The Summary So Far; or "yo, what the fuck, why isn't Russia around Kiev anymore? what happened?"

TLDR: Russia is winning pretty hard, Ukraine is losing pretty hard, this is (and always has been) a West-Russia proxy war, and the west is content to sacrifice every last Ukrainian for no particular gain other than to their military-industrial complexes. Russia may take control (annexation or otherwise) of potentially a third of Ukraine but have expressed no specific desire to do so yet. Extremely difficult times ahead for the world economically, even in western nations, but also a genuine chance to be finally rid of US hegemony over the coming decades. We will almost certainly see an increase in self-sufficiency in many countries but the road there is rocky for many developing nations.

There's been a lot of action over the last month or so, way too much to mention every single troop movement and village taken. There are/were, I would say, 4 distinct fronts in this war: the Kiev + Chernigov front (now withdrawn); the Kharkiv + Donbass front; the Kherson + Mykolaiv front; and the Mariupol "front".

First things first: the Kiev + Chernigov front. The motivations of the Russians here have been a subject of controversy in the megathreads. Did Russia intend to capture Kiev? Was that going to be via urban fighting or a slow siege after complete encirclement until surrender? As they didn't, is that a failure on the Russian's part, either due to poor logistics or extreme Ukrainian resistance? Or was the intention never to capture Kiev? All these points and more, we have argued about. I think there is a general but probably not overwhelming consensus that there were multiple purposes of the Kiev offensive. There may have been an element of seeing if they could snag Kiev without too much fighting if the Ukrainian forces were unable to mobilize in time, but when that didn't occur, the purpose of the Kiev front switched to a feint attack designed to hold the Ukrainian forces in place. This conflict is about the Donetsk and Luhansk republics, and Russia engaged (among other reasons) to free them from Ukraine after 8 years of fighting there that killed 14,000 people on both sides. Therefore, to aid the fighters of those republics, Russia attacked towards Kiev to force Ukraine to defend it instead of being able to freely move and reinforce the Donbass. A similar action may have occurred towards Mykolaiv on the southern side of Ukraine.

If you say "well, this is clearly cope, obviously Russia tried and failed to take the city and then decided to make it seem like that was their plan all along" then I only really have five counterarguments: a) taking Kiev would not instantly end the war - the government of Ukraine could shift to Lviv in the west, and taking capitals does not grant you a Domination Victory in real life; b) if the plan hinged on Kiev being taken, then Russia would have used more of its military and airforce (which we know that they have because they're using them literally as I'm typing this out); c) Russia did not do anything to hold on to the villages and towns surrounding Kiev, unlike in the south (as I'll mention later); d) Russia was able to do a full, organized retreat without much fuss at all, which would be impossible if the ferocious Ukrainian resistance was hounding them all the way to the border, and e) it's impossible to truly tell the difference unless Russia decides to reveal its war plans from the first week of the invasion, so it's not worth fixating on.

Anyway, Russia retreats from Kiev and Chernigov, as I say, without much fuss. Ukraine and the neo-Nazi battalions advances very quickly and "retakes" towns (there was nobody to advance against or fight to retake towns) and spends a couple days making fun of Russia and posting images of Russian-free towns. Then, and only then, once there had been a few days of silence, do the allegations of massive Russian human rights abuses and killings of civilians start filtering through to the western media, with the main case being in Bucha. The media goes berserk at this news. Then, there are inconsistencies: why did they wait days to report these killings? Why do the civilians killed have white armbands that signify they are pro-Russian? Why are there videos of Ukrainian soldiers asking if they can shoot civilians and being given the affirmative? Very strange. Russia denies all involvement, Belarus calls it a British operation, China and other nations call for patience, and an actual investigation first. Meanwhile, one Ukrainian authority calls for the slaughter of all Russians around the world. A little later, a railway station in Ukraine is hit by a missile, killing tens of refugees. The remains of the missile are clearly Ukrainian. It makes significantly more sense that the neo-Nazis would be doing this than Russia. Testimonies of civilians in warzones attest to this - that Azov shells their homes despite there being no Russians around, and use them as human shields. If Russia didn't care about civilian losses, they would have carpet-bombed Kiev to rubble.

Meanwhile, on the Donbass front in the east. The key thing to understand about the Donbass front is that it's seen fighting for 8 years. There are massive trench systems there, and the anti-tank weaponry means that if you're Russia, you can't just blast through it with vehicles. It's a very slow moving front that has many Ukrainians on it - I've seen estimates from 40,000 to 100,000. Even so, the LPR has about 90% of its claimed territory, with the city of Severodonetsk being the last major stronghold for them to take. Meanwhile, the DPR has about 50%. They didn't take all that during this invasion - most of it they already had. But the LPR and DPR have been consistently taking territory from Ukraine. Russia has very recently massively stepped up its efforts to directly help the LPR and DPR, and is now shelling and bombing across the entire front. Russian forces are also advancing southwards from Izyum, which would allow them to eventually completely encircle the Ukrainian troops there and force them to surrender or die of starvation.

Kharkiv, northwest from Donbass, has been a hotspot for most of the war. Tons of bombing there, and a lot of destruction. There isn't a lot to say about it that doesn't get needlessly granular for this summary. Ukraine has recently attempted an offensive outwards from the city to take advantage of the Russian focus elsewhere, but it is unlikely to achieve much in the end. There has also been Ukrainian shelling into Belgorod in Russia, but it's largely hitting small border villages. There was an incident a while ago when two Ukrainian helicopters blew up a Russian fuel depot but these are infrequent events for now.

Next, the Kherson front. The forces from Crimea splayed outwards and took basically everything up to the Dnipro river, which includes Kherson on the north side. The river is extremely defensible, with only a few (and I mean literally 3 or so) crossing points across hundreds of kilometers. Ukraine has recently tried to blow up one of them, but the missiles were shot down. The front between Mykolaiv and Kherson has been confusing because there hasn't been a lot of information. Russia has a strong emplacement near Mykolaiv that they're using to shell it sometimes, but has not encircled it nor seemed to have attempted to in weeks. There have been claims of Ukrainian counteroffensive that seem plausible, although they once suggested they're near Kherson and would retake it over a weekend which was pretty ridiculous.

I think the bigger news with Kherson and the area between it and Crimea is that there hasn't been much fighting really, and that life has returned to some degree of normalcy for the people there. This is partially because Russia has introduced the ruble there as a currency to replace Ukraine's currency, and is now reteaching the teachers there to educate in the Russian style rather than the Ukrainian style, which, as I said, didn't happen near Kiev. So I think Russia may intend to hold this territory for a long time, and perhaps never let go of it. Russia always wants more coasts I suppose.

Now, Mariupol, on the south of Ukraine on the Sea of Azov, which is where the urban combat has been happening for the last few weeks. As best as I can tell, about 8000-9000 Ukrainian soldiers and lots of Azov neo-Nazis were encircled there and have been slowly being killed (or surrendering) by the DPR and the Chechens. Kadyrov, the head of the Chechens, has visited there a few times and given updates. After a period of apartment-to-apartment fighting, the Ukrainian forces were beaten back to the industrial zones, and now they only inhabit the Azovstal factory, which is currently being blown to fucking smithereens with them trapped inside. In all, about 1500 Ukrainians surrendered there. The civilians are deeply unhappy with Ukraine and Zelensky and their neo-Nazi occupiers and generally grateful to Russia - as much as you can be to the technically invading force, anyway. Lots of evacuations and humanitarian aid by Russian, and that evacuation has been called "forced deportations" and even "genocide" by some in the media.

Continued below.