01:45
Can Ukraine defeat Russia on its own, no stab-in-the-back legend will be born in Russia and the West has helped with everything possible to appear “neutral” – air defense, drones, reconnaissance information from satellites and aircraft, the entire West’s SOF in the international legion, anti-tank weapons and if I may guess, covert ops to disrupt logistics with the West’s stealth technology, of course just a guess, and finally sanctions.
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I wonder if the Poles will come up with something if Belarus gets the idea to attack southwards but again just a guess.
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Of course, Eastern EU should send all the Soviet equipment they have to Ukraine, tanks, IFVs, air defense, aircraft, everything and I suspect they are doing that too. Poland has certainly been very active.
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I don’t believe for a second the West will let Ukraine fall because we are not stupid enough not to understand that then Putin continues, but if Ukraine can defeat the Russians on its own that is preferable. Not fair but that’s how the world is. The West is worried about turning public opinion against them if they enter the war so they prefer to let Ukraine die and cheer them on.
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There is still a risk that Putin will become a Hitler and get a bounty on his head from the West but we are not there yet.
10:53
Azerbaijan could well be a Western attempt to ease the pressure on Ukraine?
I still think they should slowly send landing ships towards Vladivostok so Putin is forced to send some brigades back on the Trans-Siberian railway.
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We should hear something from Georgia fairly soon, don’t they have a contested area as well?
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Also want to remind that to date Belarus has not crossed the border, it could of course be that they participate in the big spring offensive but my money is on Lukashenko continuing to be the friend who betrays.
10:58
It is the poorest 10% who do the conscription, those who come from broken families with alcoholic parents. Everyone else buys a free pass. They are tortured, raped and abused for a year until they themselves torture, rape and abuse the next year’s recruits and after two years the hell is over.
If you ask me they are already broken and quite maladjusted, somewhat like we have seen with some MENA men and I don’t think they should be unleashed in the EU.
The description above I got from the VICE article that the blog posted the other day.
11:05
From day one I have supported this strategy, anything that gives Putin a chance for a stab-in-the-back legend and that he gets to wiggle out of this only means he will become a threat in 10 years.
The world is not fair and Ukraine takes a huge hit for the team but it is the best solution.
I think the world understands this now but plan A should be that Ukraine beats Russia so the humiliation is total and the emperor is naked and the Russians understand.
If we are heading towards a Ukrainian defeat or that the Russians can freeze the conflict and Putin survives, there are probably a number of measures ready, a no-fly zone can be established in a day and a few hundred tanks could be in Ukraine within a week if needed but it is a very delicate ladder that is a diplomat’s/strategist’s main occupation to reason about.
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If you ask me Putin has just done a Hitler and is on the Western world’s hit list, he will not survive.
11:27
It seems the Russians have advanced south from Izyum, a larger clash in Husarivka which ended in the usual way with total Russian write-off. Now that we are slowly finishing with Kherson and Kiev, unfortunately there are sorrowful children besides Mariupol. Chernihiv and Konotop are encircled and probably Sumy is well on its way to being encircled.
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Ukraine does not have the capacity to conduct offensive war over the entire area, I have seen (just like with Kherson) early signs that they are trying to push back the southern front and reach Mariupol. The guess is that they are trying to restore the ceasefire line between Mariupol – Donetsk and push back to Melitopol or similar, then they have secured the southern front and maybe even have some kind of defensive line between Melitopol – Mykhalivka.
This must happen before Russian reserves have been deployed and I want to be clear that there are 4 Ukrainian brigades in Mariupol which certainly have some combat value and a hell of a desire for revenge and at least 3 mechanized brigades north of that so translated into BTGs it is probably double what the Russians have left in the area now that west of Kherson is written off. I think we can expect a few more blue communities on Wikipedia next week.
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Because of this offensive I guess there won’t be any major counteroffensives along the northern front and we are quite grateful that the Russians have changed strategy and will focus on Donbass. Chernihiv, Konotop and Sumy might hold out a couple of weeks until they are done down south and can roll up north again.
11:33
If you look at the losses, a little surprise has crept in, SRBM according to Wikipedia has about 1000 km range, which is longer than between Kiev – Mariupol…
The Russians probably haven’t brought these directly to the front and Ukraine’s drones seem to have 150 km range so you have to wonder how these launch ramps were taken out…
If you ask me I have believed that there has been covert ops with Western stealth weapons to take out supply depots, TOS-1, some of the worst ships and MLRS and now also SRBM ramps. It’s just enough in the gray zone to make it hard for the Russians to claim Western involvement. Right now they have no control over anything so that they could find the needle in the haystack, a stealth drone/aircraft taking out a ramp in a forest in Belarus I find completely unbelievable.
https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1507989562559279106/photo/1
11:46
You heard it here first (which apparently was wrong yesterday) and I am rarely right but if we continue to put the puzzle together here we have some interesting pieces,
-explosions in Belarus a few weeks ago.
-Lukashenko is the friend who betrays every day of the week.
-Ukraine has moved its heavy reserve from southwest of Kiev.
-Ukraine is clearing north of Kiev west of the Dnipro.
-4 SRBMs are destroyed.
-The Russian General Staff has informed us that their brilliant plan now is to take Donbass.
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My take on this, at least Belarusian units have started sabotaging everything Russian on Belarusian soil and promised Ukraine not to attack them. At most there are some kind of fights going on between Belarusian units and Russian units inside Belarus and in both cases Russia is denied access to Belarusian territory or at least has difficulty getting through logistics.
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A quick look at the map and you should be able to write off Russian units near Kiev west of the Dnipro and that the pressure eases on the northern front all the way to Sumy. That’s about twenty BTGs in total, the today encircled 13 + 7 more?
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What do you think 🙂 Maybe Lukashenko has made a deal with the West in secret or self-preservation has taken over and the military has contacted Ukraine/West on their own initiative? If you google a bit Lukashenko hasn’t really been seen after his strategic map pointing and there is no real talk about tough sanctions against Belarus?
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The West should be searching high and low for a diversion and Belarus was well placed and now Azerbaijan, Georgia next..
11:57
I think they are in Novotrotskye north of Volnovakha which is drone range to Mariupol so maybe some drone combat can start now?
Still too far for artillery, they need to get to Donskoye at least for that.
If I may guess, I think Ukraine has now infiltrated a lot of SOF and others for the guerrilla war behind the lines at the southern front, that is the only way at the moment to relieve the pressure on Mariupol. The explosion of the landing ship could indicate that? They might have brought a couple of switchblade drones for example?
13:12
I have always had in the back of my mind that Armenia was the good side and Azerbaijan the evil one, kind of.
I was really surprised in the last clash when everything I thought was turned upside down, Armenia was supported by the Russians and Azerbaijan by the West. Recently I saw something about Armenians being Christians and Azerbaijanis Muslims and that it was a religious conflict but now I wonder if I might have been caught in Russian propaganda.
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After a quick Google search it seems Armenia was the aggressor in that conflict from the start so maybe the West has backed the right horse?
13:16
Swedish media’s take on Biden’s speech – Biden threatens to escalate the conflict – people are getting quite tired of this, it is actually Russia that has escalated it to full blown genocide not the USA but the hatred towards the USA seems quite deep in some…
16:56
Much field-wise and west of the Dnieper near Kherson there is again infantry, maybe company size with 1-2 tanks delegated to them. So far it has worked excellently and now that the heavy brigades are east of the Dnieper the only thing Ukraine has left is to take Kherson and Khakovka with them.
16:57
This is a bit unfortunate because it seems the Russians have started drone combat,
https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1508068923354370052?cxt=HHwWiMC-lcOs3u0pAAAA
17:05
In Mariupol, as previously said many times, it is fire and movement over the whole area in group and platoon size that applies to survive. The Russians in this film are a bit more field-wise and it is T723M so the latest upgrade (I think) that is used so a better unit and the foot soldiers are older so I suggest regulars.
17:08
I know I have nagged about this before but I am completely amazed that the Russians go to war with MBTs from the 60s and 70s.
T64 and T72 make up most of the armor, granted upgraded but a lot without the hottest tuning as we have seen.
If you think that Russia has had power ambitions for 10-15 years, not being able to produce a mass-produced MBT in that time when their doctrine is armored warfare is as pathetic as the money that was supposed to go to bribing Ukrainian officials into passivity was already stolen in Russia.
17:10
Apparently was Chechen so I know now, not posting that film and would have liked to remove the post if I could.
19:56
The link below is Russian psyops I want to be clear about that, LW can remove the comment if it breaks content rules.
https://t.me/s/intelslava
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It is well made and if I had my ideological home towards Russia (like communism, Soviet) I would have swallowed this whole and I think that explains how some newspapers and journalists keep getting it wrong. Ukraine are Nazis all the time, they murder the population and in Volnovakha they are… invaders, Putin is completely shameless 🙂
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I take with me two things, all films with street fighting from Mariupol are Chechens protecting armor, seems like it is a bit complicated there now as they have arrested some officers in the marine brigade in civilian clothes and these films are well made so a media push from Russia, we have to be careful with what films we post going forward.
20:33
Yes, if they had attacked in three echelons with airborne landings and SU25 + alligator and artillery barrages day 1 they probably would have gotten quite far I think, for some strange reason Ukraine was a bit slow at the start. Then they would likely have taken eastern Ukraine up to the Dnieper. Now they did not get combat orders and it was silo secrecy all the time, delay and conscripts sold gasoline and food for booze and then rolled along a road completely unfieldwise to be thrown into gigantic flytraps like Kiev and Kharkov. If they had bypassed the cities and surrounded them like with Mariupol, a bit more dangerous for Ukraine.
01:38
The armor had 10% losses two weeks ago and certainly we hear the Ukrainian side’s loss figures but they have not taken any dramatic losses.
The air force is probably what they never get that we think they should get but 50% of their air force is intact and denies Russia air supremacy.
You get air defense in plenty, both MANPADS and long-range.
They also get drones and they are more effective than tanks.
The Ukrainians have fought excellently in infantry combat at platoon and squad level with some tanks assigned.
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I have guessed that they are overrunning Eastern Bloc artillery and armor but of course I don’t know.