Latest on the battle fronts in Ukraine

Here is the latest picture of the Ukraine battlefield as of February 28, 2026:

Overall Situation

February 2026 has been described as one of the most intense months of the war, marked by massive Russian missile and drone strikes on energy infrastructure, deep Ukrainian counter-strikes inside Russia, and ongoing US-mediated diplomatic talks that may shape the conflict's next phase. The front lines remain largely static, with Russia making only slow, grinding advances in select areas.[youtube]​[nytimes]​

Air War: Massive Russian Strikes

Russia launched at least four separate drone/missile barrages exceeding 400 projectiles each in February alone. On the night of February 25–26, Russian forces launched 420 drones and 39 missiles, including Iskander-M ballistic missiles, Kh-101 cruise missiles, and large numbers of Shahed-type drones, primarily targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure. Ukraine has been retaliating with its own long-range strikes, hitting Russian command posts, ammunition depots, and military assets across occupied territories and even inside Bryansk Oblast.[criticalthreats]​

Eastern Front (Donetsk)

• Kostyantynivka-Druzhkivka area: Both Russian and Ukrainian forces have made localized advances, with positions intermixed and active skirmishing.[criticalthreats]​

• Pokrovsk direction: Russian forces continue using small-group infiltration tactics — on motorcycles and buggies — to push into Ukrainian defenses around Myrnohrad.[criticalthreats]​

• Russian forces are nearing capture of key towns in eastern Ukraine after a year of grinding assaults, which Moscow hopes to leverage in peace negotiations.[nytimes]​

Southern Front (Zaporizhzhia & Kherson)

• Ukrainian forces reportedly liberated approximately 300 square kilometers of territory in an unspecified area of southern Ukraine, with President Zelensky attributing gains partly to SpaceX blocking Russian Starlink access.[criticalthreats]​

• Ukrainian forces recently advanced near Oleksandrivka, liberating several villages southeast of that town.[criticalthreats]​

• Russian forces continue limited ground assaults northeast of Kherson City toward the Antonivskyi Bridge.[criticalthreats]​

• In the Zaporizhzhia region alone, Russian forces executed 448 assaults on 34 locations in a single day as recently as February 20.[aljazeera]​

Northern Front (Kharkiv & Sumy)

• Russian forces continued offensive operations in northern Sumy Oblast (February 27) and northern Kharkiv Oblast (February 28) but made no confirmed territorial advances on either day.understandingwar+1

• Russian drone operators from the Black Raven detachment are actively striking Ukrainian positions in the Kharkiv direction.[criticalthreats]​

Diplomatic Backdrop

Trilateral US-Ukraine-Russia talks in Geneva began in mid-February alongside the fighting. Ceasefire negotiations have so far stalled, but international pressure on both sides is intensifying as the war enters its fourth year. On February 26, Russia repatriated the bodies of 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers in exchange for those of 35 Russian personnel.wikipedia+1[youtube]​

War in the Middle East – February 28, 2026

Op Ed by Helge Nome

This morning, Israel and the US attacked the Islamic Republic of Iran with a stated goal of regime change. 

Iran responded in kind with multiple strikes across the Middle East with missiles and drones.

This moment has been a long time coming and now we in the rest of the world have to deal with the downstream implications.

As usual, predictions are that it will be over in a few weeks at most, for the great benefit of the people of Iran, but more so for the benefit of international oil and gas companies who support Donald Trump and his cohort.

I believe similar predictions are made for most wars, and Trump now claims to have killed the Iranian leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei, making observers think that the Islamic state will fold in short order.

From my perspective this is wishful thinking by people who don’t understand the nature of Islam: Fervent believers in militant Islam have no time for non-believers and this attack will likely be a call for the cause for countless thousands of people across the world against the “Zionists and their American lackeys”.

I think this attack has the potential to make the world a very unsafe pace for a lot of us, not least members of the Trump administration.

Message from Charles Aulds

80 years ago, on this date: 28 February 1946, Vietnam asked the US to support its struggle for independence against its French colonial occupier.

Ho Chi Mihn was the first Prime Minister and, later, the first President of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, founded as a constitutional republic in 1945. Able to speak fluently as well as read and write professionally in French, English, Russian, Cantonese and Mandarin as well as his mother tongue, Ho studied the US Declaration of Independence and based the constitution of his tiny new nation, seeking independence from a colonial occupier and recognition of its sovereignty on that document. In this telegram to US President Truman, he pleaded for American support for his new nation.  We know how that turned out.

Hell, he quoted the American Declaration of Independence directly (read the opening) in his own Declaration. Why? Because the United States once set a standard by which most of the world wanted to live ... a belief that there are certain natural rights that we all possess from birth.

The Vietnamese were claiming those rights and they were claiming the promise of America.
___

Charles

Abraham Lake methane bubbles

Abraham Lake, located along the David Thompson Highway in western Alberta about 130 miles northwest of Calgary, is famous for its stunning display of frozen methane bubbles trapped beneath its winter ice.^[1]

How the Bubbles Form

The phenomenon is rooted in simple biology. Bacteria on the lake bed feed on decomposing organic matter — submerged plants, tree limbs, and other debris — and expel methane gas as a byproduct. As the gas rises through the water and hits the freezing surface, the bubbles become trapped and suspended in the ice. Because Abraham Lake is an artificial reservoir, there is an unusually large amount of organic material on its bottom, making the concentration of methane especially high compared to natural lakes.^[2][3][4]

Why Abraham Lake Stands Out

What makes Abraham Lake uniquely photogenic is the combination of abundant bubbles and remarkably clear ice. Strong winds regularly sweep across the lake, blowing away snow and polishing the ice into a smooth, glass-like surface that reveals the bubbles beneath in stunning detail. As the ice thickens through winter, successive layers of bubbles stack up, giving the lake the surreal look of a giant, frozen lava lamp. There may also be a component from natural gas seeping through the bedrock underlying the lake, which Alberta has in abundance.^[3][5][1]

Best Time to Visit

The prime viewing window is typically mid-January to late February, after the lake freezes in late December and enough bubbles have accumulated in the thickening ice. Good spots to explore include Preachers Point and the area near Cline Creek, where the water is deeper and the bubbles tend to be large and clearly visible against the dark blue-green water beneath.^[3][1]

Climate Implications

While spectacular, the bubbles carry a sobering environmental message. When Abraham Lake thaws each spring, the trapped methane is released directly into the atmosphere. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, and this process plays out across thousands of northern lakes from Alberta to Siberia — with the greatest concentrations found in the Arctic, where bubbles can remain frozen for centuries. Scientists monitor lakes like Abraham as indicators of how warming temperatures may accelerate methane release from thawing organic matter globally.^[6][7]

⁂

• https://www.accuweather.com/en/travel/methane-bubbles-transform-canadian-lake-into-lava-lamp/1146458   
• https://www.reddit.com/r/EarthPorn/comments/et1d57/the_spectacle_of_frozen_methane_bubbles_at/ 
• https://adventurealberta.ca/abraham-lake-bubbles/   
• https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/abraham-lake-north-saskatchewan-river-methane-bubbles-frozen-ice-1.5424865 
• https://hikebiketravel.com/abraham-lake-bubbles/ 
• https://www.bbcearth.com/news/dazzling-bubbles-with-a-deadly-core 
• https://naturecanada.ca/news/blog/the-story-behind-this-alberta-lakes-frozen-bubbles-and-what-they-say-about-our-changing-planet/ 
• https://abrahamlake.com/Ice-Bubbles-at-Abraham-Lake.html 
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd4le1tuYZg 
• https://nordeggadventures.ca/guides/winter/abraham-lake-ice-bubbles/ 
• https://www.abrahamlake.com 
• https://davidthompsonresort.com/activity/abraham-lake-ice-walk/ 
• https://www.abrahamlake.com/Frozen-Methane-Bubbles-at-Abraham-Lake.html 
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33vpNPRbEqA 
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBLP6cZSW_s 

Message from Charles Aulds

What a surprise:  to learn too late that the United States is not only a poor neighbor, but an untrustworthy ally of Canada. The US has become active antagonist to Canada. An enemy. And not for the first time.

I was surprised to learn (and we were never taught this in school) that President Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of State, William Henry Seward, was determined to take Canada, one century and a half ago. Seward was a rabid expansionist. A true believer in America's "Manifest destiny."

It was Seward who negotiated the US purchase of the Danish West Indies in 1865. Today that's known as the US Virgin Islands.

It was Seward who bought Alaska from Russia two years later, in 1867.

It was Seward who tried to buy Greenland that same year (1867) from Denmark.

Seward wanted Greenland because (he said) that Canada, sandwiched between two large American states, would then inevitably become part of Canada. Canadians would have no other choice than to submit to US annexation.

It was in 1867 that the Province of Canada (what is now Ontario and Québec) and two British North American colonies (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia) united and became a sovereign nation. The year of Confederation (1867) is significant; it was not the result of coincidental timing.

Will Americans have a second civil war? Who really cares? This MAGA shit gotta stop sometime.

___

Charles

Reports on using light to implement AI operations in order to save energy

 

Photonic (light-based) AI computing has rapidly emerged as one of the most promising approaches to dramatically cutting the enormous energy costs of AI systems. Multiple research groups and companies are now demonstrating working prototypes across a range of applications.

Why Light Instead of Electrons?

Photons — the particles of light — don't interact with each other under normal conditions, meaning many light signals can pass through the same system simultaneously, processing large data sets at the speed of light with very low latency. Conventional electronic AI hardware loses massive amounts of energy to resistance and heat in transistors, but optical systems can perform the same mathematical operations — particularly the heavy matrix multiplications that underpin neural networks — with far less power loss. Projections suggest optical accelerators could cut AI energy use by up to 90% compared to electronic equivalents.lumai+2

Key Research Breakthroughs

Several major advances have been announced in rapid succession:

• MIT fully integrated photonic chip (Dec 2024): MIT researchers built a photonic processor that performs all key deep neural network operations — both linear and nonlinear — entirely in the optical domain, achieving over 96% accuracy in training and computing results in less than half a nanosecond.[physics.mit]​

• University of Florida light-powered chip (Sept 2025): By etching microscopic lenses directly onto silicon, researchers enabled laser-powered computations that cut power use dramatically while maintaining near-perfect accuracy, also demonstrating wavelength multiplexing — running multiple data streams on different colors of light simultaneously.[sciencedaily]​

• UCLA generative AI optical model (Oct 2025): UCLA devised an optical computing strategy that generates novel images and videos using much less energy than conventional generative AI models, published in Nature.[optica-opn]​

• Aalto University single-beam tensor computing (Nov 2025): A method where AI operations occur passively as light travels — requiring no active control or electronic switching — making it compatible with almost any optical platform and extremely low power.[sciencedaily]​

• Penn State "infinity mirror" loop (Feb 2026): A prototype where light is routed through a compact multi-pass optical loop built from everyday LCD and LED components, encoding data directly into light beams and achieving AI inference at dramatically lower energy cost.[psu]​

Where It's Being Applied

The highest-value near-term application is AI inference — the stage where a trained model responds to real-world inputs — which accounts for 80–90% of total AI workload energy. Photonic chips are also being explored for lidar, telecommunications, astronomy, and real-time navigation. Companies like Lightmatter are already commercializing photonic AI accelerators, and Q.ANT has released a photonic AI processor as a standard PCI Express card for integration into existing systems.lightmatter+3

Energy & Sustainability Context

AI data centers are projected to consume as much electricity as an entire country in 2025, with GPUs generating enormous heat that is itself a major operating cost. Photonic computing directly addresses both problems — less electrical power is consumed and far less heat is generated, since light doesn't heat up a medium the way electrical current does through resistance. University of Jena's new research group, funded by the German Federal Ministry with €2.3 million, is taking this further by working on optical computing units as small as the atomic building blocks of crystalline materials — so-called "picophotonic" computing.uni-jena+3

The field is still largely in the prototype and early commercialization phase, with the main challenge being full integration of all AI operations onto a single photonic chip and scaling to production volumes.[pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih]​