When in doubt, check the currency rates. The financial markets care more about reality and less about propaganda.

One Ukrainian hryvnia is worth 20% less than a year ago. One Russian ruble is worth 20% more than a year ago.

It is absolutely going way worse for Ukraine then they'll ever admit. The salt mine town they took and some of the other smaller ones that haven't been reported have gave the Russians a direct route and encirclement around Bakhmut. Next to Bakhmut is one of the Ukrainian biggest rail links for the entire east, so if that goes the ukies are going to lose a huge amount of resupply to the eastern front.

In addition no matter how many "we shot down 38 of 32 missiles" they say, they're infrastructure keeps getting btfo and they've had to energy ration daily now. And it really seems like Belarus will eventually enter this war and open a second front, because the Russians have been moving a fuck load of equipment to them and they're starting to practice joint military operations.

Here's what Strelkov said (forever seething about himself losing Sloviansk back in 2014):

https://wartranslated.com/igor-girkins-commentary-on-the-prospects-of-russian-offensive-after-capture-of-soledar/

So far, there is no discussion even about the capture of Bakhmut, because the battles for this city continue. And it has been under siege for a long time. Therefore, to say that “we will soon go to Sloviansk” can only be corrected: “relatively soon.”

In general, my position on the operation, which is being carried out by the Russian military command in the Donbas, is quite well known and is defined by the words: “It is yet to be done.” All over the world, it has long been customary to bypass defense nodes, to force the enemy to leave them without a fight. And we decided to act according to the patterns of the First World War, and in its worst versions.

It’s hard for me to say when our troops will reach the line Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Druzhkovka, Konstantinovka. Maybe relatively soon, maybe not very soon. Maybe in the coming months, they won’t reach it at all, there is a fairly large foreground there and the “respectable Ukrainian partners” will not leave it without a fight

But in any case, even if we reach this line, it will be a pity if these cities are also destroyed during offensive operations, as Bakhmut has now been destroyed.

And it will be even more difficult to take them because they are much larger, much more strongly fortified. If in Soledar before the start of the special operation, the population was just over ten thousand people, then Kramotorsk until 2014 was a city of 150 thousand people. No Wagner is enough to take the agglomeration by storm. This will require way more forces.

Frankly, I do not share the victorious, and, as they say, ura-patriotic moods of our media after the capture of Soledar. After all, this victory means practically nothing compared to, just for example, the surrender of Kherson. And even the surrender of the much larger city of Izyum, which happened during the so-called regrouping, but in fact, it was a retreat of our troops from the Kharkiv region.

Sloviansk being probably what u/RipleywasRightLV426 meant saying "Next to Bakhmut is one of the Ukrainian biggest rail links for the entire east".

Kherson city was nearly 30 x larger than Soledar, not even counting all the other towns taken alongside it. They're not very known, because Ukraine doesn't fight "worst WWI style" as Stelkov calls it, so they were being just being bypassed or attacked from the rear and quickly taken and so you never even heard of when for example Velyka Oleksandrivka (more than half of Soledar in size) was taken from the VDV in about 1 day.

Hoped it cleared it up a bit for you (both of you).

1 minister (interior affairs) plus his deputy, as well as the secretary of state.

The point of having a deputy is not to be together, but this reminds me of how much of Polish political and military elite (including the president, a former president, and all chiefs of armed forces) died in a single plane crash in Russia in 2010:

A significant minority of Poles did not believe that it was a tragic accident, as detailed in an official [Russian] report. Instead, they saw the crash at a military airfield near the Russian city of Smolensk as a plot involving Polish and Russian leaders, mid-air explosions and cruel Russians executing survivors. Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS) party turned such theories into political rocket fuel that helped the party sweep to election success in 2015.

Although the disaster killed politicians, military top brass and others from across the political spectrum, it has become a touchstone of PiS’s political identity. It helped the party survive for years in opposition while the country was ruled by the centrist Civic Platform led by Donald Tusk, now the European Council president. The airplane’s wreckage is still in Russia, despite government pledges to get it back to Poland.

With Kaczyński’s encouragement, an entire Smolensk mythology emerged, centering on the idea that the plane crash was no accident. This mythology was cultivated by Kaczyński at monthly vigils in front of the presidential palace in Warsaw — becoming his regular way of communicating directly with his followers. Perched on a stepladder, Kaczyński repeatedly promised to reveal “the truth” about the crash, which he alleged was being covered up by enemies in Poland and abroad.