Dear followers, I have a request for you. I'm presently back in Ukraine again, and looking to make a reporting trip out to Donbas soon. The costs of this are not low, though, and keep growing as media budgets shrink. That's why I'm asking for your help to make this trip work. /1

"And then the Turks came"

It takes a bit of the gravity away when half the actors are people you regularly see at the bar

I can't believe it took me six years in this country to learn about the Armenian Kingdom of Heaven clone

3.5 years into this war and we are still being forced to listen to takes about 'peace negotiations.' Every round goes exactly the same. There isn't going to be any peace while Putin is in power. Peace will be made on the battlefield and nowhere else.

I recently joined my friend Damian Kolodiy on his podcast Talking Ukraine, to discuss my recent visit to Donbas, impressions of the war and my reporting in Ukraine and elsewhere more broadly. Give it a listen!

Just another reminder that things are quietly getting far better in Syria

Glide bombs are a truly terrifying weapon. A Ukrainian soldier fighting in Konstantinivka told me about a FAB-3000 (as in, it weighs 3,000kg) hitting a nine-story apartment building next to his position. Leveled it to the ground in one go.

I lived in this city for four years and maybe underestimated its impact on my future life choices

While Donbas has captured public attention, the rest of Ukraine also suffers from Russia's war. In Sumy, a growing drone campaign portends more displacement as locals fear the city becoming a 'second Kherson.' I visited Sumy for @OffbeatResearch:

The battle for Donbas is now fought with small arms and smaller drones, and men in teams of two or three. But the fighting is even deadlier than earlier in this war. I visited Dobropillya and spoke with some of its Ukrainian defenders, for @CBC:

And this was in Kramatorsk, until very recently one of the only 'safer' (in a very relative sense) places in Donbas. RIP.

I don't think there's anywhere the EU's cognitive dissonance is on display more than the Caucasus. This official was (rightly) lambasting the Georgian govt yesterday for its abuses. Yet today she's in Azerbaijan - a much worse dictatorship - and it's all smiles and 'progress.'

Every report that comes out about what Ukrainians living under Russian occupation endure is pure horror. Pure evil what Russia is doing to them.

My gut feeling also is that Putin will never hand over Assad. Remember how much the 2011 NATO intervention in Libya enraged him? I don't think he'll abandon a fellow dictator to Gaddafi's fate, even if he's as useless as Assad.

Wild seeing this given where we were a year ago. But I think it's a humiliation for Russia, rather than Syria/al-Sharaa. You spent a decade trying to bomb these guys to smithereens in Idlib and now you have to play the nice host in the Kremlin to keep your base.

After moving through mostly open ground for the past 18 months, Russia is now trying to take three major urban areas: Kostyatynivka, Lyman and Pokrovsk-Myrnohrad. It will take many months and massive casualties to take any one of these, let alone all three. They may not manage.

Out here in Donbas, the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield is unrecognizable from two years ago. Armoured vehicles have been replaced by vast amounts of men, who are lost in incredible numbers. Salaries and payments offered by the Russian govt have skyrocketed and keep increasing.

Something worth thinking about here. Russia's economic, military and human resources have been severely depleted by this war, and the strain is only increasing.

Bombing all night here in Sloviansk. Past three hours have been one Shahed after another, plus many other explosions.

Despite this, the situation is not critical. Russians are gaining very little ground and have no real prospect of taking the city in the coming months. The battle continues.