10:29 – Johan No.1
My take on the combined arms warfare we will see –
UA opens up with indirect fire against all armor in the defensive lines and then the artillery and light vehicles they get hold of over a period.
Simultaneously they hunt Russians in trenches with drone grenades and when enough flee into the concealed fortification they put a 155mm shell into it.
After that, tanks with direct fire stand beyond close-range distance and work on fixed targets, buildings, bunkers, or others they can reach.
The mechanized counterattack becomes Western armor in the lead because now they have the numbers and mine-clearing equipment and probably follow modified NATO doctrine.
When Russians in defense systems go into firing positions, they get targeted air bursts over them; we have seen a couple of beta tests that have been enormously effective.
The actual breakthrough then happens with minimal losses.
The offensive task force is attempted to be delayed with remotely laid mines and struck with guided indirect fire that is drone-guided when they stop. They probably try to fight the task force with all long-range weapon systems they have, including air support if they feel they need to, to reduce it maximally before it hits the breakthrough area.
The Western armor certainly takes up securing the breakthrough also in a mobile defense battle, and as soon as possible, they try to push through the breakthrough and get the mobile combat going that has collapsed front segments earlier.
I bet five hundred from Erik14 that there will be some changes in Western doctrine going forward when this has played out.
The combined arms warfare doctrine that KOS showed, I thought did not handle close-range anti-tank weapons sufficiently, and those are presumably heavily supplied. Today I experience close-range anti-tank weapons and ground-based anti-tank missiles as quite a big threat.
In the new landscape with drones, it is harder to hide armor, and since top-attack weapons have also developed greatly, they are very vulnerable today in static defense.
A defender’s solution to the problem could then be a forest of close-range anti-tank weapons and anti-tank missiles, which US breach doctrine does not quite handle but which UA will probably handle excellently with drone-dropped wing grenades and air bursts.
I also thought the doctrine did not handle the counterattack from the task force well enough, which is the biggest threat, and there they will try to decimate it maximally before it arrives. Maybe even before the attack starts if it is located?
Yesterday came a rather specific summary from FriaUkraina that someone posted in the thread, and then we have had two figures regarding northern Luhansk – 125,000 from Gregg and 130,000 + 1,000 tanks + 700 artillery from someone else.
Defmon has started listing brigades on Russian soil up at the northern front, and something flew by about seeing movements in training camps in Kursk and somewhere else. He has well over 10 brigades, and the Russians can’t completely abandon border control along the northern front or empty all of Belarus for crowd control? – not a large number, I think it sums up, but maybe enough for an offensive attempt down towards the area west of Kupiansk?
Fria Ukraina –
44 brigades distributed over 113 regiments, 92 battalions, around 40 special unit groups. In total, there should be up to 351,800 Russian soldiers and officers in Ukraine.
-2790 artillery systems -840 rocket artillery systems -4160 armored personnel carriers of various kinds -1740 tanks.
https://twitter.com/FriaUkraina/status/1625926327277584386?s=20
https://twitter.com/FriaUkraina/status/1625926333308993541?s=20
I stand by that the remaining capable units were around 150,000 and that they have been pushed hard since January 6 when we got the first reports of VDV in attack; the rest are mobilized.
Since yesterday, we know that 97% of the Russian army’s maneuver units are dedicated to the Ukraine war.
The numbers above on materiel are thus what they can muster after a year of losses and a year of war.
At the start of the war, most serious analysts reported that the Russians had 3,300 tanks. I found a YouTuber who used commercial satellite images and counted the same number. It sounded like it was confirmed, done deal 👍
In hindsight, I wonder if he was the primary source for everything.
When we started approaching high losses, we discussed it again early autumn, and I don’t remember exactly what we said, but it was losses + estimated 1,500 left + those in the rear with faults or something, 5,000?
1,800 tanks feels like a good total number they have left. Then how many are rolling or standing with technical faults in the rear is unclear. Should be at least 30%.
The same applies for IFVs and artillery – probably quite good numbers.
First of all, we can probably assume that the focus point is northern Luhansk and the southern front.
Siversk to Vuhledar is to put pressure on the center so Ukraine pulls down reserves there, which they have not done.
It is good tactics to try to secure the northern flank against the Oskil river.
It is also good tactics to try to reach Zaporozhye and up towards Dnipro because it cuts off supply routes and opens a threat to Ukrainian units further east.
351,000 sounds like a lot, but think like this –
Not all are offensive spearheads; this is the total.
130,000 in northern Luhansk whose combat value is falling fast.
They have taken maybe 60,000 away from the war in January and the same number in February – 120,000. We don’t know when the figure is from, but we know their attrition rate. (1:2 and 30%-40% who do not have war-related injuries).
They need defense in the city of Donetsk and along the old ceasefire line; they have units against Siversk, Soledar, Bakhmut, and the communities around Donetsk.
They have defense along the Dnipro and along the southern front.
Remaining, there is probably an offensive capacity for the southern front I think of about +50,000 roughly.
They will naturally fail as spectacularly as at Vuhledar or up in northern Luhansk.
No reason to worry thus 👍
10:45 – Johan No.1
Sweden had a small air defense gun that was turned with a crank for horizontal and vertical, it was on wheels but you folded them up if I remember correctly.
So not the powered ones we sent to the Baltics.
The annoying thing with that gun was that if it was not standing completely on flat ground and you turned it too much (to have some fun…) it started spinning around by itself where it gained speed on the “downhill,” and you had to sit through 5-6 turns before it started slowing down – you only did that once.
11:42 – Johan No.1
Regarding Hersch, it is not uncommon that anti-West, anti-USA, and anti-NATO have turned out to be pro-Russian.
Then the whole anti-everything movements often slide into support for Russia as well.
One can’t help but wonder what the West would have been without Russia’s subversive activities here.
11:57 – Johan No.1
CEO of SAAB hat on here – it would be damn stupid not to send Gripen to Ukraine because if they choose it, they can equip their entire air force with Gripen with Western funds – many years of work for SAAB.
The same with CV90, when the war is over, half of NATO will start placing orders on CV90, and now they apparently could scale up significantly immediately but build factories and hire.
They can barely handle all orders for NLAW.
Archer will probably also become highly sought after, sad that the dumper version is out but they MUST be able to get them into production again?
If we are now going into a recession, it would be great if we could get jobs and export revenues from our Russia-killing weapons.
12:11 – MatsExtrude
+1 Air support is starting to feel a bit overplayed, but I at least want to see them get Gripen (or F15/16) + A10. I think they could clean up well on the battlefield and minimize Ukrainian losses.
13:04 – Johan No.1
I guess I’ll answer since you mention me 😀
Yes, you are definitely one of those in the thread who believe that Russia can keep this up for a long time. They have the numbers and are a large country, as you usually say?
Now you wrote “war for at least a year” but you usually write that they can wear down Ukraine, that Ukraine can never win a “war of attrition” and similar things.
If I check back, I’m pretty sure you previously wrote during the war that Ukraine might not be able to avoid ceding territory in the end and that it might be a suitable end to the suffering.
I recall you fairly recently wrote about the Russian offensive to come, that they have mobilized more than we think (without hard numbers but as an assumption).
We’ll just have to park this until sometime in the spring and see who was right about the information.
If Ukraine goes on and wins the war and the Russians get pushed out, you have been completely wrong in all your predictions throughout the war.
If Ukraine cedes land in the end, I was wrong.
It’s late summer in Ukraine until sometime in September 😀
13:05 – Johan No.1
At the risk of some typo, I refer to the gist to absolve myself of responsibility 😀
13:43 – Johan No.1
Now it’s one of those days with “you said” and “I never said”.
How do you check the history in the thread? I couldn’t manage with the search function.
Thought I’d check the weeks around the start of the war and see how the discussion went then for a little calibration 😀
14:05 – MatsExtrude
I have also tried to find old posts via the site but there doesn’t seem to be any decent archive where you can see posts month by month and day by day. I end up using Google. If you add
site:cornucopia.se before the search term it will search only here.
site:cornucopia.se mysearchterm
But of course, that’s not good enough to find, for example, articles written in February 2022.
14:10 – MatsExtrude
Managed to figure out how to find what was written during a month. Try for example
https://cornucopia.se/2022/02/
However, all posts come in a row so it takes time to search through and it shows all posts written, not just those related to “Defense”.
Then you can find everything related to the category “Defense” via
https://cornucopia.se/category/forsvar/
But then it starts from the newest and you have to scroll, so it’s hopeless.
15:05 – Johan No.1
No, that’s not how it is 😀, even though I would need 13 correct on the football pool to cover the electricity bills.
But it’s interesting to see how the discussion has developed and if the goalposts have moved, below are probably among my first posts on the subject from February 24.
Now you could argue that I have repeated the same mantra for a whole year which is tragic but that’s because the Russian army is even sadder than me…
—
All the information about the pre-bombardment I think shows “scattered showers” rather than a traditional Russian pre-bombardment where they wipe out kilometer squares on the map.
—
If I understand this correctly, the Russian attack on Kharkiv has almost stalled east and north of the city.
In Luhansk and Donetsk the rebels have started advancing on foot to the west and they probably won’t get far.
Russian pre-bombardment was a minor joke.
The impression I get is a half-hearted attempt at an invasion?
Gives me a bit of Hitler vibes when he sat in his bunker ordering divisions to attack that existed on paper but in reality consisted of a few hundred men.
Has it gone so far that everyone in Russia is following this charade fully aware that it will fail?
Putin says – unleash the Iskander cloud.
They fire their 50 Iskanders at targets chosen by dice, lean back and say they’ve done their part?
If Russia is now dragging itself into economic ruin for this joke of an invasion, the leadership is completely disconnected from reality.
I probably haven’t fully trusted Cornu’s mocking descriptions of how bad the Russian army and Russia are but it seems to be true.
—
Has anyone heard from Putin?
Since the speech was pre-recorded he had a couple of days to do what he planned, what was that?
Is he now sitting in a bunker with a well-paid Spetsnaz brigade that got a couple of million SEK each in a bank in Bern?
15:11 – Johan No.1
This blog and all the comments are quite a well-summarized historical archive.
Every day the day’s events have been summarized in detail.
There is probably no equivalent archive in Sweden if I may guess?
15:35 – Johan No.1
There has been quite a lot of wishful thinking here over the past year – Leo2, CV90, that Ukraine will survive the war, etc.
Now I took a look in the rearview mirror and quite early the Russians fled from Kiev and then they have left front after front.
The only reasonable thing is that they continue to leave the last remaining fronts northern Luhansk, Donbass, southern front and Crimea, right?
I can’t see that it’s wishful thinking in the way you do, nothing has changed to Russia’s advantage and they are retreating slowly, or advancing backwards as Darth Putin says.
The completely logical thing is to assume that they will continue with that until the war is lost, right?
15:43 – MatsExtrude
That’s true, an impressive war diary!
Surely some researcher will sit in 50 years and dig into everything that has been written and then conclude that Cornucopia was the best source they could find.
(They will also be amazed by the character DENGAMLE who must have been a fictional and mythical figure because no one can have lived as long as claimed here..)
15:52 – Johan No.1
Entertained myself by checking what was written last year in February and onward and one thing stands out – this war went catastrophically badly for Russia already on day 1.
I’m surprised they haven’t given up already, you have to give them credit that they can take defeat after defeat like a man actually.
16:32 – Johan No.1
Forgot – yes, something there I wrote that was wrong you are right about 👍
10:12 – Johan No.1
It seems confirmed that Krasna Hora has been retaken or at least is contested. If you remember the broadside straight into the march of the killer snails westward from Krasna Hora, it feels a bit like that now.
If you have listened to the Cossack’s daily updates on Bakhmut or Gregg, you haven’t been worried.
Yesterday’s scoop by the blogger that 97% of the Russian army is in Ukraine is probably exactly right if you look at the maneuver units, as was also written? This has been discussed quite a few times over the past year that they have emptied the military bases.
The entire VDV is there along with the entire naval infantry and all Spetsnaz, and it was mentioned earlier in 2022 that all brigades are represented. The most well-known names like the unit in Moscow that is supposed to prevent coups and the 1st Shock Army, etc., are all in Ukraine. They sent the first battalion, then the second battalion, and finally the training battalion. Then this year’s conscripts came and went to die in the potato fields.
First of all, one should probably remind that Russia is not the least bit afraid of NATO here. If they were, they would have deployed 30%-40% in Ukraine and kept a strong border defense. Someone wondered yesterday in the thread why they are not afraid of China and Iran – well, that is a question.
The existential threat that NATO is said to pose to Russia is, like everything else, a lie and just a pretext to commit violence against peaceful neighbors who want to live in peace and quiet – now we have irrefutable proof of that and that NATO’s expansion would somehow be the underlying reason for the war – loooooooong.
Do not misunderstand this as if they have unleashed the country Russia loose in the cow pasture here because they have what – 500,000 men in their various agencies and private armies as well – they are needed for crowd control in Russia and in the power struggles among the elite. Now I probably counted Wagner in there and Rosgvardia has probably taken a hit so maybe 430,000 left?
Then I’m not entirely sure where I got 500,000 from, I tried to sum up sometime with Putin’s private army, Shoigu’s private army, FSB, other agencies, Rosgvardia, Omon and Wagner so I might have overestimated a bit, don’t know?
This is huge news because Russia has really gone all-in in Ukraine while losing big.
Then I think the rest of the EU can stop messing around about not being able to lower our defense capability, 3% of saber-wielding overaged Russians with T62s are not a threat. The EU could absolutely reduce defense capability radically over 5-6 years and build it up again.
I’m starting to suspect that some seriously begin to see Ukraine as a threat instead and that is why they don’t send more. That said, Sweden has sent more than expected, but of course it would be smart to send Gripen as well for future orders/advertising and to let Ukraine win faster, but we have made a very big contribution here.
Bad thinking overall, I think, from quite a bunch of other countries in the EU.
The countries that could be threatened by a hostile Ukraine – Poland, the Baltics, and Slovakia – have emptied their defenses of materiel because they do not perceive Ukraine as a threat – the threat is correctly identified as Russia.
Especially Poland suffered enormously from Ukraine’s ravages when they were part of the Soviet Union but they can see straight and think clearly unlike a whole bunch of safer countries that also consider themselves morally better than Poland.
The only threat Ukraine might pose to the EU is if post-war is handled terribly and the army has to find supplies in other ways. Then we get Europe’s strongest mafia that will also make a difference in the underworld. One can only hope that we smoothly integrate Moldova and Ukraine into both the EU and NATO. Ukraine has a debt to collect after this.
Apparently Macron has had talks with China and what a nice signal that it is not Xi who comes 😀
Then there wasn’t exactly big game at the Ramstein meeting and I think everyone is twisting around with the aircraft just like they did with the tanks.
They probably bit on Ukraine’s pitch about the Russian major offensive and sent tanks but now that they see how it goes maybe they start thinking again, why send all of Europe’s materiel to Ukraine, can they be trusted in five years?
I have no idea and everything above should be considered highly speculative, I’m just trying to find a reason why they are still stingy with materiel.
However, we can be confident that with the latest armor deliveries underway, Ukraine has received enough to win the war, aircraft or not.
Then to LW’s excellent translation of the soldier’s little red book where I took with me that 40% of the losses are not combat-related. There was something about 30% of the wounded in Horlivka being frostbite but 40% hits harder.
1:2 and 40% on top of that – that’s a lot of Russians who have done their time in Ukraine.
Also fun that they haven’t kept up with guided 155mm ammunition or drone-dropped wing grenades, “artillery is not as dangerous as they say”… tell that to a tired Russian in a trench who has to sleep with both eyes open.
I haven’t found anything interesting at the fronts so I have to conclude that it is February 16 and all-out war or mobilization is absent.
GeneralSVR claims that Putin will announce mobilization of 200,000 men by spring. I park that to see if he has any grain of truth in his predictions. The account should be read with the highest warning flag, feels like FSB psyops.
It will be interesting going forward because we have two quite stubborn positions in the thread that refuse to die –
-Russian offensive is coming (soon) and it is (*high numbers).
-The Russians can keep going for several years, they have the numbers (and can wear down Ukraine).
As is well known, I believe both arguments are wrong and I think both arguments are based on pro-Russian psyops but if you don’t look in the rearview mirror enough, the assumption is quite reasonable. That’s kind of the hallmark of pro-Russian psyops, they are good at making it sound reasonable.
It sounds reasonable for the simple reason that it is almost incomprehensible if it were not true because then everything we have learned about Russia is wrong.
When you see through the smoke you understand that it is not true but the smoke is thick.