I am on a trip currently, so tonight's post and the posts for next couple of days will be a bit short.
Russia's Kharkiv offensive has at this point mostly ground to a halt other than at Vovchansk, which continues to see slow Russian advances within the city. Today Putin issued a statement that the goal of the current offensive does not include the city of Kharkiv, and is merely meant to establish a buffer zone. While Russia never explicitly stated the purpose of their offensive, they did previously mention a desire to establish such a buffer zone inside of Ukraine, if attacks from the RDK, LSR, and Sibir Battalion directly into Russia continued. That said, Russian aspirations clearly include the city of Kharkiv. It's the largest city in Ukraine other than Kyiv, sits in a prominent industrial region, and bore witness to one of the most embarrassing defeats that Russia has suffered from over the course of the war. Still, Putin's statement is certainly an acknowledgement that Russia cannot take the city in the near term.
Ukraine's drone attack against Novorossiysk endured through the night, and carried out into the morning. Ukraine seems to have largely targeted energy infrastructure, including large fuel containers adjacent to the harbor. After the initial attack on Novorossiysk, drone attacks continued even deeper into Russia, hitting an oil refinery in the port city of Tuapse. The damage dealt to Russian energy infrastructure was quite substantial, and will take time to repair. There is no quick patch up situation that Russia has been able to get away with at many refineries when small Ukrainian drones collide with them.
Ukraine possibly struck even deeper still, further into southern Russia. Over the course of the same night, an airport in Stavropol was set ablaze, dealing significant damage to the airport. The cause was not mentioned, but given the timing, Ukrainian involvement is quite likely. Ukraine did not officially claim responsibility either. But this was the third loss of a major piece of infrastructure in the southern part of Russia that we're effectively taken out in the span of just a few hours.
While not publicly tied to the attacks by Ukraine, Russia hit the Ukrainian port city of Odesa pretty hard after the fact, probably a direct retaliation for the Ukrainian strikes on two Russian port cities. One of the sites hit by Russia allegedly held a large number of Ukrainian drones, but they were likely decoys as satellite imagery from a year ago showed the scene as the exact same as it was right before the Russian strikes.
Today Zelenskyy officially signed into the bill which enables certain Ukrainian prisoners to voluntarily enlist in exchange for early parole. Ukrainian officials have stated that they already have around five thousand candidates who have expressed interest. Even if every single one is approved, the figure alone won't be enough to change the course of the war. But they would help to flesh out a large number of Ukrainian units which are critically undermanned at the moment, allowing these units to remain in the fight for longer. And depending on the circumstances, they would enable some current front line troops to get some much needed respite. Especially with social tensions relating to the draft being quite high, finding a voluntary source of recruits is a must for Ukraine. One example of a high profile incident involving Ukraine's further attempts to mobilize took place at the border of Romania. A Ukrainian man was trying to escape mobilization by fleeing to Romania, and was shit dead by a Ukrainian border guard, who is now facing charges.
Zelenskyy also made a curious statement, that there hadn't been any complaints from units at the front of late of artillery shell shortages over the past two months. This is pretty categorically false, with some units going as far as even going public with their complaints at times. I doubt this was designed to boost military morale, as it just makes it seem as if their concerns are being ignored. It would be a weird way to express gratitude to the west, particularly with more shells in the pipeline. I think it may have been a misguided attempt to oaint things as better at the front than they are, to try to convince some Ukrainian citizens to enlist. But this is far too little to move the needle on that at all, and has many other drawbacks. It also just isn't enough to outweigh bad news from the front, such as the Russian capture of a portion of Vovchansk where they have faced a string of allegations of commiting war crimes, which Ukraine has been unable to prevent so far as Russia maintains a grip on part of the city.
Zelenskyy has ruled out the proposals made by some third countries for a truce to take place during the Olympics. Zelenskyy's view is that such a truce would be of greater benefit to Russia. Russia has in fact employed truces regularly in order to build up their forces before breaking the truce in places such as Syria, so Zelenskyy's concerns are not without basis.