Large explosions are being reported at a major Russian airbase as well as sea drone attacks at a port in Crimea.
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I saw it claimed that Ukraine now holds more of Russia than Russia ever held of Ukraine. I haven’t checked the math, but it seems that if it’s not true now, it soon will be.
I also read one theory that Ukraine is making a bid to grab control of the gas main that controls the supply to Europe.
Prigozhin’s little day trip toward Moscow really exposed how thin the interior Russian defenses are, huh.
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Could prevent a freezing of the war too. Putin won’t want to freeze it if Ukraine holds Russian territory.
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The land holdings comment is completely wrong. Orders of magnitude wrong. And would take hundreds of thousands of troops. Ukraine holds 1’s (or very low 10’s) of square kilometers of Russian land while Russia holds thousands of Sq.Km of Ukrainian land, not even counting Crimea and, at the start of the war, held even thousands more. Heck, just with the Ukrainian counter-offensive in the NE of the country in 2022, they cleared the Russians out of 74K square miles.
Ukraine: 603,000 sq.km
Russian current occupation of Ukraine: 109,000 sq.km (including Crimea)
Russian current occupation of Ukraine: 83,000 sq.km (without Crimea)
Russia’s largest occupation of Ukraine since start of war: 161,000 sq.km
Ukraine occupation of Russia: <30 sq.km.
There is no reality that suggests that Ukraine has or ever will come close to "holding more of Russia than Russia holds of Ukraine. That is a comically bad source you were quoting. This is a decent Wiki page that is tracking a lot of this with decent sources (like the Institute for the Study of War). Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine - Wikipedia.
Re: controlling the gas supply to Europe, that is a dubious comment as well. They are operating near the town that is the main collection point for LNG from various Russian sources and dumps into the pipeline that serves the majority of Europe. That same pipeline that transits right across the middle of Ukraine. Militarily speaking, it makes no sense to expend resources to capture a transfer station if you already control the downstream pipeline. Again, the resource that posited that theory is poor and uninformed.
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Appreciate the clean up on Aisle Limey. 
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I would be slow to assess this as a weakness. It’s a hundreds year old defensive “bend, don’t break” Russian strategy. If their front line defenses are breached, they tell their people to fight or get out of the way, let the invaders (relatively) deep into the country then wait them out and counter attack at the most opportune time. It’s literally been a winning strategy for them for 600+ years.
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This made me LOL.
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Lots of theories out there on why the Ukrainians are doing this. Knowing your comment above is likely true, it makes it even more interesting. I have two theories:
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The Russian sustained attrition-based offensive in the east is working and the Ukrainians are dangerously close to running out of resources, leading to a rout. This is a diversionary tactic meant to force the Russians to redeploy forces away from the eastern front. Which is indeed happening.
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Zelensky’s support on the home front continues to erode and he needed an optical victory to re-energize the citizens. And this gives them the time they need to get the latest round of draftees to the front.
We’ll find out soon enough if one or both (or none) are true.
Waiting for winter may have worked on Napoleon’s and Hitler’s armies, but I doubt it will be as damaging to Ukraine’s forces. In addition to Ukraine having access to 21st century equipment, their supply lines are as short as can be. Lastly, I doubt they have an ambition to drive as deep into Russia as those previous despots attempted.
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I would posit a third possibility: This is a demonstration to the Biden Administration and NATO that Putin’s nuclear “red lines” are bullshit. This could be to convince Biden to remove restrictions on the use of U.S. weaponry inside Russia so that Kiev and Kharkiv can be defended. I will say this: Ukrainian OpSec has been superb.
Does Putin have the ready reserves to exploit a breach in the Donbas lines?
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The problem Putin has right now is that deploying reserves might just end up expanding Ukraine’s forces.
I don’t know-at all. I am not convinced, as das may be, of Ukraine’s imminent collapse. Russia is a larger force and has a huge tolerance for losses, so maybe. I can only speculate as to the purpose of this operation, but the information that I have seen leads me to believe that it is larger than any previous incursion and may very well have a strategic objective, even if I can’t discern one at this point. I’m reminded that while Russia has never been conquered from the west, they can be defeated in the west.
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It’s being reported the Ukrainians are now digging trenches and fortifications.
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After first seeing the graphic, I read that as “digging trenches and fornicating.”
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They might as well at this point. The response to them has been tepid at best.
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This link contains an animation of Ukraine’s incursion.
It also claims that Putin is shitting himself that they will roll all the way to Moscow.
That’s worked out so well for others.
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Related aside: has there ever been a good movie made about the WWII Battle of Kursk?