📖 🇺🇸 🇲🇽 Colony Ridge is an illegal-immigrant "Colonia" of Liberty County, Texas.

🔶️ According to local law enforcement and the developers, a majority of residents are undocumented immigrants, with most of the other residents being United States-born persons of Latin American origins. The lack of requiring Social Security allowed people who did not legally immigrate to the United States to acquire property. In the State of Texas, and under federal law, people without United States citizenship may legally purchase land. Forrest Wilder of Texas Monthly stated that those attributes caused it to be "one of the fastest-growing parts of Texas".

🔶️ In September 2022, passersby in Colony Ridge found the body of a 16-year-old Honduran girl who’d been shot to death and dumped in a ditch by the side of a road, still wearing her uniform from her work bussing tables at a local restaurant.

🔶️ Evidence of cartel involvement dates to the earliest days of the illegal-alien settlement boom. To at least 2013, when federal, state, and local investigators raided a Mexican drug cartel’s marijuana grow operation on 300 acres in Liberty County, finding explosives, 6,000 marijuana plants, worker bunk houses, and guard towers.

🔶️ The San Jacinto County murders involving neighbors earlier this year put a spotlight on the Colony Ridge community and growing stress illegal immigration puts on local communities:

🔶️ "Whether it's the owner-financed loans that are going predominantly to illegal aliens. Whether it's the drainage problems that are causing people who are downstream in the water shed to be at much higher risk of flooding. The dumping of waste into local waterways and into drainage ditches," says Russo.

📸 Colony Ridge

🇷🇺🇺🇦 Archangel reports that a storming operation of Volchansk is underway.

📝: “The 42nd Brigade, which had been stationed near Chasov Yar, is reportedly being hastily relocated to the Kharkov front.”

🔗 Dr Snekotron

📖 🇷🇺 🇺🇦 Day 2 update for the Russian offensive into Kharkov | Armchair Warlord

🔶️ Thus far Russian troops have advanced into Ukraine to a depth of approximately five kilometers over a fifty-kilometer strip of the border northeast of Kharkov, seizing a dozen villages. By way of comparison, this is more tactical success in 48 hours than Ukraine saw in their entire 2023 offensive, achieved with trivial loss to the Russian Army.

🔶️ Currently Russian troops are attacking south towards Kharkov via Liptsy (marked in purple on the map), with reports that scouts have already penetrated to the town. There's another identifiable attack to seize the town of Volchansk, presumably en route to Velyki Berluki and Kupyansk; Russian troops are reported to have entered the town already.

🔶️ It's likely we're still looking at shaping operations thus far - the Russians have not yet moved to attack west of Kharkov (marked out on the map) nor have they pushed over the border east of Volchansk. Looking at the map it's apparent that the engaged sector thus far is relatively undeveloped, suggesting the Russian command would like to draw the AFU into battle and fix them in the more open countryside between Kharkov and the Seversky Donets reservoir to the east.

🔶️ The Russian force engaged thus far is by all reports relatively small and focused on feeling out the Ukrainian defenses. It occurs to me that we could in fact be looking at the Russian equivalent to an Armored Cavalry Regiment in action, probing ahead of what is presumably a corps-sized element uncoiling out of assembly areas in Belgorod Oblast. In any event the Russians seem to be in no hurry to develop the battle too quickly - the big arrows will come when they come. The Russians have an extraordinary level of drone surveillance and "fire control" over the battlefield right now, and Ukrainian forces caught under their gaze will wither quickly.

🔶️ The Ukrainian command seems to be bizarrely fixated with the battle ongoing at Chasov Yar (an operational sideshow for weeks now) and paralyzed as to how to respond to this attack, although rumors have emerged that they're stripping units out of Kherson to redeploy to Kharkov. Given recent Russian moves to consolidate their control of the Dniper delta and threaten a push back onto the right bank this may be a critical blunder.

We shall have to await further developments as usual.

📎 Armchair Warlord

🇺🇸👶 This is a disastrous population revision for the US but one that simply reflects the reality of trends showing plummeting TFR. A United States of sub 375M is in for a rough road ahead, especially considering the consumer spending driven nature of our economy. A Yeltsinesque turn.

🇵🇸 🇮🇱 The expanded evacuation zone mapped by the IDF includes parts of Rafah that would seemingly cross Biden's red line, as it includes the large Rafah market area and municipal stadium where the UAE field hospital is located. An UNRWA aid distribution center would also be included.

📎 Jake Godin