Quote Originally Posted by Montmorency View Post
I don't know if this is a good or a bad sign, but this month the Russian domestic media have widely discarded the phrase "special military operation" for plain old "war." Hard to think of this as anything but a calculated rhetorical shift.

Yuri claims that Russian intelligence has obtained official lists of names of Ukrainian stay-behind personnel (partisans) - and he's gone into witness protection?? Also claims aRussian offensive SW of Izyum toward the Dnieper (Zaporizhzhia) - deep envelopment rather than envelopment through Slovyansk - will commence on April 12th according to sources.
My guess is that they want to achieve something major by May 9th, their Victory Day. Im skeptical it will commence on April 12th- repositioning and reconstituting units takes time, if you do it right of course. So they might just start the offensive anyways but I guess we will see soon enough.

An interesting development, if this turns out to be true: a report that Putin and Lukashenko are going to be meeting on the 12th about the war and doing a press conference after. However, it doesn't make sense that they would be meeting all the way on the Pacific side of Russia? Thats why I am skeptical. However, if this does turn out to be true I wonder if it would be the announcement of Belarus joining the war. While there is no way that Belarus could take Kyiv, I do think that they could apply just enough pressure to ensure that Ukraine wouldn't be able to divert as many forces east as it might want to to stop a major Russian advance there.