Well it is true Paul, the Ukrainians have taken territory in Luhansk.
- But the amount of territory is insignificant, it's about as far into Luhansk as one could hit a golf ball.
It's more of a symbolic victory with bragging rights than any kind of meaningful gain, see for yourself.
http://tinyurl.com/2s4nrpa

12000 people out of 35000 used for this counter-offensive.
4000 dead and 8000 wounded Ukrainians in the last 5 or 6 days.
I've even seen video of convoys of ambulances and other vehicles going through Kiev.
That's what Zelensky had to throw at this to get that 2.9 billion shadowminister.
The Americans were starting to get cold feet and they needed to see gains to continue giving support.
Zelensky had to cooperate more with them given the talk of sent weapons being untraceable, and being sold on the dark web.
Ukraine's now working more closely with the US in military planning.

On the other side of things Russian forces who conducted a tactical withdrawal are largely intact, and will live to fight another day.

It was a huge blunder on the Russian side, but from what I understand they just didn't have the troops to hold the territory, and decided it was best to conduct a tactical withdrawal.

The reason Russia lacked troops was because he was constrained by the framework (terms) of the 'special military operation', and up until yesterday, he hadn't targeted civilian infrastructure.
Yesterdays attack on electrical infrastructure signals a new stage on the conflict.
The Russian people are pretty mad, and it's they who are now pushing Putin to ramp things up.
You see Putin already convinced them that America was serious threat to Russia with NATO in Ukraine, and Russians have seen all the hate directed at them.
When the allies took the territory they promised the people in the towns they would be there forever, but when they left these people have now been left to reprisal attacks by the Ukrainians as they take back territory.
Russians aren't happy about these people being left to fate.

Russians are well aware of the war games in the far east and have asked why 50,000 Russian troops there weren't in Ukraine.
They are now openly discussing on nightly Russian TV that Putin should take out more electrical infrastructure, take out the rail and all the bridges including the ones on the Dniper etc.
As well as that you've got some pretty reliable voices in Russia saying that a response is coming.

From what I understand Putin has come to the realisation that he can't achieve what he set out to do withing the constraints of the terms of the 'special military operation' and that changes are going to have to be made. The attack on civilian infrastructure might be a sign he accepted the situation and will now move to a more serious kind of war.

As far as the attack on electrical infrastructure is concerned, I heard somewhere that after the power shut down, as well as water pumping stations which rely on power, and traffic lights, internet, trolley buses and trains - which were stranded and military supplies cant be moved easily, but also that Russia hit a train stranded full of Ukranian soldiers, though I'm not sure it's true or not.

12000 dead and wounded Ukrainians.
Russian forces largely intact.
- They traded territory for the lives of their troops as they were largely outnumbered, some reports say by 8 to 1.
Expect changes in the conflict to be forthcoming.

Putin has been trying to conduct a 'noble war' as much as possible, the original aims were to demilitarise and denazify, and not harm civilians or civilian infrastructure.
Looks like now he's taken the gloves off.

AC,

The Russian casualties are nearly 50 000 dead and nearly 100 000 wounded. They have lost so many soldiers that they couldn't fight both in the south and the north. They have captured not only territory but scores of tanks vehicles and 1000s of tons of badly needed ammunition that will now be used on the Russians which will fit in nicely with the $2.5bn of new weapons from the US.

Ukraine has now recaptured nearly 6000 sq km and the Kherson front line for the Russians is collapsing as they run out of ammunition.

As for the electricity in Kharkiv, this does nothing to blunt the Ukrainian military but has given them an excuse to fire directly into Russia. Maybe Russia can do something but they better do it fast otherwise they will lose badly.