14:12
SVT confirms that the same people appear in different contexts with Putin.
That was not their angle but that is what they say and have proven 👍
19:00
To be able to disrupt the Russians’ safe space, Ukraine needs to gain terrain in the winter offensive.
It needs to be a bad start for Russia in their spring offensive, as bad as possible.
Preferably Crimea should be cut off and they should be lobbing HIMARS at everything moving on Crimea still a bit south of Melitopol.
Bleeding out the Russian army is not an option because Putin is pushing in with blood.
Time is not Ukraine’s enemy but it could probably benefit Putin if he manages to hold the current terrain “just” by sacrificing lives.
07:18
The world has at least interpreted it as Ulf K having promised to send Archer. Ambiguous Swedish that leaves all doors open is high risk when it is then translated and interpreted by those who are not used to it.
Now Sweden has promised Archer to Ukraine 👍
11:06
Trying to find signs of an offensive but there are pretty few, we have many preparations but that’s where it stops. For example, new tape color has so far been a late preparation for offensive operations.
Another sign is usually when the opsec cover comes down and we’ve had some kind of that for quite a while so no indication.
Indirect attacks on bases have picked up significantly and are weather dependent, they gather in larger quarters due to power supply and become grateful targets so no direct sign of an offensive.
Losses of armor were thought to signal something but then information came about Soledar and that they deployed armor.
Preliminary fighting against Russians in the trench seems to continue with high intensity, as do the reconnaissance battles.
Counter-artillery as well, quite a high level of lost artillery for the Russians.
Sitting and wondering if the last thing we see before a start is an operation against air bases?
Not Engels but the front-line ones with army aviation and aircraft?
If you hit them with a mass deployment of drones and HIMARS, do you take out the air force just before the offensive starts?
I find it incredibly hard to see Ukraine missing the opportunity for a winter offensive, illogical and highly likely that they will do what they can this winter. Maybe the timeline has slipped due to Russian attacks, it was a few weeks ago that Ukraine informed us that the Russians would launch a winter offensive and now they have thrown in endangered VDV in Bakhmut and Soledar.
You get free dead Russian elite soldiers there who can’t defend anywhere else.
Northern Luhansk seems to be in constant motion and Ukraine is advancing, the guess is that it is a front line and quite empty behind all the way to the NS line through Starobilsk where VDV is sitting and warming up.
And then a VÖ line through Luhansk which is also populated by VDV.
Russian combat command has thus prioritized the defense of northern Luhansk, why?
Probably because they would lose LPR and Ukraine is approaching the city of Luhansk?
The other is NS transport routes/railways + supply hubs outside Ukraine’s border that they then reach with long-range everything and infiltration.
Now that is not a game changer today because Rostov-on-Don is probably one big depot but over time it will be difficult to bring down new armor and troops on that NS supply road/railway and the darkest Donbass and Crimea will become as difficult to maintain as Kherson (over time…).
At the southern front, at least the Russians expect an offensive but at the same time something very strange is going on there – they have partly retreated from the Dnieper River in stages. There are still units there but not in the numbers one might have expected.
The other is that they have moved units from the southern front to the Bakhmut-Siversk line to support the attacks there. The most pointless attacks we have seen in the entire war. It can almost only be because the Russians can’t do anything else?
They could just retreat to the old ceasefire line on the Russian side and have a huge fortification system but they sacrifice everything to gain a few more kilometers forward to this defensive line.
At the same time as they depopulate part of the southern front, they have attacked over by Vuhledar and it can only be the oblast warfare causing trouble.
The fact that they are still doing this can also only mean that Putin believed he had a negotiation solution where the West would abandon Ukraine if they gave up a bit of land. As recently as autumn, that was still on the table before France and Germany started shining like suns and were really idolized.
Here we probably see how much damage a leader in the free West can cause if not careful.
And they are digging trenches in Melitopol which signals that they intend to defend the city.
Now that the EU has finally woken up and managed to get the preschool class into some kind of food queue, the last puzzle piece is really in place here. IFVs were always more important than MBTs since modded T72s are not so bad but M113 and Kirpi are just okay.
The symbolic value of Bradley, AMX and Marder is high but not diplomatically lava-hot – a nice middle ground.
Eventually MBTs will follow here and both systems are probably deployed for the spring offensive one can guess.
In videos you see a lot of BMP-3 and later BTR instead of BTR-60 and BMP-1, you also see overwhelmingly T72 instead of older vehicles so Ukraine has probably gradually replaced worse Soviet armor with newer ones they have captured. Oryx has listed hundreds.
Territorial forces have probably received the older vehicles that stand in defense at the liberated border?
Reminds me of this from Ukrainian Forbes and that Ukraine now has 1:1.5 in tanks.
https://twitter.com/FriaUkraina/status/1605485831984074752?s=20&t=NJMvpfWrmDho2j62VfsuWA
The winter offensive is already resourced and the spring offensive is being resourced with Western armor and the last Eastern systems one can guess?
Russia can’t do anything, buried armor is a target, you push the platoon with drone grenades into the reinforced trench and then put a 155mm in it so it collapses, they have surface barrages of some new type that deliver death throughout the trench system, everything on the way is hit by army aviation and aircraft.
Everything close to the front rear is exposed to long-range weapons.
Anything further from the front does not arrive in time if needed.
The Russians’ only play left is really to push soldiers into the defensive lines faster than they are knocked out and hope that Ukraine does not get any breakthroughs.
The attacks at Siversk-Bakhmut and the oblast warfare are madness but politically driven.
A spring offensive is more typically Russian – increase the violence when the level of violence doesn’t work. You have to do something and I can see the logic in that.
The spring offensive can hardly achieve anything and can only prolong the war but if you are a dictator and the circle around the dictator, probably every minute you avoid dangling from a gas station is worth many lost lives, actually countless.
The key is to close the doors for Putin and Russian combat command so they finally understand that it is pointless and if Putin doesn’t understand it, all the oligarchs and politicians do.
Now nothing happens without FSB consent so they must also understand that it is futile.
We may not be there yet but the sanctions have been good and Ukraine’s warfare as well.
The last opening was really that the West would waver and that seems to be over provided that there is no double play by the shining icons Macron and Scholz but you would never believe that, they are gods.
Lack of materiel was another and there it is also signal politics of the highest order.
Really just a matter of time before Putin or someone else gives up here and leaves the remote province Ukraine with its subhumans who do not allow themselves to be punished as they should.