Ukraine Para Spent 131 Days At Front, But Life Under Russians Was Scarier

Serhii was living with his mother when the Russians invaded in 2022. He remained in his town for some months before escaping. 

But after spending 131 days at the front - mostly by himself - he reports that living under Russian occupation was scarier because of the hostility, drunkenness and unreliability of Russian occupation forces. JL

Yurii Ustymenko reports in Hromadske:

Serhii would spend 131 days alone at a front-line position near Pokrovsk, one of the most fiercely contested sectors of the war. Yet he still considers the eight and a half months he spent under Russian occupation more frightening. He serves in a reconnaissance platoon of Ukraine's 25th Sicheslav Airborne Brigade, part of the 7th Air Assault Corps. He joined the military in late 2024 after receiving his first mobilization notice. He had already experienced what Russian occupation meant. Originally from Ukraine's southern Kherson region, Serhii remained there with his mother after Russia launched its invasion in February 2022. After joining the Airborne, Serhii remained a the front, by himself, for more than four months was not due to a shortage of soldiers to replace him. The terrain and intense Russian drone activity made movement exceptionally dangerous. The unit waited for overcast weather that could limit drone operations. "We were afraid of risking his life,"

First Week Of November Sets Russian War Loss Record, Nov 8 Highest Daily Record

During the first week of November, Ukrainian forces inflicted the highest number of weekly casualties on Russian troops of the entire war: 

16,130 killed or severely wounded, which works out to 2,300 a day or almost 100 every hour.

And as if that weren't enough, the Ukrainians then started the second week of the month by inflicting 2,980 casualties on the Russians in one day - again, the highest daily total of war. The previous record was achieved a week earlier, on November 1. The eleventh month of the year is not proving to be an auspicious one for the Kremlin and its troops. JL

The Kyiv Post and Kyiv Independent report:

The Russian military lost 16,130 military personnel during the first week of November, marking the highest weekly casualty toll recorded since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. "Over seven days, Nov. 1-7, the Russian aggressor lost 16,130 military personnel. On average, more than 2,300 occupiers daily, or nearly a hundred every hour– a new absolute record of the war.” On November 8, Russia suffered a record-breaking number of casualties on the front lines, totaling 2,980 soldiers either killed or seriously injured in a day. "One less invader every 29 seconds." The report comes a day after the General Staff reported Russian casualties reaching 400,000 since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in 2022. The previous record for Russian daily personnel losses was 2,500, reported just a week prior on Nov. 1, 2026.

Is Jensen Huang, With No Designated Successor, Too Big, Vulnerable To Fire?

So it turns out the company primarily responsible for supplying and financing the AI boom is led by a guy with 60 direct reports, no succession plan and, oh by the way, got honey-trapped by a Chinese government operative who also appears to have convinced him to divert billions in chips to a US adversary in direct contravention of US law. 

Which means that Jensen Huang's firing - a absolute certainty for most public companies - may not happen because it could collapse the global economy, and would include trashing the financial well-being of millions who have Nvidia stock in their retirement portfolios. You know, just in case you thought this was a straight up morality and/or national security issue. One might well ask how an entire economy became dependent on a tech company with what appears to be zero corporate governance safeguards, but that would mean you haven't been paying attention to Trump administration corruption for the past two years. Ok, that's unbelievable and unforgiveable, but here we are. What happens now? The board will 'investigate' with an eye towards 'proving' that he was a lovelorn dupe, not a cagey operator who knew what he was doing. But the investigation will really be a cover for them to begin figuring out if they can survive without him and who, if anyone, could succeed. In the process, they will almost certainly begin to impose governance standards and a succession plan as well as streamlining the reporting structure. All with an eye to hoping they can forestall further collapse, competitive challenges based on lost confidence, a financial disaster and an economic depression. Wish the Nvidia board good luck. They need it. JL

Sam Sutton and colleagues report in Politico and Connie Loizos report in Tech Crunch:

CEOs have been felled by smaller scandals than an affair with an alleged spy who routed sensitive technology to China. But there doesn’t appear to be anyone in the wings to take Huang's place. He has 60 direct reports. Depending on the results of Nvidia’s investigation, shareholder lawsuits and the political tidal wave, the board may determine Huang’s removal would be more damaging than keeping him. Nvidia’s role at the center of a massive, complex circular financing web is what makes this so tricky and terrifying. Nvidia isn’t just the biggest provider of chips driving the AI boom but the bank behind the buildout. In addition to stakes in hundreds of smaller startups, Nvidia has invested in OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, CoreWeave. It signed agreements mobilizing more than $500 billion over time, and could backstop a quarter of it. The bigger test comes when Nvidia’s employees, customers, and partners, and millions of Americans with Nvidia in their 401(k) plans, have to decide whether an AI economy built on Huang judgement makes sense.

Counterattacks Add To Ukraine Gains In Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia

Ukrainian forces operating south of the Fortress Belt are counterattacking again, liberating more territory in three crucial oblasts, as Russian units continue to struggle to recover from the summer and fall Ukrainian gains. JL

Ryder Blackthorn reports in Frontline Signal:

Ukrainian forces have been gradually recovering territory in the Oleksandrivka direction, near the borders of Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. Ukraine’s counterattacks around Oleksandrivka were reportedly forcing Russia to commit naval infantry and tank units to defend the wider sector. Russian infantry operating in small groups, sometimes only two or three men, attempting to move through Ukrainian positions or remain hidden in wooded areas and abandoned buildings. Reconnaissance drones are used to locate these groups

Changes In Ukraine's Vivaldi Tactics, Command Paralyzed Russian Forces

Corporate executives will recognize the change that Ukrainian forces now credit with a major share of Operation Vivaldi's success.

In a technologically driven era, pushing information and decision making down to the commanders on the ground gave them the adaptability necessary to identify Russian vulnerabilities and then strike them, effectively paralyzing the Russian forces. JL

Carlotta Gall and Kamila Hrabchuk report in the New York Times:

Ukrainian troops had been losing ground to the far more numerous Russian Army for the best part of two years. But the wider use of drones and remote-controlled vehicles, and changes in the command structure and culture within parts of the army, enabled Ukraine to shift gears. Decision making was given to commanders on the ground rather than being relayed from a command post, while the senior commanders focused on the broader operational level to disrupt the Russian command. When Russian reinforcements were called in, Ukrainian drones struck them as they dismounted from vehicles miles before they could reach the front line The Russians were effectively paralyzed. The tactics were so successful that Ukraine's troops wiped out Russia’s 144th Motor Rifle Division in the fighting and reversed Russia’s gains of a whole year.

How the Data Center Backlash May Help Biggest Tech Companies

There is an argument to be made that US voters last week merely confirmed what the markets were already saying: data center development was becoming absurdly unaffordable and needed to slow down. 

But for the biggest tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Nvidia (?... more about that tomorrow), this could prove to be an advantage. The reason is that they already have the size, scale and financial resources - as well as existing capacity - to ride out the slowdown which may affect smaller or newer companies, giving them a cost and future growth advantage. AI has long been about the rich getting richer and this this situation simply magnifies that. JL

Telis Demos reports in the Wall Street Journal:

The market's major concern hasn't been AI’s growth potential. It has been the fear that building the capacity to meet that growth would be so costly that even companies that won the AI race would end up much less profitable. Rising AI credit costs were a big factor leading AI stocks to sink in recent weeks.  So if the Democrats’ sweep spurs a national slowdown in the AI computing power build-out, it could play into the hands of the biggest tech companies. A slowdown can ratchet down costs on supplies, labor and credit. And it would give existing data centers confidence that the scarcity of their asset will make it more valuable. “If you’re a data center that is already running, or have power in place, there’s scarcity value.” Amazon and Microsoft, which already control vast computing power and have the financial might to outbid for more, rallied more than 6%. Shares of computing and data center companies with less sterling credit and fewer cash resources were down. 

Recon: Inside One of the Ukrainian Army's Most Dangerous Jobs

Even on a drone dominated battlefield, human soldiers usually have to go in closer to assess the situation. Their work requires training, patience, skill, experience - and 60% luck. JL

Asami Terajima reports in the Kyiv Independent:

Their heir work includes ambushing the enemy, countering Russian infiltrators, and clearing out Russian positions. In the era of constant drone surveillance, both sides increasingly rely on infiltration to advance forward, sending a small group of soldiers one by one until they eventually accumulate, especially under bad weather conditions. Figuring out where Russian troops are infiltrating from is part of the reconnaissance soldiers' work to guard their area of responsibility. It is especially crucial for reconnaissance soldiers to be highly trained and conduct repeated drills, as the brain "shuts off" in these nerve-wracking situations, forcing the soldiers to rely on muscle memory instead. There is only so much that the drones can see from above, compared to the reconnaissance soldiers on the ground. Survival is defined 60% by luck, 30% by skills, and 10% by alertness and patience.