09:05
It seems to be a bit balanced with China, we have leaked information that Russia is now asking them for help with war materials (not exactly a signal that Russia is steamrolling over Ukraine) and something about China including Russia in its payment system.
For my part, it is starting to be time for China to distance itself. Russia is the aggressor and a fairly bloody one at that, so actively prolonging this war is seen as aiding crimes against humanity.
Now I may be a cocky keyboard warrior and realpolitik is completely different but if I may guess, China is more economically sensitive than Russia and militarily larger but not significantly better + that in war they get the US on their back.
09:56
If one may guess, Ukraine has been able to allocate artillery and drones to the southern front now. That means they feel “done” with the northern front, i.e. that the acute threat is averted. In the long run, that probably means they don’t really care what the Russians throw at Kiev because it is well defended and they are quite sure that Lukashenko is the friend who betrays.
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Step two should be to infiltrate large numbers of special forces and Western special forces behind the southern front that strike at all supply lines.
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Step three is to start recapturing taken terrain, target 1 should be to break the encirclement of Mariupol.
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Down south, the bottlenecks are the bridges over the Dnieper and then back to Crimea, and if Ukraine now gets its air force going + hotter air defenses, this could become an absolute bloodbath that ends the war for Russia when the southern front tries to retreat and gets caught between destroyed bridges in the blogger’s crappy formation. Russia has difficulty bringing up reserves in the south except for the naval infantry who have already refused to attack Odessa (the attack that never came…) and ships will be very vulnerable for evacuation.
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I continue to say that Ukraine will throw out Russia entirely on its own, so there will be a Russian withdrawal in the not too distant future including Donbass and Crimea. Russia does NOT have numerical or material superiority. Ukraine has millions of motivated and battle-hardened soldiers and the entire West’s light weapons arsenal available. Russia has poorly motivated reservists and surplus material that barely moves.
10:28
The first days when we saw columns of abandoned Ukrainian vehicles along the roads in the south, the situation was probably critical. I would like to know what went wrong for Ukraine there, why weren’t the bridges blown up and why weren’t the units in firing positions?
When they painted the cars with Z, everyone knew the time had come and they should have been deployed for combat and the bridges rigged and ready to blow. Regarding the bridges, I guess infiltrated special forces surprised the defenders at strategic points but why they were not deployed in starting positions I have no answer to. What rolled over the bridge at Nova Kakhovka around lunchtime the first day was a real mix of passenger cars, older armor and combat vehicles and trucks of various brands, VDV was deployed only several days later and naval infantry after that, so even on the Russian side they were probably surprised by the breakthrough.
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Had Russia from there put everything into going north east of the Dnieper, they could have encircled the Ukrainian units defending the stalemate line and up to Kharkiv and then had a negotiating position, now they put everything into traps like Mariupol, Kherson and Mykolaiv and if they had advanced further it would have been Dnipro etc. A fatal misjudgment is my keyboard warrior assessment not to push forward when they had the opportunity but instead go straight west and tie up units around Mariupol.
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I look forward to more battle evaluations from the blogger like the other day.
10:36
The worst thing that can happen after this war is that Russian citizens have thought the war was justified and that the West is the one who twisted the knife in their back, a stab-in-the-back legend. Then the corrupt leadership can cultivate that and prepare for round two and in 10 years Russia is a threat to first-strike countries, Poland, Finland, Gotland, Ukraine, the Baltics. The only way to counteract is an arms race and we get Cold War 2.0.
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Not so keen on that but rather see a new perestroika where we tie Russia with trade to the EU and treat them fairly. As was done with Germany and Japan post WW2.
13:43
Very interesting observation.
I felt that already the first or second day it was chaotic. Sporadic pre-combat, a failed air landing, units that just shifted into gear and pressed the gas so not even a start went according to plan which reasonably must be considered completely useless.
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After that everything goes to hell and you have to start with combat control and there they are hopeless after over two weeks, especially logistics but also reserves which are just thrown in continuously and get knocked out in long rows.
20:51
So far we Swedes have really stood up for a brother people and opened our homes to the Ukrainians.
There has been some minor nonsense about it being racist to welcome Ukrainian women and children with open arms but you have to disregard that and acknowledge that we and the EU stand up when needed.
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Now many live under the belief that Ukrainians are a homogeneous mafia but they are probably more like the hard-working Poles were when they first came, so likely a great asset for the country that takes them in.
09:02
Read the post below from MP where they accuse SD of being useful idiots.
I understand that this is not the first post in the discussion and I don’t have much sympathy for SD but MP completely lacks insight into their illness…
It is their wind power investment and the decommissioned nuclear power that have destabilized the power grids in Europe to such an extent that Putin thought he would get a free pass for the Ukraine war. MP is the very definition of a useful idiot. Enough about that.
https://www.expressen.se/debatt/alla-kan-se-att-akesson-ar-putins-nyttiga-idiot/