<– Part 183 – January 20, 1918 | Part 184 – January 27, 1918 | Part 185 – February 3, 1918 –>

On January 20, an Ottoman fleet, led by a battlecruiser and light cruiser, sunk two unescorted British monitors near Imbros in the Aegean sea, but then sailed into a minefield, sinking the light cruiser and disabling the battlecruiser – a stunning victory immediately changed into a stunning defeat.

At Galati, following heavy Russian artillery fire, the Romanian launched a counter-attack January 22 using their own artillery, gunboats, rifles, and bayonets. The Russians capitulated later in the day, were disarmed, and sent home. Fighting continues throughout the country between the two erstwhile allies, with the worst earlier today at Faltceni, where nearly 100 Romanians and 600 Russians were casualties.

In Russia itself, fighting is increasing between the Bolsheviks seeking to centralize power, loyalists to the czar, and soviets declaring their own independence (encouraged in part by a Bolshevik declaration supposedly allowing them to be independent). The first soviet to declare independence, Finland, is now stuck in its own civil war.