12:52
The US has donated enormous amounts of weapons now and has trained Ukraine since 2014. There is little to suggest that there is something behind it as you write.
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It was the same with the Kiev retreat, that Zelensky had come to an agreement with Putin to let all Russian units out northwards for (insert; money, cabal, rich elite, big conspiracy). When we started zooming in on the maps there was a small damn road east of Ivankiv that went up to just before a river/stream/watercourse and there they laid a pontoon bridge and slipped away. The maps we all look at paint with broad strokes but since then we have learned to be a bit more precise.
13:12
Now you’ve started a serious sub-discussion here 🙂
It is a grateful target and probably still stings for the French one would guess.
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I don’t fully agree, if I translate that to the Siversk – Bakhmut line we want the Russians to jump right onto it and die, thinning the locust swarm as Gregg would have said. If they go north or south of it and completely ignore the line, it serves no purpose (expressed some concern about this a few days ago). If they also get past the line so that it eventually has to be abandoned, it would be completely pointless. Then you would have spent the time, money, and units building the same defense somewhere else (hard to predict I know, that’s why Lysychansk was boring because everyone knew Putin really wanted Luhansk Oblast so whatever you defended you would get full payout).
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That was exactly what happened with the Maginot Line, as some wrote below it did not extend to the Atlantic coast.
Then as someone else wrote, they partly failed to stop the Germans in the forests (which is considered quite strange in hindsight) and then there was chaos in the mobile units.
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What I meant by not fully agreeing is precisely that, the chicken or the egg, was it the Maginot Line that they bypassed because it wasn’t built up to the Atlantic coast or was it the units that were supposed to stop the Germans in the forests and then meet the attack that did not behave as intended.
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Since we’re talking about the French, they probably messed up everything 🙂
Then you have the whole discussion about how many more tanks the French could have bought for everything they spent on the fixed fortifications of the Maginot Line. And the counterpoint is that it might not have mattered because then the chaos in the maneuver units would have been even worse. Maginot Line or not, they might have been beaten in three weeks anyway. Or not, because last time it happened the Germans got stuck pretty quickly.
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One more side discussion is that there were quite a lot of 20mm weapons either in small AA guns or single shots, the Russians’ elephant guns or whatever they were called. They went right through all armor in the first war years except Matilda 2 I think, and I actually find it quite strange that since all armies had tanks, they did not have these as standard equipment down to the squad level. They had mines and AT weapons in the form of cannons but these would have made infantry quite dangerous even then. As it later became when all different versions of man-portable AT weapons came out in units.
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Ukraine has shown that even in 2022 you can get far with an infantryman, a hole, and an anti-tank weapon – that hasn’t changed since the early 40s.
13:20
Yes exactly, he discusses the little he has first-hand information on and then just like everyone else he wants to paint the big picture. In his case, he is legitimate and then you have to evaluate information based on the knowledge he has. I think he has a really interesting angle on what he writes and I usually think through his assumptions.
A guy who has had a hard life and sits with his mobile phone in a hole in Ukraine, reads, discusses, and writes posts that a whole world analyzes. There are actually some new angles from him.
13:27
Now long-term interest rates seem to be going down, which could be the start of a recession/downturn after all.
Before that happened, I saw from my unassuming stool in the world how electricity and fuel prices were skyrocketing and thought that this is an ingredient in everything we buy so prices in general should go up. Then supply chains were disrupted by covid and now to some extent the Ukraine war. When inflation goes up, interest rates go up and when everything gets worse, the state wants to raise taxes and then falling exports and rising unemployment follow.
I have felt it is a perfect storm, everything coincides and there is really nothing you can do, it has to play out. Comes with longer intervals, last time it happened in a similar way was probably the 90s crisis.
Everyone has a breaking point and an anecdote is that in the area I left, a villa sold for 18 million SEK at the peak early May or whenever it was. Now similar villas go for 11 million SEK and the cheapest for 9 million SEK. If you get it wrong, it can also go straight down the hole.
14:05
Thought it was best to check Erik14 first if he had posted and yes, there it was 🙂
Seems like he will have to stay until the fall, does anyone know exactly what it was or was the pressure just generally too high?
This will have huge consequences as the Boris has been the driving force to help Ukraine in Europe.
However, it probably doesn’t matter at all in practice.
Still nice that he got the chance to support Ukraine before he resigned, the legacy gets a bit better.
14:12
Belarus is ripe for a color revolution, blue t-shirts. If Lukas enters Ukraine I’d bet a month’s salary that will be the punishment. Discontent is widespread and it only takes a group with good knowledge of how to start popular uprisings to press start here. Igniting that volcano is probably quite easy. The question is actually whether the country can manage to do it themselves without the push from the group with good knowledge of how to start popular uprisings. One picture and two sentences that strike the right chord is enough and then it’s on.
14:41
Good question, maybe I’ve been a bit annoyed with Macron and threw in a jab?
Professionally I have worked under/with French people a few times and it has either been chaotic/disorganized or ruthless and high pressure and as described above high productivity. Now these are not traits only the French have of course and exist in all nationalities. I can’t say more about the country beyond the obligatory visits where you ordered Boeuf and the waiter pointed to his stomach which seemed good and you got some kind of tripe stew or something.
15:53
Was an interesting discussion about the Maginot Line and a mental note not to extend the ridicule of the Russians too broadly to other nationalities who don’t deserve it. It’s not a hill I’m willing to die on at all and I have no strong opinion on the issue/issues except when it comes to Russia and those who support Russia. Improvement promised.
11:18
A quick look at FIRMS, set it to four days, so the red areas at Davyidiv Brid have moved further out to something that is presumably either Russian defense or that Ukraine has significantly expanded its positions. I guess Russian defense.
According to earlier information, Ukraine is probably going on the defensive eastward along the N-S road down from Davyidiv Brid and then takes all the terrain west of that “inside” Inhulets. That is quite sufficient. When they eventually reach Darivka a bit east of Kherson, they will have secured the whole area and then they have bearing on the bridges at Kherson (which they have, in fact, already today and that bridge crossing at Darivka can probably be denied to the Russians by other means than standing on the bridge).
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Looking at the Siversk – Bakhmut line, it is bright red “in front” of it and very few fires on the line itself. Now Deepstatemap suggests that it is contested territory but we have also heard that Ukraine has fallen back to the main line and that could be the rear guard?
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It certainly seems like it will pay off for Ukraine to have set up this defensive line?
There is nothing more frustrating than building a decent defense and then the attacker loses interest and goes somewhere else creating chaos, ask the French. If the Russians also start feeling that they have a chance at some kind of encirclement, they can probably focus a lot on this for a while and there will be many grilled BTGs.
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According to some Twitter general, 3-4 BTGs were moved from the southern front to Kherson in recent days. If the defense was going well for the Russians, they would not have moved 4 BTGs needed at the southern front there, and now the southern front is weakened so Ukraine will be able to snatch a few more communities down there. Then they have to fix technical faults and cross three known points that Ukraine has eyes on from above (probably also from the ground) and then run a gauntlet between air, army aviation, and artillery. When they eventually stand in their UFA and start feeling ready to kick the Ukrainians out of whichever community it is, they get HIMARS on them in the form of a rain of some half a million glowing tungsten balls.
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The combat value of those battalions probably won’t be very high when it comes time for the big attack day 🙂