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Thank you. Hello and welcome to the Battleground Ukraine podcast with me, Roger Morehouse and Patrick Bishop.

It's arguably another week of deja vu all over again in the war in Ukraine, the same deadly nighttime drone and missile attacks,

the same exploitation of General Winter, and the same remarkable Ukrainian defiance and stoicism.

But the eagle-eyed might have spotted a few changes this week, which could point the way to a more profound upheaval in the future, sort of salient moments in waiting that we may one day

look back on as turning points.

The first of these, following on from Elon Musk's suspension of the racking use of the Starlink

satellite communication system, which we reported on last week, was the Russian suspension,

or at least slowing, of the social media platform Telegram. The official reason given was that Telegram had failed

to comply with Russian laws around content, data and security, but it's widely thought that the move

is also calculated to choke off the increasing expressions of discontent coming from the front.

We tend to forget that while in the last week or so we've been talking about Ukrainian civilians

and others suffering in minus 20, but also the Russians at the front are also suffering in

minus 20 conditions. So it's not surprising that there were some expressions of discontent,

perhaps more than the usual. Now given that tens of millions of Russians use telegram,

there's a significant development, and it has already raised hackles. Duma deputy Sergei

Mironov spoke to the Russian press on Wednesday night and was sharply critical of the move,

saying, for the guys shedding their blood, this is their only link to family and loved ones.

...