3 Russian Helicopters, Crews Destroyed Repelling Ukraine Drone Attack

Added bonus for Ukraine: three attack helicopters and crews destroyed while trying to fend off a Ukrainian drone attack on an oil terminal near St Petersburg Russia. JL

Vladyslav Khomenko reports in Militarnyi:

On the night of November 11, Russian army aviation lost three helicopter crews while repelling a Ukrainian drone attack. Seven crew members were killed. The losses involved three aircraft: two Ka-52 attack helicopters and one Mi-8. During the same attack, Ukrainian drones struck an oil terminal at the port of Ust-Luga in Russia’s Leningrad region. The strike caused a fire at the facility, with fire hotspots detected by NASA’s FIRMS satellite monitoring system.

Russia's Orikhiv Assault Implodes As It Can't Replace Ukraine-Inflicted Losses

Ukrainian forces on the Zaporizhzhia front, particularly around Orikhiv are being eliminated faster than the Kremlin can replace them.

This is an essential element of Ukraine's latest strategy adaptation, which identifies Russian reinforcement units faster so that they can be decimated before they even get to the front. JL

RFU News reports:

Ukraine's increasingly effective strategy of systematically exhausting Russian manpower rather than merely defending territory, with Ukraine’s expanding reconnaissance and strike capabilities make Russian offensives not only more expensive, but almost impossible. Ukrainian strikes depleted Russian reserves. The infiltrators that managed to slip through became isolated and their supply routes were disrupted. At the approaches to Orikhiv, Ukrainian forces cleared contested positions, and began pushing back along Russian infiltration corridors. The decisive factor remains Ukraine’s ability to detect and eliminate assault formations faster than Russia can replace them. The decisive factor remains Ukraine’s ability to detect and eliminate assault formations faster than Russia can replace them which creates a destructive cycle: higher casualties reduce Russian offensive effectiveness

Anthropic Pushes Ahead With IPO Despite Market - But At Lower $1.4 Trillion Price

The market is unlikely to get better, the thinking goes, so better to move ahead, even at a slightly reduced valuation, than to delay the IPO and risk further panic in the equity markets. 

In addition, it is entirely conceivable that the IPO will be oversubscribed and that the valuation will then rise, which is the traditional expectation o hot releases like this. Better to appear conservative and blow away the doubters than get ambushed by a tetchy market. JL

Cris Tolomia reports in Quartz and Corrie Driebusch reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Anthropic plans to forge ahead with its IPO later this month despite recent market volatility tied to AI. A week ago, investors anticipated the company targeting a valuation of $1.5 trillion, but after the steep selloff in AI companies, major investors are pushing for it to be lower. Anthropic launched the roadshow for its IPO on Tuesday, setting an expected price range of $70 to $78 a share for 825 million shares of Class A common stock. Anthropic is selling 801,351,354 shares, and certain existing stockholders are selling the other 23,648,646. At the top of the range, Anthropic could carry a fully diluted valuation as high as $1.405 trillion. (But) Anthropic is targeting a valuation near $1.33 trillion, and an offering priced at the midpoint would bring in upwards of $61 billion. A figure near $2 trillion was under discussion several months back.

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