>Not hearing enough about this reminds me of the overly cheerful propaganda Ukrainian TV regularly describes the situation there - Kherson is lost, Berdyansk

>Not hearing enough about this reminds me of the overly cheerful propaganda Ukrainian TV regularly describes the situation there - Kherson is lost, Berdyansk is lost, Mariupol is like Stalingrad when the defenders were pushed right to the Volga, Nikolaev - still not, and there is fighting around with various small villages and towns changing hands. Odessa - preparing for invasion, Russian Navy assault group is there and the smaller ships are hanging on the horizon periodically shelling the city. Some radars, etc. taken out by the bombing. I wonder what would you have to add/correct here. Granted, Odessa falling will be huge in all respects. It would make the situation worse tremendously for Ukraine. It will also be a pretty tall order for Russian propaganda as for example i couldn't say which city is more dear to Russians - Kiev or Odessa. And Odessa will be fighting. It will be at least order of magnitude bigger/longer battle than Mariupol (especially given that Russian forces haven't yet encircled Odessa which is hard without taking Nikolaev, and attempting to take Odessa just by an assault from sea onto the mined beaches would be very risky). So, it isn't exactly a given that Russia can sustain such a fight given the Russian losses that have already happened and are going to happen - Russia is already starting to bring in military college cadets as well as calling reservists. Russia also wants Belarussian forces to join, yet given the Belarussian society feelings Lukashenko is afraid that the Belarussian army will desert to Ukrainians and would potentially turn against him while hoping that staying off may allow him to not go down with Putin/Russia. Russia has also significantly decreased close air support for ground forces because of heavy losses of planes and helicopters. Thus they mostly bomb the cities from distance using unguided artillery and unguided MRLS like Grad/Smerch as well as unguided air bombing from higher altitudes. That mostly hits civilian population and civilian buildings/infrastructure while having much smaller effect against military targets. And thus even after such massive multi-days bombings the Russian ground forces still can't move ahead much.