left Ukraine once again today but not for France quite yet. He instead traveled to Qatar, a country which has served as an intermediary for Russia and Ukraine. Qatar has helped secure deals which has seen a number of Ukrainian children be returned by Russia to Ukraine. Zelenskyy thanked Qatar for their diplomatic support for Ukraine, and notably confirmed that Qatar will be attending Zelenskyy's peace conference, helping to give it added geopolitical heft.