10:58
We should be clear that none of this bothers Putin et al. the least, the plan now is to hold defensive positions over the winter by sacrificing as many lives as needed.
At the same time, they will build up an offensive capacity for the spring offensives and they have time for that, and my money is still on something coming from Belarus; I have guessed a diversionary maneuver so maybe the Belarusian units will be moved over to Russia and become part of the spring operations. Then it is also harder for the Belarus army to make a revolution if they have TikTok Chechens and the FSB backing them, surely they use VDV for that too. Of course, there could be a revolution before they get to Russia as well – a wild card one hopes for is that Belarus falls.
Again, Ukraine should reasonably maximize the season and carry out as extensive offensives as they can for maximum damage before the Russian side is ready for their round 4 (which is probably now) towards spring?
The Chess Move has been discussed for a long time and it looks favorable for it since the units from Kherson have partly moved up to northern Luhansk and Donbass while Ukraine has gotten loose +8 maneuver brigades from Kherson. There have always been three distinct offensives – Kherson, the Revolving Door, and the Chess Move, where really only the wedge down towards Azov remains to be initiated. After that, darkest Donbass and Crimea would remain.
When you have fire control over the island road along the Azov coast, all units east of that are trapped, and Crimea will fall over time; my money is on them abandoning the peninsula voluntarily going forward. You can then swing up towards darkest Donbass “from below” (from the south) while pressing between Donetsk and Horlivka, at the same time as pressing up in northern Luhansk.
The eternal discussion about where to launch the attack probably won’t die out before they advance, but I have thought the terrain feels too easy to defend between Vasylivka – Polohy and that Mariupol is probably a fortress, so it would be logical to go SE from Vuhledar and take Olhynka and Dokuchajevsk (maybe Volnovakha?) and then press down towards at least Boikivske.
Or Ukraine attacks with sheer force when the combat value is at rock bottom for the Russian side straight towards Melitopol or Mariupol?
The old ceasefire line lies somewhere east of the current front lines, and it can always be fortified eastward, while to the west there is natural defense. Then the only supply route left is from Crimea, so bring on the Patrol Burners.
There is now no reason to take Crimea directly; that pear has to ripen and fall completely on its own after some HIMARs and sunken ferries. Instead, one goes northeast into the darkest Donbass, Blahodatne type, while simultaneously defending the eastern flank. Pretty sure that defense is neglected just like it was up in northern Luhansk.
One then also reaches Rostov-on-Don with long-range small arms and SOF, which is likely a major supply hub similar to Belgorod.
Once you have come this far, the darkest Donbass is under attack from all directions and the supply is cut off while considering abandoning Crimea. What remains then is to fortify the border everywhere it can be reached, deny supply and reinforcements from reaching still-occupied areas, and to liberate the last occupied areas.
10:55
After Kuwait Highway 2.0 and Operation Badanka, Winter War 2.0 remains along with the Chess Move.
What we see now is the Russians in trenches during/after attacks or on the front line it has felt like, so we don’t know what it looks like behind the company’s/platoon’s/battalion’s firing position. If the Russians are not rotating and have heat sources in the rear, they are completely crazy, but stranger things have actually happened in this war.
There are reports that many mobilized soldiers have just been dropped off in a forest without food or anything else with orders to hold the position – if they have no direct knowledge, no equipment, and there are few trees and all combustible material is soaked, the likelihood that they manage to make a fire is quite small?
We always had that little flask of spirit for the Trangia stove, so you could get any fire going even if it was considered cheating.
For the groups that cannot protect themselves against the weather, Ukraine hardly needs to do anything, their combat value tends to zero all by itself. I also suspect that they have had to take some kind of substance to carry out the attacks, and then there is the constant vodka, so when they lie in a trench after an attack soaking wet and in withdrawal, things can go downhill fast. Alcohol and cold is a terrible combo.
SOF will have it incredibly easy going forward to both infiltrate when guard duty is zero and to take Russians in trenches out of action. I still believe that when history is written, the free war behind Russian lines will have been infinitely more extensive by infinitely more countries than we know. The entire West’s SOF might be a stretch, but that activity is in full swing and is effective.
My thought about this was probably that the Russians would start making heat sources that they gathered around to then be identified by the smoke plume from drones, and then the whole group/platoon would be cut down with a 155mm or something else cool. It is also enough for SOF to lob a grenade into the stove pipe or through the window when everyone is gathered in one place.
There was a story in the military that some reconnaissance group spotted a stove pipe sticking out of the snow and either blocked it with a sock or let in a blank cartridge, there were different versions of that story, and then they stood watching as the tent was emptied and had that kind of reconnaissance fun that only clever scouts can have. If you have no guard duty and there are enough drones, that story, which was probably told so we wouldn’t neglect the watch, becomes everyday life for a Russian group wanting to warm up in Ukraine.
When too many have died and they have to adapt tactically, they can really only do one thing – forbid heat sources. If you time that with the cold, it becomes even more chaos even faster. What we have ahead of us is probably a bit like war in the old days where battles accounted for a fraction of the losses and diseases, weather, and poor maintenance took care of the rest. I am absolutely sure that this will become Winter War 2.0.
That mud pool in Bakhmut is probably the main trench, and then the Ukrainians rotate guard duty 8h, 12h, or 24h. It is impossible that Ukraine has units permanently in water-filled defense systems as the defense looked.
However, it gives a clear indication of what a Russian in a trench looks like nowadays because they have absolutely only dug this type of defense – our paddle analogies with a mud ball and slowly blinking eyes were probably closer to the truth than I thought here 😃
We avoid talking too much about Ukraine’s hardships, but they wrestle with the same weather. What they do have, however, is a functioning leadership trying to maintain the combat value of the units, an American overcoat planning ahead, and access to the warehouses in the West. I put the rest of my money on that we will see videos going forward of well-dressed maneuver units.
However, I have noticed that you don’t see much rainwear, but just around zero degrees when the humidity is high and it’s drizzling, there is no point in having rainwear during movement because you get wet from the inside instead. But we also haven’t seen rainwear on the Ukrainians in the trenches. As soon as it goes below zero, it gets easier because then it’s just about layers of clothing and not trying to stay dry in the same way.
Then the next challenge will probably be sharply falling temperatures, and that is where Winter War 2.0 will sweep over Twitter with videos of whole groups of Russians who have frozen to death in resting positions.