Russia Plans Ukraine Land Blockade Strikes Road Rail Links; Russian A50 AWACS Defeat Ukraine Drones (Alexander Mercouris)

Time Stamps:

00:00:00 Intro, biggest event of the last 24 hours
00:00:30 Russian strikes hit Odessa, Izmail and Reni
00:02:54 Ukraine's Black Sea shipping shut down since July
00:03:31 Financial Times spins a resilience story on Odessa
00:05:33 Russia targets Odessa's road and rail links west
00:08:44 The Rasvet system, Russia's answer to Starlink
00:11:30 Why Russia held back from a blockade in 2022
00:14:40 Geran drones now hitting Ukrainian trains and rail
00:16:54 The Dnieper bridges mystery, why Russia hasn't struck them
00:19:42 Rasvet as a gamechanger for coordinated Russian strikes
00:23:25 Ukraine facing a total blockade by land, sea and air
00:26:18 Zelensky's Zaporizhzhia victory claims come under doubt
00:29:31 The Kursk precedent and a history of false claims
00:35:23 The Orikhiv crisis keeps getting worse
00:44:39 The growing threat to Kharkiv, Sumy and Kiev itself
00:49:35 Putin orders the Russian Navy to seize western ships
00:52:48 Crew crisis aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Gulf
00:59:41 Britain panics and quietly reaches out to Russia's military
01:04:42 The failed drone attack on Novorossiysk and returning A50 jets

[Posted at the SpookyWeather2 blog, August 14, 2026.]