10:46
You were not allowed to criticize SVT according to some user, but today SVT has a large map with “territory controlled by Russia”.
Even the Twitter maps I follow always have a disclaimer stating “Russia does not control all territory”.
If we take this convoy now, they don’t control a damn thing; they are standing on a couple of roads freezing and getting shot away, so the blogger is probably quite close to the truth.
Once again, SVT is wrong in its reporting, which I find very unfortunate.
11:21
On Tuesday I was convinced, yesterday it was reinforced, and today the same. Still many writing “we haven’t seen everything from Russia yet, it’s too early”.
There is a total lack of advance by Russian units, and on Friday/Saturday there was a lot of chatter about an all-in offensive against Kiev by Monday at the latest. Now it’s Thursday and the Russian convoy is experiencing its own little winter war.
Russia can still achieve local successes, e.g., Mariupol and possibly take eastern Ukraine up to the Dnieper, but with each passing day it becomes more unlikely.
Considering that sanctions against Russia will remain until they leave all of Ukraine, the endgame is that Russia returns Donbass and Crimea to Ukraine 🙂
11:29
Could this be the arrested senior officer we were informed about earlier or is this new?
A very high-ranking officer within Spetsnaz captured 🙂
https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1499320660476182529?cxt=HHwWgoCywc2M1M4pAAAA
11:42
This looks interesting and is supported by the fact that the USA has said that Ukraine’s priority is to strike the convoy to Kiev.
They have started to bypass and blow up bridges BEHIND the convoy, which effectively traps large Russian units between Kiev and the bridges they have destroyed.
Instead of mass flight, it could very well become mass surrender of this.
https://twitter.com/Nrg8000/status/1499300782487015424?cxt=HHwWgMDU-caHy84pAAAA
12:00
I have always seen Russia as a threat; it started kind of with Operation Garbo and exercises against airborne landings during conscription in the 90s. Then the military’s “one-week defense” and the constant “we cannot withstand a Russian invasion”.
The defense wants funds, authors want to make money, and Russia believes they are world-leading.
By 2025 at the latest, the Russians were supposed to be fully modernized and a threat to Europe…
I also never believed the blogger’s mocking about their poor condition.
The condition of Russia’s best units and how the invasion is going is nothing short of catastrophic.
-An invasion of Sweden where they try to cross the Baltic Sea against submarines, coastal missiles, and modern fighter jets would have been an absolute bloodbath.
-Defense of Norrland would obviously have worked as intended, Russian logistics shot down and everything stopped.
-Where they land, Sweden could then concentrate mechanized brigade size forces and large amounts of home guard, so after a week or so they would have defeated the landed units.
If the defense now gets funds, they should definitely strengthen and in the future have a strong defense as it can obviously start moving quite fast. Those who have called defense a special interest and that it should be shut down should be branded.
However, we don’t need old-style invasion defense but a much larger and better-armed home guard is probably a good idea. Anti-tank weapons and portable air defense. Spend the money on what is effective: a couple of armored brigades, air force, submarines, corvettes, missiles + special forces against Russian infiltration, and then the mass soldiers are free home guard.
12:01
Forgot coastal rangers with anti-ship missiles and Norrland rangers.
12:03
So far, Ukraine has acted very humanely; the poor 20-year-old conscripts who have surrendered have almost been taken care of rather than subjected to violence.
If they manage to continue with this, Ukraine as a country will gain enormous PR benefits.
12:10
While I wish for a stop to the hostilities, I feel that Russia must leave all Ukrainian territory, preferably chased away.
If that does not happen, Russia can continue its conflict-seeking, so it requires almost total humiliation to steer Russia onto a new path where they give up great power ambitions and start refining their mountain of raw materials instead and become a prosperous country near the EU.
12:15
An example of propaganda –
Ukraine has said they will execute captured artillerymen on the spot, this after the terror bombings and in an obvious attempt to scare the artillerymen into stopping killing civilians.
Media (mostly Fria Tider and Samnytt) – Ukraine will kill all Russian prisoners!
15:32
This is where I think you are wrong.
Russia has completely worn out 200,000 men who were their best, with desertions, exhaustion, deaths, wounded, and captured.
In addition, they have worn out the best of their crappy equipment and especially advanced ammunition.
Ukrainian brigades obviously have combat value as they have gone on the offensive in several places.
They also have leadership that is not afraid of mobile combat.
They have target data from the USA that can make every ambush and artillery shell hit the right target.
In the south it will take the longest, but around Kiev and the northern front line the Russians will probably be rolled up within a couple of days; we have only seen the beginning of the counteroffensive.
15:36
Peace talks today, Ukraine probably has zero willingness to negotiate – give us Crimea and Donbass and Xmrdr and disappear.
Russia probably has not yet understood the extent of the collapse and maybe has instructions they cannot override, so they will leave without a ceasefire.
From today onwards, Ukraine will regain the initiative around Kiev and along the entire Northern front all the way to Donbass.
The next peace talks will probably find the Russians somewhat marinated in defeat and eager to negotiate.
16:12
Unclear if this is the official Twitter account, but the guy has a really big tin foil hat and seems to have stumbled upon this issue completely by accident.
https://twitter.com/Ahmadinejad1956
16:20
For those who still don’t believe that the war is won by Ukraine, it should be enough to look at the blogger’s videos of the condition of the Russian army and the flood of messages on Twitter about Ukrainian local offensives.
One should probably consider here that it is not really Ukraine that crushed Russia’s army in a week, but Russian corruption, hazing, and dictator antics that have done so over a very long time.
They have treated the soldiers like animals, sold their equipment, and let them half-starve so that the combat value is at rock bottom, which is probably obvious to everyone except the Russian staff.
Someone smart in the thread said that China did its part when they asked the Russians to wait a few weeks; it thawed out and they sold their gasoline and rations + the combat value dropped. That’s how good friends China was and how stupid Putin was.
It can probably only lead to mass surrenders by everyone except the better units who might retreat somewhat organized?
16:39
Putin has recently told Macron that he wants all of Ukraine and will not stop.
https://twitter.com/SylvieKauffmann/status/1499398371710103557?cxt=HHwWisCjqf-3984pAAAA
Interesting that there are peace talks when the top boss wants to fight the Ukrainians back to the Stone Age.
Also interesting that Putin really doesn’t understand what is happening; a quick Google search would suffice.
18:02
According to this communiqué, Belarusian units refuse to move south.
The blog wrote that they have Lviv as a target, and so far we have heard absolutely nothing about such an offensive.
https://twitter.com/GlasnostGone/status/1499427160624353281/photo/1
18:07
Tomorrow’s discussion: is Russia now conducting a general mobilization?
https://twitter.com/pmakela1/status/1499428355778744325?cxt=HHwWisC4haaJhc8pAAAA
If they do, it is my very clear conviction that Putin et al. will fall even faster than they would have if they had just run out the clock in Ukraine.
It is almost incomprehensible, but they are completely out of touch with all this and have some kind of Soviet image of how this will go, but in a month or two a whole bunch of Russians with Putin at the head will be sitting in The Hague sulking.
18:13
It’s almost impossible to take in, but this is very similar to when Hitler sat in his bunker and ordered divisions that only existed on paper to attack in the last year of WW2.
Sure, they can mobilize their reserves and deploy stored BMP1s and BTR-60s, but the day they attack Europe, they will have the entire EU+USA military against them, and if they weren’t already a bit tired of the war before, it probably won’t even take a month before they ask for peace.
09:53
For a couple of days, we have said on this blog that the war is over and that we are just waiting for the Russian staff to realize it. The convoy down to Kiev, which is suffering from fuel and food shortages because the soldiers have sold it for cigarettes and alcohol, is an unsolvable logistical problem; you simply cannot get fuel because the convoy is blocking itself. Yesterday, reports came from the USA that Ukraine sees it as a priority to strike the convoy, so one can guess that every fuel tanker is shot down as soon as it starts moving.
Winter War 2.0 and mass flight from this convoy are probably only a few days away.
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Misjudgment 2.0 down south is that they are now preparing for a larger attack on Odessa. It seems to have double the population compared to Mariupol, so probably harder to capture and likely well-defended. Putin’s last chance for anything at all is probably to try to take eastern Ukraine up to the Dnieper and freeze the conflict. Throwing in his last VDV and marine infantry in Odessa instead of reinforcing the advance from Crimea and northwards is a mistake (for Putin) that risks him not being able to take eastern Ukraine either.
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Mariupol is the unpleasant one; this city will be subjected to enormous shelling and constant assaults until the war is over and either surrenders or becomes a Grozny with a massive number of dead, all for nothing since the war is already lost.
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Quietly (unconfirmed), a Ukrainian brigade has gone on the offensive in Luhansk and defeated a Russian rifle brigade, and the 09:22 update suggests that the 1st Guards Tank Army is finished. I still believe that a credible end to this war is that Ukraine, if they want, can retake all territory including Donbass and Crimea entirely on their own 🙂