11:37
I am still stuck in political winds here but it’s probably soon time for combat technical matters, I feel I got closure regarding Germany with the post in yesterday’s thread this morning.
Exactly how the developments went is not entirely easy to know but the pressure has probably been very intense on Germany since it ended in open view in the media. Getting beaten that badly is unusual but these are also unusual times –
they probably had to learn that the hard way here.
Now all countries with Leopards are in discussions about joint delivery and I guess they will be delivered to Ukraine in large numbers, it could very well end up being more than 300 in the end if UA wants?
I am quite convinced that Sweden is part of that discussion, anything else would be strange, but maybe as LW writes that they support Finland with units in case of war if they send more?
-completely fine 👍
If you are to be pro-EU, which we should be, then maybe we don’t want the USA to snatch all the arms contracts now that Germany has finally cracked. We also don’t want Poland to miss any chance to put pressure on Germany. If you got Leo then you have it and then it turns into something that no longer serves a purpose. Germany has fallen in line and Scholz has been lying motionless on the ground for a while now so it’s time to stop kicking. If he manages to lift his head and German-yell something about territorial concession with a half-closed fist in the air, we’ll probably reopen that discussion again 😀
So today’s text about Germany is archived now that Leopard is done. The country has been interesting because they blocked Leo, no other layers of aversion.
Where we were sprightly positive yesterday, it’s a couple of notches higher today, now Ukraine is getting their MBTs, Leopard, Challenger and maybe Leclerc. They get Bradley, CV90, Warrior, Stryker and AMX-10. Next round they get fighter jets and attack aircraft and helicopters are probably not far off, that UK reporter probably got information too early that he should have held on to.
Before Ramstein we said that if there was a united front and Leopards were delivered it would be Putin’s worst nightmare and a chance for a short war. Now the message was quite split but Leopards are now open for delivery and this should be exactly as bad for Putin as we guess. The numbers matter here of course but wait until the lists come in a week or so, then it will probably be a full folk festival in the thread and everyone is tipsy before lunch. That everything came one day too late and after some fuss does not diminish that effect in the least.
You do remember the discussion about all support to Ukraine being incredibly well coordinated where I claimed it was not at all but that it was horse-trading and quarrels. After that discussion I felt a bit like I was the one who understood nothing from my boy’s room in my parents’ basement but sure enough that’s what we found out in the end in open view.
From where I stand looking down at the sandbox it now looks like this – all countries have abandoned Russia and they have announced it in the media to be sure it is not misunderstood, the Russians have now completely stalled in Donbass despite throwing in elite units, the Russians have not announced a general mobilization even though they need to bring in new living dead and now the West has finally agreed to provide offensive weapons so Ukraine can throw Russia out completely on its own.
The sleeping West has awakened and there is not a single opening left for Russia to try to worm its way in here except to negotiate a peace where they leave all of Ukraine and they can only negotiate as long as they have land to negotiate over.
When half the thread was sitting and having everyday drinks at lunchtime on Friday, after having sampled the Finnish spirits already on Thursday evening, and in all their epic creativity painted a very bright picture of the Ramstein meeting as an absolute jackpot – it turned out exactly that good if not even better. Erik14’s Thursday evening cocktails were the hit of the year 👍
We probably thought Macron would want to take the lead again and now Leclerc is on the table, Germany gave in but one day too late so they were paraded bruised and droopy in open view for a while but better late than never. Macron is probably the most predictable politician ever and that he would top with Leclerc was highly expected when the UK challenged him with Challenger, of those there are probably a few more than Challenger but fewer than Leopard?
At Bakhmut and Soledar it has stalled – it’s worth reflecting on this because this line has held since Lysychansk fell and now the Russians’ elite units are being lost for nothing.
At the Southern front there was an offensive but a low-frequency one that UA could shake off. The Russians are said to have sent about two brigades there but so far not much of a war. It was probably reconnaissance battles we saw and maybe too early but I still raise the question – do you think the commander of the army in question (combined arms army?) has made his own decision to save lives at the Southern front?
I don’t quite think so but if all Russian blogs that get information to spread go all in for a Russian offensive at the Southern front that doesn’t happen then it’s a bit like Izyum again, first they formally announce that the city shall be defended by Guards and then the Guards run away the next day – not sanctioned by the top leader at all.
Up at northern Luhansk the winter offensive is in motion and just yesterday we read from Dimitri how Russian units are taking losses from frostbite so Winter War 2.0 is approaching but still no footage of Russians frozen to death in a hole.
Crossing of the Dnieper is probably on the table too, I see it as the easiest way to create a threat for the Southern front that drains units from it so it should come. The staff officer who came up with Davyidiv Brid has been given renewed trust for a crossing of the Dnieper and a bit of BTG grill trap under own artillery umbrella and air defense protection. You can do it in a variety of ways and the ice probably carries armor over but looking at the units along the Dnieper, battalion size going on defense in suitable communities is probably reasonable. Then you have opened a threat behind the Southern front that the Russians must get rid of. Then they are forced to attack and be fought all the way to the goal to finally collapse in front of the infantry just before the finish line.
Have long thought about all the armor they have taken over in Kherson and at Izyum – I believe these are vehicles that were in the rear with technical faults. If you translate that to all fronts, surely +30% (if not more) of all armor is stationary due to technical faults because the condition of the vehicle fleet has been so poor. 3500 tanks was obviously a huge mistake. I wonder where that came from, I got it from a YouTube video where the guy had been sitting with satellite photos of all military bases and counting, so it felt reasonably ballpark and credible, and then all the experts said the same thing, so it became a truth.
How many they have we do not know, but already now we know that a couple of thousand with technical faults are also standing in the rear in various stages of repair. It should thus be +5000 Russian tanks out of combat-ready condition in total. There are tanks left but absolutely not unlimited and definitely not enough to face Ukraine’s mechanized units in our best tanks. Their IFV vehicle fleet is irrelevant when the heavy elephants take the lead.
The strike aircraft is naturally for air supremacy (which I have considered unnecessary due to the world’s strongest Air Force) and we know that they have been training on F-16 for quite a while now, so it is about flying the aircraft over the border into Ukraine, it is just flight time once that decision has been made. And already now the USA has unlocked it and the Netherlands have promised it.
Then we have the Polish and Czech (Slovakian?) Mig-29s as well, 12 + what?
That Ukraine has bought super expensive flight simulators for the A-10 also has its explanation.
Try to stop Ukraine’s spring offensive Putin 😀
Kuwait Highway 2.0 is already behind us a couple of times over but for Winter War 2.0 we are waiting for videos where Ukraine has advanced over frozen Russians in a ditch who have not died from wing grenades from drones, I think the weather is cold enough for that and it should be more than frostbite they suffer from.
Now we also have proof that the VDV is being decimated hard because someone in the thread posted that the VDV top commander has been fired. Erik14 managed to show everyone that I have no clue because the news was two weeks old…
That troop type is quite proud with a long tradition and the criticism was that they were wasted as simple infantry.
We were supposed to watch for cracks in the Russian facade and this is no bad one, he was not fired for incompetence, he was fired because he protested against incompetence which is significant.
There is probably quite a bit of complaining in the VDV which is good and even better if they refuse war. One can guess why Gerasimov came to the front.
In September the Russians took extreme losses during 2 + 3 weeks with some week gap in the middle. We sat and counted that they could not manage this much longer and then the panic mobilization came like a letter with Russian post.
With these losses before/after Christmas, and one should have counted days but has not done so, the Russians probably need to mobilize again but we hear nothing. It is January 23 and they are completely silent, January 15 there was a rumor about general mobilization. Then we heard that they tried to silence the rumor, and then we heard nothing.
If we disregard the losses as a factor – the EU has just agreed to arm Ukraine with top-shelf armor – everything they point to as a spoiled child in a toy store and they can go on the offensive as soon as the ground holds in spring whenever that is, maybe one should go back and check historically but May reasonably?
Putin has one counter-move left to play – general mobilization and the country at war footing. But we see or hear nothing. He needs a general mobilization now to have a somewhat trained defense if it is even to be counted as an attempt at resistance here – just lying down and quietly being kicked does not count.
It may very well mean that the country does not accept general mobilization but it feels quite Russian to at least try and then fail?
Someone is losing grip here (maybe) but we will probably get a Russian statement during the week in response to Leopard, well, to completely let it pass without the usual battery of empty threats is a sign that they are starting to become completely hopeless at least I think?
My guess of better Russian units left was 150,000 and they have probably decimated them by up to 15%-20% after the turn of the year because they HIMARS quite a lot of units in UFA as well which are not counted and HIMARS now reaches the elite units brought forward for this offensive, previously they were in the rear and were spared. VDV has already protested and when Spetznaz, Guards and marine infantry do the same the offensive capability will probably be completely gone because then they have nothing to attack with that makes a difference anymore.
I see a whole palette of signals where we are heading very fast here.
11:49
Ulfus, when you look at what Poland has sent to Ukraine and that they are by far the biggest contributor to knocking out Russians in ditches in GDP per capita terms, your statement is not entirely correct. They have actually sent the most to Ukraine per capita of the world’s countries AND taken in the most Ukrainian refugees.
The map below shows which countries have sent the most per capita.
The one who has sent the most in absolute terms is the USA which has given as much as the rest of the world combined.
Just wanted to correct so it is right.
Then that there are some low blows Poland – Germany is another thing which I do not oppose but that Poland has decided that “supporting Ukraine is the most important” we have hard numbers to support.
https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-support-tracker/?cookieLevel=not-set
11:57
Interesting and I did not manage to find after a quick Google search.
Pbv302 was a magazine that the gunners became quite quick to change so it could be experienced as almost continuous fire.
CV90-40 has a high rate of fire but they have several ammunition types to choose from – it says automatic cannon but the Air Force piece had a 4-round magazine or something and you always only hear 4 shots in a row in all videos at most.
I think magazine or have they automated it beyond the magazine on 9040?
Old CV90 gods are welcome to jump in here because Wikipedia was not clear enough and how it looks on 9030?
13:10
Now that was quite a heavy German site I posted as a link precisely so it could not be perceived as a partisan piece as if it came from the Polish PiS.
Now this is the way they have chosen to count, so it is not so black and white. If those who can count start counting in another way we will have to use that.
I absolutely think that direct state support per capita is not so bad here and yes, what the Germans have paid for third-country weapons to Ukraine should be counted as Germany’s but I thought it already was.
Do you have any link that shows that it is not included and how they would position themselves in that case?
If you want to mix the entire EU budget into the deck, you will have to reason about how the EUR and common interest benefited Germany and not the PIIGS and how much it cost to build up Europe in the 50s – just want to show that you can take it as far as you want 😀
13:25
They have hinted that the Slavic empire would stretch to Lisbon and not too long ago they took over half of Europe and no country really had its own sphere of interest, they were all probably satellite states with a pro-Russian government.
Now they also seem to be even worse than during post-WW2, in my opinion, as they are destroying Ukraine.
China, Iran, Turkey and some countries in the Balkans might have had something to gain from it?
I don’t think any country in Europe would benefit from a Russian-Chinese world order, neither in trade nor war.
13:30
13:12 now things are actually moving but that Ukraine is under pressure here cannot be misunderstood and they are under pressure because their country is being destroyed and they, so far, have been denied the means to sort this out entirely on their own.
Zelensky had an unusual outburst and now this.
14:08
First of all, I thought the Ukrainian tank went quite far out, he could probably have stayed a good way into the forest?
Terrible visibility on Russian tanks if they are not hatches down, at Borensberg in the 90s they had lots of Russian tanks that we got to run around in and if they are not hatches down and looking around – bad.
Western tanks have 360-degree rotating sights for the tank commander that he can sit and scout with but as soon as a western tank is somewhere, either the crew must be hatches open or they have infantry as protection.
They also have IR sights so they can see heat sources inside the forest quite far in?
That is exactly why Russian tank losses are skyrocketing because they just sit and warm themselves inside the tanks all the time.
14:10
We once did it to skip the hatch and sit in the tank, had some old I22 second lieutenant who with a roar threw himself headfirst into the tank, we had some hatch open, and there was damn food everywhere when he was done with that scolding.
14:10
Or K4, don’t remember.
14:17
Wild speculation, the only thing that could top that Challenger was announced first and that Leopard is the most numerous, would be that Leclerc arrived in Ukraine first.
Ammunition, training and fuel are unimportant, to be able to go out in the media and say – our tanks arrived in Ukraine first, that feels veeeery much like Macron. Wild speculation from the boy’s room as said, soon mom will bring food and I have to take a break.
14:29
There is probably a diplomatic escalation ladder that was refined during the Cold War and all proxy wars?
Now I think the West has been a bit too timid here but have guessed that they needed to balance China and then maybe they needed to work on Macron and Scholz over time to get all the way to getting him into the closet (I don’t know).
Then Henrik writes this out in the most pedagogically possible way here that it is only Putin and his inner circle who can be removed of all variables.
15:42
Yes, maybe I hope a bit too much, Zelensky has broken out in despair here in the media.
I remember 80,000 who came to the front immediately and then they have trained, sent 25,000 to Russia etc. A few weeks ago we learned that they drove down to the front from the training camps, how many we don’t know.
September/October, was Wagner included here?
They held back all better units, which I guessed was maybe 150,000, all autumn and let newly mobilized and LPR/DPR take the hit.
They probably still have some mobilized left as you write and now they are also compromising the better units. I think there are many losses we don’t know about and all frostbite etc. and then the constant question of what is combat capable.
Yes, there may still be some left for an offensive if they want to let it play out now?
17:36
Yes, my experience in the ME is that the more you give in, the harder they push until it stops, which seems to be exactly what Erdogan has done here. Finland has barely been mentioned in the context?
Then I can think that the provocations right now have bordered on deliberate actions but we live in a democracy and can’t do much. It could for example be the left who are NATO opponents as well.
USA will probably have to solve this for us, doesn’t really change anything in essence if it takes a little time before we join in.
18:44
Poland raises the stakes re: Leopard, not evaluating the information but posting it.
https://twitter.com/yamzallagh/status/1617496818308321286?s=46&t=giDVUSWTwLdd6_zj4rDDbQ
21:00
Is Rybar, though, but this is probably something he is pissed about so you can trust it.
Below is a summary of the six countries in South America and their equipment for Ukraine, not a small list there.
https://twitter.com/rybar_en/status/1617605136695824385?s=20&t=HljmdJ5T4_33GZ-rSeRbSA
21:05
This one is a bit in what Rybar wants to angle but three new brigades under formation, UA has soldiers and equipment.
https://twitter.com/rybar_en/status/1617603900147912705?s=20&t=HljmdJ5T4_33GZ-rSeRbSA
10:52
I am very keen on mobile anti-ship missile platforms on Gotland with long range, a team that operates them.
Large platforms with a lot of ammunition being fired are expensive and create a direct breach in the defense.
I base this on the fact that the Robot56 missile groups that were land-based survived longer than all others in all exercises.
This thing about a meat wall in a rowboat, isn’t it a bit too slow to be a threat 😀