14:04
I have to ask – is it established truth that Putin uses body doubles or is it still a conspiracy?
I’m a bit late on that ball and think it has probably been studied with ears and nostrils now so there is proof?
Just when one thought of starting a round about the twitching puppet hat being seen on video with today’s newspaper, he appeared necking a bottle of champagne.
You never know when it’s timely but it looked like traceable news.
If he could just get palace-couped sometime it would at least feel a bit better.
15:42
This will be tough for Ukrainian soldiers too but my money is on the Russians doing this infinitely worse.
Then we have another wildcard with a high tension factor – will the Russians run armor, trucks and everything else idling for heat?
If they do, they will definitely run out of fuel and it will be the big fuel shortage again but for a retreat – they will have to go on those stiff frozen legs.
14:01
You definitely get a sense of the difficulties in Ukraine now that the winter cold is setting in and it’s half cold inside with an acute power shortage on the agenda. It must be absolutely terrible for the residents in, for example, Mariupol right now and the winter has only just begun. They already had barely any water or food before and now they can’t warm themselves.
It must be even worse not to be able to protect your children from hunger, cold, or desecrating Russian soldiers.
Add to that the general misery that hungry Russians will plunder the civilian population in occupied areas of absolutely everything, food, fuel, and warm clothes. That this war was not ended before winter was very unfortunate.
Likewise, I think we will soon see either drone footage or videos from soldier phones of Russians frozen to death in their trenches – Winter War 2.0. All heat sources are tracked by smoke plumes or IR cameras on drones and around them gathers a large, beautiful target.
With a bit of luck, the combat leadership tries to counter all extinguished Russian group campfires with a fire ban and then even more freeze to death. Vodka and cold do not go well together and we haven’t seen a sober Russian soldier yet.
Now a tardy EU is slowly waking up, or the USA goes out in the media and puts pressure on Germany to send Leopards. I thought it was Leo2 but according to Paul, they have Leo1 at Krauss Maffei. It depends on what upgrades these Leo1s have received but it might not be the huge capability increase we expected with the latest version of Leo2 A7 – better than nothing and strong signal politics. This whole discussion about Western armor is timely for the spring offensives so one might guess that the West’s counter to Russian preparations for a spring offensive is to start taking from the upper shelves. Putin’s counter will be what, squinting even further into the darkness in the storerooms and dragging out the last rusty examples of some KV1s.
It’s a bit strange right now because Erik14 posts signal massive pre-battle strikes, Opsec prevails, Gregg has started hinting at breakthroughs but the canary in the coal mine – Rybar – he is busy with other things. He usually is very quick to run around and scream in falsetto.
It looks like Russia is also reinforcing the Svatove line with VDV now, how large the numbers are is unclear but tweets from the Twitter gods about it are starting to come in. That means two things – high pressure against the defensive line and an intention to hold said line.
Then there is a misconception going around, maps showing the extent of the defensive line and that Ukraine will have “huge difficulty” to “take it”. Yes, the whole line looks bleak but Ukraine scouts forward to find a weak point, some defense of channeling terrain that is no longer channeling because it has frozen over and passes it in the best Maginot Line style (we like the French!) at night. Then SOF spreads out like a huge fan, they defend the flanks and drive armor deep so the rear burns and bleeds.
Mines are all well and good but you bury them where you think the enemy will pass and right now they are not burying any mines at all, they have to hide them in the snow (which in itself is no less dangerous). If Ukraine crosses that frozen watercourse the likelihood that it is mined is low and they sail straight through.
Quite quickly the whole defensive line then becomes obsolete, it is reasonable to assume that Ukraine can get sudden breakthroughs, penetrate deep and start rolling up the entire line North and South.
If one guesses, there is more VDV at the North-South line through Starobilsk and then an East-West line around Luhansk.
I have thought about whether pressure can be increased on the Southern front enough that they voluntarily abandon northern Luhansk due to personnel shortages but probably not. They show great willingness to defend this area with their best units.
My five hundred bet that the Azov strike would come from Vuhledar and the Southeast looks to be torpedoed because that area is a focus point for Russian attacks after Bakhmut. They probably want to straighten out their front line.
Since cold and darkness are Ukraine’s best friends and create chaos among the Russians, thoughts now turn to maybe attacking Melitopol after all. It has looked impossible all autumn with its defensive lines in dominant terrain and high numbers but suddenly channeling terrain became obsolete and VDV has been sent north.
It is not unreasonable to go south towards Tokmak and then when the Russians weaken the Dnipro line, also start pressing across the Dnipro. They would probably quickly force a Russian organized retreat (total chaos) down to Crimea and then go on defense eastwards along Vasylivka – Tokmak – Melitopol and unleash 2000 suicide drones and HIMARS over Crimea just because they can.
I think it is confusing around where Russian units are and their combat capability but you don’t have to be related to Patton to understand that they have a strong defense along the southern front and that it requires cold, darkness and a lot of indirect fire to get through without catastrophic losses. What was impossible in early autumn is hopefully no longer impossible when a Russian in a trench starts becoming a small deep-frozen ball of ice with persistently drumming legs to keep warm.