11:24 – MatsExtrude
+1 And looking forward to your possible posts after midnight!
14:57 – Johan No.1
Now the Russ@£$€€ will probably launch a bunch of missiles on New Year’s to assert their dominance.
Let’s hope Ukraine has some New Year’s rocket prepared here, and then it’s the Russian Christmas, or New Year, on January 6th, I never learn.
High psychological factor if they destroy some high-value targets starting today and a week ahead, and so far Ukraine has shown great flair for the theatrical.
18:11 – Johan No.1
This will probably be the last readable one because apparently things have already started here with a very lively wife and you have to keep up. Around Christmas, there was some light in the thread writing that we Swedes have probably taken the Ukraine war quite hard because we have a sense of justice with our mother’s milk – conflict resolution and all that we learned in school which we absolutely did not listen to at all back then because it was dog-eat-dog on the schoolyard. That has been grinding in the background, not what we did on the schoolyard against the younger classes but the sense of justice.
On Christmas Eve, there is always Christmas music for a couple of hours while I whip up the Christmas food, and every damn year it takes about half an hour and then it’s fields of Athenry or Flower of Scotland, and thoughts go to all the underdogs who have lived under oppression and sometimes done the impossible, it has become almost its own Christmas tradition amidst all the Jansson’s and herring salad.
I believe the Ukraine war struck exactly that chord of David and Goliath, injustice, etc., and moreover they had a bite like a grizzly from their disadvantaged position. I was on a project in a country in Africa with a rather difficult project manager, an old SAS soldier who had made it a folk sport with some mind games, I was lucky and he liked me but a Korean got himself punished immediately and received God’s worst scolding every morning for a year before he gave up.
At one point he said – “my bite is worse than my bark” and looked mysterious and violent, with everything else one had seen it felt quite reasonable so one downed the glass, smiled the widest smile and hoped for life. He probably had a lot of fun every day at all our expense…
Detour and long story short – the Ukrainians bite harder than they bark and we in Europe should be very grateful for that. Putin is slowly beginning to understand that he really has been poking the sleeping grizzly bear who has now woken up. Another image might be the wasps’ nest but the Ukrainian infantry feels more like a newly awakened black bear with sharpened claws.
We really hope for a run-over Russian in a ditch in 2023 and if one understood anything about the sense of justice when one stole change from the lower classes in the schoolyard in the 80s, one should also wish Macron and Scholz the worst possible 2023. If you play on the good half of the field but want the evil side to win, reality should hit like a bag of bricks at the beginning of January. Preferably in the form of Panama leaks where their accounts where they have received their FSB bribe money are published on the BBC (now it has gone quite far so there is actually nothing to indicate that, I blame the alcohol).
11:16 – Johan No.1
Now we are looking forward to a devastating Ukrainian winter offensive and Russia turning inward during 2023.
That, together with Bradley and Leo2, will be my New Year’s wishes.
There are many videos now on rolled-up defense systems and something I have noticed is that the Russians all run into the reinforced protection or some basement and then when they have to choose between a hand grenade or surrender, they come out.
We will see much more of that at least along the NS defensive line through Svatove, which I am quite sure is fortified with poorer units, while the NS line through Starobilsk and the SE line through Luhansk is manned by the remnants of the VDV among others.
What will be interesting when Ukraine throws itself over the Starobilsk line is whether the Russians are prepared to lose the remaining VDV (and Guards) or not.
My guess is that they would rather abandon northern Luhansk than make it the VDV’s last stand.
As soon as Kreminna has fallen, it will be like poking a stick into an anthill and Ukraine will spread out in all directions. That alone will make it impossible for Russian combat leadership, which sits at a safe HIMARS distance and sends orders with couriers, and all orders are – “hold point A to the last man, then retreat to point B.”
When it gets really lively up in northern Luhansk, of course, the chess move down towards Azov will happen; according to Liveuamap, Blahodatne has been retaken, the SE of Vuhledar, and then they are almost in the forest belt north of Volnovakha. Deepstatemap does not have it marked, but I can’t afford to lose that five hundred on them going on the offensive SE of Vuhledar, so I hope until the last moment, having invested too much there to be objective.
Then we have offensive operations between the city of Donetsk – Horlivka and actually all the way up to Lysychansk. Something will definitely happen there; Ukraine has rotated in rested units and topped up with Azov, the international legion, and other capable volunteer units that gladly take the lead.
Just north and south of Horlivka, there is quite a high density of maneuver brigades, but that could also be because they don’t know where to place them; the unit maps have lost some value just like FIRMS.
I don’t know what the Russian ceasefire line looked like, but after 8 years of war, it should have been formidable and difficult to break through. Provided that the Russians don’t have everything in the defensive line where they are today and haven’t fortified the ceasefire line because they are short on personnel, so that a breakthrough discovers that it is completely empty behind – that would be nothing less than a sensation, but one doesn’t really dare to hope for it.
What we do know, however, is that all maneuver brigades are at active fronts, the Russian circus is bleeding out daily, and Ukraine has enough armor and ammunition for its winter offensive. The summary posted a few weeks ago showed that UA-RU was 1:1 or 1:1.5 in armor, for example. Everything signals high ambition, including many donated bridge layers (not to be confused with bridges, which I mixed up yesterday).
Now they are going to jump on the Russians in defense, but the defenders in the first lines are those who don’t want to die and can’t fight, and against them stands the world’s best infantry fighting an existential war – it can only go one way for the Russians in the pit here 😀. Ukraine is quick to learn and now they have figured out how to fight Russians in defense systems and in defense, which is damn hard to do without taking astronomical losses, but they seem to have adapted their tactics very nicely.
After that, there are units in the next line that I suspect the Russians are not prepared to lose and will pull back when losses get too high – is the Russian army really prepared to lose its last capable units for a few potato fields in eastern Ukraine – I don’t think so.
They abandoned Izyum and Kherson to save their elite units, and it will be the same in northern Luhansk and the southern front as soon as Ukraine has been able to increase the pressure enough, and then eventually in the darkest Donbass and Crimea, they will voluntarily empty out – it just has to hurt enough first for the elite units.
Add to that cold, darkness, and general misery on the Russian side and that Ukraine has managed to maintain combat effectiveness through difficult weather.
If the Russian combat leadership and all the proud branches like VDV, Guards, and Spetznaz haven’t already taken a hit, their confidence will fall like a tungsten rain when they can’t even manage to defend against the subhumans in Ukraine whom they absolutely despise.
2023 will probably be the end of the war in Ukraine and the year when Russia turns inward.
After that (or now) all the experts have calibrated their models and can sit and spread out again during prime time 😀
We will then have several years of various hypothetical scenarios that no one really knows are true; it’s about shouting the loudest and selling the prettiest to get TV time, but it’s hard to deny that this blog has been closest to the actual outcome since the start of the war, and many have competed for that distinction but failed miserably.
That doesn’t stop them from coming back with a bang when they hope everything is forgotten, of course, but highest praise to this blog, late at night I have to bring out a nice medal for the blog.
I’ve probably said it a couple of times that the blog and comment section are on par with the Skalman thread about submarines, and I think that’s quite an achievement. For me, and some others I guess, it has been very grateful to have this outlet to write off so it hasn’t become a pressure cooker of this monumental historical injustice.
Even if there will be a Happy New Year post and I probably can’t stay away, I want to wish Happy New Year to the blogger and everyone in the comment section and in advance apologize for any half unreadable posts late at night.