2022-04-24

12:32

After Ivankiv, I spent some time trying to understand what happened, as there were rumors that Zelensky had let the Russians out with some backroom deal. I had read somewhere that there was a pontoon bridge and discovered that there was a road east of Ivankiv up to Vakhivka and Lyubudva, and then they slipped over on a pontoon bridge.
It probably cost them a lot of equipment because there were videos of tanks going 90km/h and burning wrecks everywhere in the days after, and we saw VDV BMD vehicles dragging non-operational BMDs.
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I think the difference here is that two brigades are waiting on the western flank of the Izyum offensive, but maybe they manage to slip out eastward here.

14:06

Yes, I have believed that the purpose of the International Legion has been to funnel all of the West’s SOF into Ukraine, but we’ll probably have to wait a couple of years to get that confirmed. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if those who know someone in SOG know that he has been on vacation for 1.5 months now.
The known faces among those tweeting are not these, but in the beginning they had some videos of volunteer veterans who were mostly in groups of four with full combat gear, extras and all.
If you ask me, it would almost be a war crime not to send them in.
Then the combat leadership probably has a lot of hands-on involvement from competent Western staff officers; some have thought that the US leads the combat entirely, and this will probably also take time to find out.
We can probably agree that many have contributed to why things are going so well for Ukraine, not least the Ukrainians themselves.

14:19

The topic of things one can dream about but as someone wrote, a couple of the artillery pieces Ukraine now has range with the right ammunition to fire a salvo at the Kremlin.
Now that won’t happen unless it’s part of starting a takeover of power, because Putin’s response would almost certainly be tactical nuclear weapons against such an insult to the Russian empire.

18:00

Tanks are necessary but not as per Russian doctrine. Ukraine has lost a few hundred and they allocate a platoon of tanks or less to an infantry company. It is the direct fire with explosives and missiles over very long distances that is difficult to achieve with other weapon types. From now on, a brigade on wheels will be very high risk if it meets an opponent with smart artillery ammunition and drones; every country with a defense larger than the Vatican probably has that at the top of their wish list right now.

18:42

I’m quite convinced that Ukraine will press as hard as they can pretty soon. They have nothing to gain from a long war; it’s about retaking Donbass and Crimea. The turncoats in the EU are on a stopwatch and it could turn quite quickly, so Ukraine must strike while they have the world’s support.
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Then again, just because the Russians are back on the right side of the border doesn’t mean the war is over, and border towns can probably be forgotten about repopulating, but eastern Ukraine is safe. There are few natural defense lines between Ukraine and Russia, so total liberation almost has to come with a regime change in Russia, but Ukraine won’t take chances and has a Maginot Line-style border as soon as they finish building it and then fortify where the terrain allows, minefields, etc. Their best brigades will be along the long border and maintain fairly high readiness.

21:55

Maybe a bit late to reply, but,

Trying to be a counterweight to all the demoralizing news in the media, I’ve been saying “Ukraine will win easily” all along and you have to see it in that light. I firmly believe that message, but sometimes it gets a bit sarcastic.

– Before the war, I thought the best-case scenario for Ukraine was if they lost all territory east of the Dnipro for peace.

– On the first day, I said “this doesn’t look like a real offensive, there’s no coordination and they’re just lobbing some artillery at a few towns,” something like that, here in the thread. I expected a red steamroller and saw none of that. Got Operation Garbo nostalgia with the air landing but that was about it, and when Ukraine retook Hostomel on day 2 or 3, my view of how this war would go was finalized.

– Kherson was a done deal but Ukraine moved its heavy brigades east of the Dnipro and let it take longer.

– I’ve seen the Kupiansk offensive coming for a long time.

– The Kiev encirclement was first mentioned by the blogger here and then many escaped even though I kept talking about it and someone probably gave me credit I shouldn’t have.

– I thought Ukrainian counterattacks would come quite early before the Kiev encirclement, a bit like now when everyone thinks Ukraine will lose but they are just loading up for a hit.

– I’ve long believed Ukraine will launch a counteroffensive on the southern front and am still waiting 🙂

– I’ve had anxiety and been wrong about Mariupol and repeatedly wrote in the thread that I thought the city would fall; glad I was wrong. The blogger knew early that Azovstal was a fortress.

– I didn’t think the spring offensive would be anything at all, a real nothing burger for the Russians, pretty much exactly how it is developing.

– I think Russia will be kicked out with their feet first before summer ends, then of course what they do next when they stand on their side of the border remains to be seen…

22:16

Now day 6 of the spring offensive is over and the Russians have achieved even less than a worst-case scenario, which was that the lines would hold but the pocket/bow north of Horlivka would shrink quite a bit as it was intended for mobile defense.
(ok, for a while we wondered if the Russians could take all the ground down to the forest belt/river Dnipro – Pavlograd-Slovyanka but abandoned that quickly, probably before the first offensive ebbed out I think).
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What does the thread think, is there more gas in the Russians’ BTG than this? Down by Izyum, they have been attacking for two weeks now and there are 25 BTGs. The usual hotspots around Donetsk and Popasna were in combat 2-3 days before the offensive started and around Severodonetsk maybe 1-2 days after the official start of the offensive, which was when Lavrov rang the bell.
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Strategically, we can already say today that Russia has not achieved any of its attack goals. I don’t think anyone here believed they would win, but now they have exhausted all offensive power and haven’t gotten anywhere. They were in order – All Ukraine, Kiev and then Kharkov, Donbass, Luhansk, Mykolaiv, Mariupol. Now the bunker dwarf is not worse than that he can revise this and declare himself the winner, and that leads us into phase two.
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What choice does Ukraine have here? A frozen conflict means loss in the long run and they have the West’s support now, so better to accelerate. Retaking all territory I think is the goal, but what do you do then? The Russians stand on their side of the border and prepare round two?
This is what many misunderstand when they say the war will go on for many years. The war on Ukrainian soil will end before summer is over, but what happens afterward is up to the free democracies.
In the worst case, Ukraine will live with a real war threat going forward and we in the West will be safe, but then so be it and we give them the EU and a rebuilt country as thanks.
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Then it might be good to stay on good terms with Europe’s strongest military after this 🙂

22:43

Tactical nuclear weapons, Iskander has been moved forward as well?
I’m starting to get a little worried that Putin is actually far enough along that now, with the offensive stalled and no more meat soup, he will drop 4-5 tactical nuclear weapons over Kharkiv, Odessa, Mykolaiv, Kramatorsk, Slovyansk, and Severodonetsk. He might see some value in launching one towards Lviv and Kyiv as well, but there is no military objective in that, just terror. Maybe some big stockpile for Western material donations?
Maybe all these missiles are a preparation for that, they’re checking how Ukraine’s missile defense looks?
The US countermeasure will probably be that they’ve sneaked in Patriots and are monitoring the submarines and Iskander batteries?
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He achieves zero strategic gain with this since all maneuver brigades are outside the cities, but the damage will be enormous in civilian losses and the national guards, national battalions, and territorial defense manning the ring walls will be gone.
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What the bunker dwarf might be thinking here is that NATO and the EU go all in and he gets his world war, so in my view, it is important that NATO does not attack Russian territory or send troops into Ukraine. However, a no-fly zone over Ukraine should be implemented immediately, and maybe symbolically strike the Black Sea Fleet, what can be reached of the Baltic Fleet and Northern Fleet, and some extremely humiliating target in Russia, like the Kremlin and something else you probably had in mind.
Then Poland gets free rein to participate in the war if Ukraine asks for help but not under the NATO flag.
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Keep an eye on China too because tactical nuclear weapons don’t happen without them being informed. China understands that after this, the West will be the dominant power for another hundred years, so maybe they are foolish enough to believe that escalation can work. I don’t know 🙂

22:50

Setting a trap for Putin with covert ops, I forgot that, but hopefully the US is already working on that.

22:55

The above should be enough to throw out the Russians within a few months is my thought here.
My worst-case scenario is if Putin gets a world war for Russia and brings the country along with it instead of them getting tired.
Right now, he can’t cook up a story that NATO is involved in the war that is credible enough for the domestic audience.

23:38

Frozen conflict where Russia gets to keep Donbass and Crimea. I believe Zelensky himself has stated that if Putin gets to freeze the conflict where they are today, they will just start round two as soon as they can.
The fact is that then it’s 2014 all over again and we know how that went now 🙂
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Now, the Russians can of course do it from Russia if they want, but it is psychologically harder if you have been badly beaten and kicked out to justify a new offensive war from where you started in February 2022.
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Before the war, I thought Russia would be satisfied with eastern Ukraine, but Russia has clearly stated that their empire shall stretch from Lisbon to Vladivostok, so they have no intention of stopping there.
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Now Western pro-Russians will soon start claiming exactly this, that Russia is ready for a ceasefire and to stop killing children and all that, and then it is important that we support Ukraine in throwing out the Russians from all Ukrainian territory. Jan G and Swedish Peace most notably.

23:49

21:07 update the sketch was a good laugh 🙂
I remember from military service that after “halt who goes there” you were supposed to ask the soldier in the sights to say BULLE because Russians apparently can’t pronounce it and it becomes booelle or something similar even if they have learned perfect Swedish at the academy.
That was how we were going to win the war, by shouting bulle to each other at night.
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Then you can imagine that potential sabotage units have for years been sitting in a row practicing pronouncing exactly the word bulle with standard Swedish pronunciation now that every conscript knew that was how you exposed a Russian.