Team Sunflower say they’re kicking ass in the fight to liberate their country from Ivan, with Ukrainian forces pushing toward Russian-held Kharkiv with the help of Western firepower and collapsing morale among Putin’s stormtroopers, the New York Times reports.
“In total, more than a thousand square kilometers of the territory of Ukraine have been liberated since the beginning of September,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in an address to the United Nations on Thursday. The successes could not be verified on the whole independently, however social media and witness reports do not at all contradict Zelensky’s claims. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley on Friday remarked on the gains, with Milley saying “There is fighting – both offense and defense – all the way from Kharkiv all the way down to Kherson,” while cautioning the war is still very far from over.
In Moscow, Putin’s propagandists were both uncharacteristically sober about the losses while characteristically shitfaced on cheap vodka. “I’m worried. Naturally, we want for our guys to crush [the other side] and only to advance, but life doesn’t work that way,” said Vladimir Solovyov, Russia’s Sean Hannity, on his radio show “Full Contact” on Wednesday. Solovyov had a large bruise on his face visible on the live streamed version of the program but would not or could not say why he got it. The bruise was covered in makeup while Solovyov hosted his later nightly TV show.