2023-02-23 -

11:50 – Johan No.1

A thought about GLSDB (I can never remember this but have now written it down because the word glide bomb is to expose oneself to food extrusion and risk getting stuck in one of those self-reinforcing loops that takes all the energy all day 😀)

The thing is that the Russians have basically deployed all available units from the training camps or rear areas, and together with their weapon systems and ammunition, they are within a 150km radius from the front.
You might not want to count Russian territory here, but they are starting to stockpile “something” along the northern front as well, within range of new cool weapons…

Since it is cold, it is very likely that they cram as many as possible into a small area and have vehicles and ammunition with them.

It can go very badly very quickly for the Russians here. Finland wiped out entire Russian brigades during the Winter War or Continuation War with indirect fire, and in Angola, South Africa did the same with MPLA/Cuba. At Dien Bien Phu, it was the artillery that broke the back of the French main forces, etc. There are surely more examples, but well-aimed indirect fire is deadly.

Russian artillery batteries are probably quite static now with poorly trained crews, and their own counter-battery fire is probably quite lousy as well. UA capability in the area is rapidly increasing – my take on this is that besides the ammunition, UA artillery can wreak havoc fairly undisturbed here, and Russia will lose more and more artillery.

We have already had two nights with maybe 12 detonations per night in Mariupol here; Mariupol is a hub for everything: command centers, ammunition, staging areas for units, and so on.

As soon as they start thinking about pulling units back +150km, Putin will go through the roof – March 31 is the deadline according to Budanov, and by then Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts should be taken.

There are thus 326,000 (if we stick to that estimate) in Ukraine now within range of long-range weapons.

Offensive operations are probably in their last week, barely progressing forward anymore.
Only large targets waiting for a tungsten rain or GLSDB and death.

The condition of the Russian circus after a cold winter and wet spring and constant indirect fire on top of that will be absolutely miserable.

ATACMS is now unlocked if JDAM and GLSBL are ready for delivery/delivered; JDAM has the range that has been the central argument against ATACMS before.

Now Johan thinks the smart move would be not to pre-announce ATACMS and then, once the 150km is cleared, hit them with those too?

JDAM is probably strategic communication to Russia, but Putin really handled strategic communication quite well himself when two Satan II missiles crashed during launch – I laughed so hard when LW wrote that on the blog, just the name makes you start smiling.

In northern Luhansk, (all of the West’s) SOF swarm around like a ground hornet swarm with night vision, and as soon as the Russian side runs out of batteries (which don’t seem to be a staple for them) or runs out of fuel, they are just prey during the dark hours of the day.

SOF don’t care about mud because they run around with fins anyway.

Behind the southern front, it looks dangerously thin now for the Russian side; what has been impossible throughout the war is now within reach – the Azov thrust (TM I don’t remember but nicely titled).

If they start losing large amounts of everything in the rear at the southern front, it contributes to thinning out.

If losses are greater than I understood at Vuhledar, it has drained the area behind the southern front even more, and it seems so if you run Wagner from Bakhmut to Vuhledar and have to mobilize the next group of 5,000 men according to the governor in Mariupol. They have attacked many times since DPR stormed with drawn sabers across the fields, and Ukraine has carried out two epic counterattacks with failed Russian attacks on top – the big chaos day probably has several cousins here.

A crossing of the Dnieper closest to me is just asking the Russians for trouble, in my opinion, given how little they care about that flank.
It would open a threat that they would have to send BTGs to, which could be grilled within artillery range and ground attack, and further drain the area behind the southern front of reserves just before they want to attack towards Melitopol or Mariupol, or both.

I saw on Deepstatemap that UA has taken a few hundred meters in the forests south of Kreminna – with 130,000 Russians in the area, that should be impossible, and it signals that numbers are not a strength at all for the Russians.

That then leads us to the question of what is a strength for the Russians – they don’t have the technology, they don’t have the competence, they don’t have the ammunition, they don’t have the will, they don’t have the numbers, and where they locally have it, numbers are not a strength for them – looks pretty hopeless from where I sit in the stands looking down at the sandbox.

They also don’t have the endurance to produce materiel, no endless stocks of key materiel, no ability to mobilize anything that would make a difference on top of everything else they are terrible at.

Stalin said that quantity is a quality in itself, but obviously that’s not true, otherwise they would have rolled over Ukraine in northern Luhansk a few weeks ago.

The window for something fun for Ukraine is also starting to close, a local counteroffensive that is beyond consolidation of positions.

However, we can be calm that northern Luhansk will keep rolling because SOF don’t take winter holidays. Then infantry with light armored support will follow when the Russians are in bad shape, and air brigades don’t care about ground conditions either.
In forests, it doesn’t get as swampy as in the fields, and up in northern Luhansk, the soil is sandier.

My money is on UA continuing to press relentlessly at northern Luhansk as hard as they can until the area is liberated and they reach the NS supply line outside UA’s land border.

Ukraine actually wanted the war this little – in the BBC article about the “10 mile column,” they hadn’t mined the roads down, and the patrol that was up near the border was supposed to withdraw and report what the column was doing. They didn’t plan to go all-in before they knew the column had hostile intentions.

That’s how bad the Russians were – they waited for the Olympics to end so the frost would thaw, and they got stuck in the terrain. They had to drive up on the bigger roads, and in every community, angry citizens threw Molotov cocktails at the column until it stopped.

There are those who still claim that Ukraine was fully prepared and that France’s and Germany’s promises that Russia did not intend to attack meant nothing.

Why hadn’t Ukraine mined the roads then? That’s the first thing you do, for heaven’s sake, and plan ambushes along the entire stretch down to Kiev.

Ukraine did EVERYTHING to avoid provoking a war, I think that has been completely clear all along and this article from a credible publication reinforces the assumption that Ukraine has not mobilized and prepared for war in the way they should have.

Klitschko will challenge Zelensky in the next presidential election and this point is guaranteed to be included – Zelensky will have to live with this for the rest of his life as his big mistake.

Then we have Budanov who believes that the Russians’ artillery ammunition is down to 30%.
https://twitter.com/christopherjm/status/1628355820877389824?s=46&t=Kj6WCk_19Wn0dX_zV0jdAg

If GLSDB can wreak havoc well for a month or so, it could become truly critical for Russia.

Now Budanov is also an excellent psyops operator but there are many signals now that the Russians already have a crisis with ammunition, at Vuhledar before the attack they got enough for one (1) day. After one day of attack – how were they supposed to defend themselves (now they died instead in one morning but I think it’s a relevant question).

I believe one factor before the Ardennes offensive was ammunition availability. Then absolutely China and hope for negotiations.

(It will be fun to see Ukraine shrug off China’s peace envoy here, probably tomorrow so the thread will explode on a positive Friday evening as it should).

Fast forward 1-2 weeks here, the mud will come, the vehicle fleet is in poor condition, GLSDB wreaks havoc in the rear, they have difficulty getting ammunition and drone-dropped wing grenades and guided 155mm shells take out everything they find near the front.

It will be bayonets for the Russians this spring and acrobatic screams across the fields. In defense, they will be so short on close-range anti-tank weapons, anti-tank missiles, and all kinds of armor that you almost feel sorry for them when old techniques like trying to puncture tracks with bayonets will be tested and evaluated.

The war is really already over but it still requires the Russians to throw in the towel for it to formally end.

Regarding Bakhmut, it seems to remain critical up north but I don’t think they will get up on the hills when the mud comes, everything just becomes slippery, slick, and difficult and down on the fields even harder, and the infantry can’t stay dry and quickly freezes to a severely reduced combat value.

It’s damn hard to have to slip around all the time or walk in knee-deep mud, especially if you have 30kg of equipment and everything is wet with rain and above +10°C.

Sunday and Monday the temperature will shoot upwards and it will rain heavily if I read the weather report correctly.

Then the Russians will probably hide in houses in whole groups/platoons as protection against the rain and you can start putting guided ammunition on pretty good larger infantry targets as well.

It feels like one should try to hold the city if possible, before a counterattack has played out north of Bakhmut nothing should be critical at all and I think the Bakhmut panic is slowly starting to loosen its grip here, I’m starting to feel like I’m the only one still focusing on the area north of Bakhmut 😀

According to Deepstatemap, the Russians are starting to get up on high ground west of Yahidne (“behind” Bakhmut) but I wonder if the weekend’s rain will solve this for Ukraine, if they have gotten that far.

If neither the Cossack nor Gregg are worried, then we shouldn’t be either, I think.

11:59 – Johan No.1

And then we have a negative Gregg just above 😬
You never learn to check the information before posting…

12:54 – MatsExtrude

Don’t dare risk my boat spot so to avoid slipping onto the wrong track I’m content to give +100!

Or actually, I have to add that I laughed heartily at the phrasing:
“It will be bayonets for the Russians this spring and acrobatic screams across the fields.”

13:07 – Johan No.1

There should have been more vivid words between acrobatic and screams but I moved on a bit too fast 😀

13:15 – MatsExtrude

Thought it was perfect, the image you got in your head when the Russian storms forward became even more vivid when trying to visualize it!

13:53 – Johan No.1

There should be fewer than 10,000 up at the northern front and it also feels like the weather is done now.
Well planned you have to say about the Russians here 👍

https://twitter.com/Militarylandnet/status/1628676673200586752?s=20