20:39
Haven’t seen the castration video and am not looking for the heads on pikes video either but one has to conclude that the fact that the Red Cross, UN, Amnesty and all the other organizations are not screaming at prime time is remarkable. Especially the Red Cross and UN have guaranteed the safety of the Azov prisoners and they come back castrated, that should have prompted some protests one would think but no.
The free West owes the USA and UK a lot here, this could quite easily have become a global conflict but it seems it might stay at Russia’s geopolitical atomic bomb.
10:36
SVT quite often takes a stance on issues they absolutely should not take a stance on.
—
When it comes to the Ukraine war and unreserved support for Ukraine and maxed out hostility towards Russia, probably 90% of the country’s population, whom they work for, believe they should take a clear stance.
—
When this happens in major media, they usually come out with a front page or editorial explaining why they break with tradition and take a clear stance for or against.
20:34
The charm of Kherson is that it is extremely difficult for the Russians to move units anywhere without being easy targets on the road for aircraft and army aviation, or as soon as they either go on the defensive or form assault groups, it’s artillery, smart ammunition, or Himars’ turn. It’s an incredible stroke of luck that the Russians really want the potato fields west of the Dnieper because they have put themselves in an extremely bad position here.
—
The stories about them buying swim rings should be taken with a grain of salt, Ukraine also needs to have PR, but there is certainly concern among the soldiers that the retreat route is cut off and everyone knows that Ukraine is gearing up for a huge hit. The only right thing here would have been to go on the defensive on the eastern side of the Dnieper and reinforce the southern front, but instead they have chosen to barely hold the southern front, they believe, and then stockpiled everything they can west of the Dnieper.
—
Many predictions now about what is to come, but if they have started flying more frequent missions with aircraft and army aviation, an active phase is probably approaching. FIRMS currently gives zero guidance actually, the fires are a fraction of what they have been the past two weeks and I wonder if it’s cloudy, too lazy to check 🙂
MBT has probably arrived now and the reserves that have been held back and re-equipped have actually had five months to train, that’s quite a long time.
—
Then there is the really big question whether what we see now and have seen for a while are Ukraine’s offensive operations or if they will blow three horn blasts and then get five mechanized brigades led by an armored brigade forward and basically run over the defense of Kherson before they have reached the river dressed in their pink swim ducks and colorful swim rings.
—
The general’s description of Lysychansk was probably what we wrote on the big sulking day, it felt like Ukraine was retreating because they couldn’t hold the line. Now we are lucky because the Russians just jumped onto the next line instead so it ended up with grilled BTGs anyway. And then, 50% losses and the units still function, these guys are something beyond the ordinary, what infantry Ukraine has. This war will go down in history alongside the Finnish Winter War and all the other “against all odds” wars.