13:00
Ukraine is clearly starting to realize how fun tape can be, Russian prisoners are well-packaged nowadays, high level of humor.
Now the intensity is increasing again at the NS defensive line through Svatove. The pre-attack is heavy and I guess they have moved weapon systems up there and that the intelligence situation is good. We now know from NL Wartracker how detailed commercial satellites are (remember it was up for discussion early in the war, nice that they post the pictures so you can see) and the all-seeing eye is sharper.
Russian in a pit also does not change pit when the pit is dug, then it is his permanent nesting place up to the knees in mud. The Russian team still has no defense against this which means they have no defense against this until the end of the war which means the end is inevitable.
Even if the West stopped delivering weapons, Ukraine now has a parallel capability with drones to guide dumb ammunition in real time.
There are loose Twitter rumors that the Russians are preparing to leave Kreminna and at the same time we know they are bringing in reinforcements behind the NS line through Svatove which Ukraine HIMARS away. Starobilsk is probably a starting point now where reinforcements are flowing in and Ukraine reaches there and sees everything.
There has been very little movement up there but Ukraine infiltrates everything they can and now indirect fire is picking up.
We have also guessed that the Russians cannot establish a defensive line with overlapping fields of fire without it becoming isolated islands in channeling terrain where Svatove, Kreminna and Troitske are strong fortified positions. Beyond that they put some platoon/company mobilized in a settlement in channeling terrain with orders to defend. They are fully occupied fighting weather, mud, fatigue, darkness and being mobilized so combat value is almost zero.
Ukraine can cross watercourses and bypass these defenses, they infiltrate deep, they HIMARS away etc. Presumably there will be a Lyman run also from Svatove eventually.
The colder it gets the more the Russian soldier huddles around a heat source so Ukraine gets both easier to identify targets but also greater yield per incoming grenade. In this weather they cannot lie in a pit many days without a heat source. It will definitely be a winter war 2.0 where tired and wet Russian in a pit defends himself as best he can against (all of the West’s) SOF and guided ammunition. With a bit of luck diseases and frostbite will soon run rampant and they might start freezing to death.
13:00
You have to give the Russians that they have adapted their tactics – target saturation and soft high-value targets. If they had run this already on February 24 it might have looked different.
23:17
Hitlerjugend in the making.
https://twitter.com/gerashchenko_en/status/1593334289193738240?s=46&t=sNIRfHt84AoQmQDRfe4qyQ
23:28
This one has been up as friendly fire but I just want to highlight it again so no one misses another video of operation badanka.
https://twitter.com/thedeaddistrict/status/1593225128242040833?s=46&t=sNIRfHt84AoQmQDRfe4qyQ
23:31
Ukraine has pretty good own reconnaissance capability now, a “home-built” control room for drones with laptop, flat screen TV and direct communication.
https://twitter.com/thedeaddistrict/status/1593137238078279680?s=46&t=sNIRfHt84AoQmQDRfe4qyQ
23:38
If Ukraine had given up this would have happened on an even larger scale and the world would not have cared. If you want peace you prepare for war.
https://twitter.com/kyivindependent/status/1593326013852930049?s=46&t=sNIRfHt84AoQmQDRfe4qyQ
23:47
Twitter god regarding new Russian mobilization after Christmas. Sad that Ukraine did not get the materiel so they could exploit the low point maximally but it is what it is.
https://twitter.com/tpyxanews/status/1593371981520416768?s=46&t=sNIRfHt84AoQmQDRfe4qyQ
12:53
It has been a strangely quiet morning and yesterday there were rather tedious discussions about support packages and the Polish accident.
Luckily, Ukraine is not burying itself in misfortune but is accelerating and running over Russians in the pit 24/7, always open at HIMARS and the snipers’ darkness/IR sight is insanely good.
Full speed on the missile attacks against Ukraine’s power supply which have spilled over to the Balkans with power outages. If nothing else works – why can’t the EU at least have self-preservation instincts, the sooner the war ends the sooner Russia’s attack on our energy supply stops.
The Balkan power grid is well connected with the rest of Europe and if there is a failure there it must be compensated, and then the wildcard stray missile that happens to cut some large transformer station in Poland.