10:28
I expect an intense peace campaign during the autumn aimed at freezing the conflict.
There will be known and some new faces and nothing will be spared.
The only outcome of it will be that some capable journalists log everything and have a complete map of who is engaged in Russian psyops and then maybe we will get some peace and quiet going forward when the empire has fallen and all subversive forces are more or less known.
10:36
If you ask me, ATACMS is probably already in Ukraine but not officially, right?
Then you have Tochka U and these new ones we saw the other day but there should be two of those.
However, there is a significant uptick and Tochka U can apparently be shot down by Russian air defense but not HIMARS ammunition.
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My rather vague point was probably – first 777, then HIMARS and now ATACMS because it’s the same exponential curve over knocked-out high-value Russian targets at a new distance.
19:48
We have now seen a very effective pre-attack unfold. One can guess that 155mm lob guided ammunition over Russian defenses in Kherson and the Southern front as we speak 24/7.
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We have also seen positioning fights/recon fights that sometimes have developed into more and maybe something more, quite a lot of fog of war.
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What we have not seen is a full-fledged offensive as we hope to see it but Ukraine is probably grinding on and taking community after community.
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I think a bit like this 🙂
Who thought two months ago that Russian logistics would go up in smoke?
Who thought that all the bridges over Kherson would be cut (me, me, me, Phase1…)
Who thought we would see T62.
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Since Ukraine has only just started to accelerate, we can be absolutely 100% sure that they will surprise again pretty soon…
10:25
Now we probably have a bunch of targets outside HIMARS range, Ukrainian hockey moves fast and you only remember the twelve spikes but I’m pretty sure there have been more in the past week.
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Since all airbases worth their name behind the southern front have been HIMARSed so many times that the Russian command must still cringe just thinking about it, everything has probably been moved down to Crimea. If they had moved everything to Donbass or east of Mariupol, it would partly not have been outside HIMARS range and partly been too long a drive to Kherson.
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Ukraine has simply (just as we all guessed 🙂 ) waited for the Russians to move all aircraft, army aviation, and maintenance to the airbases in Crimea before striking. A bit like when they waited for large staff meetings in bigger staffs before they got their 155mm and later HIMARS.
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Now we also found out that the Russians are starting to pull SU24s and some older Mi models out of storage, so the air force is not something they have an endless supply of either, and the glowing tungsten rain every night apparently stings all branches of the military now.
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The fact is that the Russians now have older stored artillery, T62s, older aircraft, older helicopters, and the infantry is to no insignificant part the 1st Army from Donbass (Ukrainians forced to fight Ukrainians as the blogger often points out…), former prisoners and this year’s conscripts. “The second largest army in the world” is starting to sound pretty hollow 🙂
This at the same time as Ukraine is receiving Western materiel more than they can field and there are constant attempts to bribe for a place in a fighting unit before the war ends by veterans from 8 years of war in Donbass.
Almost a warrior culture.
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The only thing that surprises me a bit is that Ukraine hasn’t snapped the Russians out of Ukraine with thumb and forefinger, but my take on that is that to win even round 3, Ukraine must have an intact army to secure its enormously long border. If the Russians are out but the Ukrainian army is run into the ground, then Putin will just come back in a year or can have high-level partisan warfare until he goes in again, a constant open conflict. They must be kicked out feet first and then the entire border must be secured by maneuver brigades maintaining a 30 km demilitarized zone with HIMARS inside Russian territory by force – then the war is over. And for that, you need a large army.