13:36
That clip with DefMon, first of all, that guy/they have an extreme capacity, an incredible amount of information is filtered through him that can then be used – what a huge job they do.
You remember the whole discussion about how the T62 was supposedly capable in defense, now they are using them offensively – things are going well now for the Bunker Dwarf and his fiasco war. It also looked like well-equipped units that got a ride, so no 1st Army there, they had loaded decent infantry.
Kyselivka has been on the daily artillery list a couple of times now, so that place is probably contested.
13:38
400 criminal crows that have bitten the dust during the day, a positive number. It’s approaching 50,000 dead and what, 1.5, 2.3 times wounded. MinusRus believes soon 200,000 Russians will be put out of combat, but that sounds a bit high, 137,000 was a steady and good number, you have to give Putin credit that he is very specific in numbers here, no rounded figures 🙂
This hasn’t been discussed for a good while but for the Russians it’s reverse Darwin that applies, they lose proportionally more at the top (until depot workers became the most dangerous job in the whole war…).
High-ranking officers, battalion commanders, brigade commanders, company commanders, tank commanders, gunners, etc. are likely in screaming shortage and they probably promote the nearest grieving?
The quality of the Russian army has thus dropped markedly since the start of the war and they fill the gaps with Donbass rebels in the 1st Army, and they seem to be starting to doubt the purpose of the war now.
New reports of forced conscriptions all the time. Then the FSB and TikTok beards are probably behind it making sure the task is solved or they die. These units must just be waiting for a rout, I think?
This is also what you read between the lines and I’m joking about Human Wave, infantry attacks are starting in some places and pretty poorly executed ones at that, and virtually all attacks have been repelled since the clinically clean tactical retreat from Lysychansk because the city was not needed for defense.
13:39
I believe the absolutely most important thing in this whole war is not to create a Russian patriotic will to fight but to continue making everyone feel that they are stuck in a mess they want to avoid at all costs and the recruitment offices are empty. It takes a bit longer and is a bit less fun when you “go carefully” but right now it’s hard to fill the gaps in Russian BTG shells.
Then we have China who is just waiting for an opening that never comes, are they going to declare war on NATO because Russia is getting beaten in Ukraine by Ukrainians?
Now we tried to break up the post a bit, yesterday’s got stuck in the filter even though it didn’t mention the USA’s former strongman with a single word.
13:42
Ukraine has the luxury of being able to reinforce units with existing structure so they keep the chain of command and competence in the unit – the 81st Airmobile Brigade is still an elite unit despite months of Eastern Front fighting while the 1st Guards Armored on the Russian side is an empty shell that they have stuffed with older tank models and topped with this year’s conscripts, prison customers and a bunch of contract soldiers who have seen their contracts torn to pieces – the unit’s effectiveness has plummeted.
This is already showing on the battlefield and will manifest more during the autumn, the Russians cannot counter Ukrainian offensives, they barely manage defense, are afraid of shooting and collapse faster.
13:43
What the hell, this was supposed to build on the above message and then I got some piece as a reply to another.
13:44
Misplaced.
14:01
I’ve been thinking a lot about “the Red Army” and the Cold War lately. My thought has been that when these 15,000 tanks were in good condition and manned, the Russians probably could have rolled straight down to the Thames.
It was only after the fall of the wall that the army declined to finally, after kleptomanic oligarchs, and after running an Afghan war, we got this monumental fiasco.
At the start of the war we got the link to the description of the New Year’s attack on Grozny which is among the biggest chaos I’ve read – it makes Putin look like a great strategist. Then recently we got a description of Czechoslovakia 68(?) and it wasn’t much better.
It was known that in WW1 it went so-so, Tannenberg was not something you put on your CV and the start of WW2 wasn’t much better – millions of Russian soldiers were encircled and Kerch has been tried to swim across before.
After that there have been small conflicts they managed to cover up and somehow the myth has been cultivated.
I understand today that of the armored divisions that stood fueled and shiny in barns along the border and ready to thunder westward, half had run out of fuel because the crew sold the fuel for booze and the other half had rats that ate the electrical cables, when the barn doors were finally opened there probably rolled out a couple of lonely T72s instead of whole divisions and when the tank commanders finally looked around amid all the flag waving they probably pressed the talk button and asked the driver to park in the barn again.
It would also have needed too many refuelings for it to work so there would have been the same transport chaos.
The conclusion is that Russia has gotten some kind of free pass because they were on the right side in WW2 and then had a good and fine communist revolution. They have cultivated the myth of the Red Army effectively but the truth is this is what it would have looked like.
I wonder if WW2 will be interpreted differently after this?
14:10
A geopolitical atomic bomb, Putin has broken the supposed most important basic rule for dictators, calmly and methodically and never shake the cage. Most of the world’s dictators are meticulously cautious and tiptoe around everything and manage to steal enormous wealth. True or false but Khadaffi had more money in bank accounts than anyone else known on the rich list, just that no one knew how much he had. You can guess how it looks in the other criminal clan countries.
Russia could probably have continued the same for another 100 years for sure but then the Bunker Dwarf started to get on in years and felt that nothing would liven things up like an old fine punitive expedition, he had probably read too much about Peter the Great.
This will end badly for Russia, at least trapped behind NATO and with Kaliningrad and Belarus leaning west, it will be a straighter border then. At worst the country might break up a bit maybe?
Putin is a mystery, he could have lived out his days as an absolute god, 70 years old and probably 15 more years with a “no limit life” whatever that means for him. He traded that for a stool in The Hague at best or dangling from a gas station at worst. His days are numbered.
I think the Russian Empire has lived on borrowed time far too long, it is they and China who are still accepted as colonial states and it is time for their oppressed ethnic groups to gain their freedom just like the rest of the world.
14:27
surely FIRMS is becoming quite clear that this week’s armageddon is in Volnovakha and Mariupol, if you pair that with it being a weak spot for the Russians and a buildup area for Ukraine, could it be a possible offensive?
14:34
I have just changed my stance on the matter 🙂
I remember that in the early 90s the Baltic Fleet was half-sunken in the Baltic and the other ports and that had probably been going on for quite some time one can guess.
Just like all great nations, Russia probably had a peak where they could achieve something, Sweden probably had the world’s fifth largest air force with the Tunnan back in the day for a few years.
The reason I changed my stance on the matter was that article about the entry into Czechoslovakia which was apparently terribly managed/executed. It was quite early and already then it was going badly. Then we had the Afghanistan war but you probably can’t blame the Russians for that since they have managed to repel everything that has come across the border since the British Empire’s glory days and the Khyber Pass.
14:38
Yes, lend lease was probably in a way decisive, we have learned about the weight of trucks.
What I was thinking about was probably whether it was the USA or Russia that decided. A little truth I have been told was that Germany had the absolute lion’s share of its units on the Eastern Front and that they were ground down there. The USA/west fought against the second-rate units. It was therefore thanks to Russia that the Germans could be defeated.
It might be that it was the disrupted supply from the west’s carpet bombing that decided the outcome?
17:08
According to the Twitter gods, an ammunition convoy was taken out BOTH on the Antonovsky bridge and at the Khakovka bridge.
This is clearly the new normal, they discovered it was difficult with their own ammunition so they waited for an ammunition transport to get a huge hit – problem solving at the highest level.
Now you can look at previous actions and make an educated guess that the pontoon bridge will be full of ammunition trucks and then it will rain red tungsten balls.
That the Russians do not give up is quite incredible, the road to the west is cut off.
17:15
I have now for the first time from the stands seen how a Hitler is made. Now this is a Hitler with a very short lifespan as the free west reacted decisively but it has been incredibly interesting to follow.
Western democracies try to compromise for too long and the Hitler version interprets everything as weakness and puts the country on a war footing.
Lesson two was – when the free west wakes up from its slumber it is not fun to be on the wrong side, this lesson China is currently analyzing down to its components because this did not go quite as they had planned, at all.
13:36
That clip with DefMon, first of all, that guy/they have an extreme capacity, an incredible amount of information is filtered through him that can then be used – what a huge job they do.
You remember the whole discussion about how the T62 was supposedly capable in defense, now they are using them offensively – things are going well now for the Bunker Dwarf and his fiasco war. It also looked like well-equipped units that got a ride, so no 1st Army there, they had loaded decent infantry.
Kyselivka has been on the daily artillery list a couple of times now, so that place is probably contested.