09:26 – Johan No.1
In any case, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the Russian southern front commander has finally gotten his units in order and with a scream orders everything that rolls, walks, or can barely move forward straight into the mud and towards Zaporizhia.
Rebell posted this yesterday and since a film says more than a thousand words, here is one on how “The Great Attack on Zaporizhia” will go and how 15,000 Russians drown in the fields.
It will probably be a sea of snorkels slowly waving forward before they stop breathing or something.
https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1630913565073764359?t=7vrsw-xnVx2V9cA46_fn1A&s=19
Erik 14 posted yesterday in his exemplary night race that Sweden has donated paving stones, they together with AMX-10 can cross watercourses quite easily.
A couple of weeks before the offensive starts, front-line pre-bombardment should begin, we are not there yet but then all heavy vehicles in defense, artillery, and air defense will be destroyed and the Russian in the trench will regret not emptying it of water when he lies on the water-filled bottom, holding his ears and reading on Telegram that Putin has just promised that victory is around the corner.
-we will see quite quickly when it is time.
Bakhmut holds ✊
If you see this, they will try to circle Chasiv Yar now because it was not possible to get straight north towards Ivanivske. You don’t have to be a general to understand how it will go.
https://twitter.com/FriaUkraina/status/1631044568182411266?s=20
SW of Bakhmut it has probably broken now but from the south and east there is pressure.
North of Bakhmut, the fighting will continue to be intense but again UA has road M03 to attack along southwards and they have an armored brigade and an elevation advantage against the Russian team that is below them all the way to Yahidne.
They also hold dominant terrain SW of Dubovo-Vasulivka and Deepstatemap was updated last night (checked very carefully!) The fact is that the Russians have not moved for a few days now.
Who has the easiest time getting reinforcements?
I guess UA because they have offensive reserves and battalions 2, 3, 4 from the brigades in the nearby area.
If you follow Defmon’s unit map, RU must pull reserves from Kreminna or Donetsk.
Who has the best logistics?
RU storms across open fields and carries what they can, inside Bakhmut there are probably ammunition depots and Chasiv Yar probably has everything else needed or the M03 road?
It’s starting to go completely crazy with demands from clearly pro-Ukrainian people now that UA should leave Bakhmut.
VDV knee-deep in mud across a field or VDV in a well-prepared defense with near PV and PV missile – when would you rather meet them, because meet them you will.
Then I sense a bit of a power struggle here between Russia and Ukraine in Bakhmut. For Russia, they are desperate for a win and Bakhmut can be dressed up as a win.
For UA, denying them this win has value, but only to a certain limit of course – cost-benefit.
For UA itself, Bakhmut has no strategic value and they are just falling back to a prepared defense west of it but right now I feel many forget to factor in what this means for Russia and what units they are wasting here.
UA has just left the area east of the watercourse inside the city and if it becomes a delaying battle through the city, which it probably will, Russian losses will skyrocket.
Looking at the terrain, the city of Bakhmut itself is a nothing burger since Ukraine holds all the high ground around it.
They ran this in Severodonetsk and it was exactly the same then and that the Ukrainian army was finished, ammunition shortage, they would get beaten and all that. When they left Lysychansk, the international legion and SOF were there at night clearing out and they probably retook the city 3-4 times before they hit the ground?
Here they probably leave once to take new positions.
Regarding 155mm ammunition – now there will be more of that stuff going forward ✊
https://www.spiegel.de/politik/drei-stufen-plan-eu-kommission-will-munitionsherstellung-drastisch-ankurbeln-a-a3bcbd19-4680-4b63-910e-fc75c93c5f4f
“Accordingly, Russia fires 20,000 to 60,000 artillery shells per day, around ten times more than Ukraine. However, Europe’s defense industry can only produce 20,000 to 25,000 shells per month.
However, the Estonians estimate, based on information from the armaments industry, that this number could be increased sevenfold. As early as this year, the production of one million 155 millimeter grenades is possible, the costs would be around four billion euros.”
Since this figure has been circulating before, I recognize it – is there anyone in the thread who knows if this is all ammunition for all indirect weapons or is it only 155mm for the production of 20,000 – 25,000/month?
Defensenews believes that UA has used 3,000/day during the past year.
The Ukrainian Army has expended roughly 3,000 rounds per day defending its territory against Russia’s invading forces,
https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2023/01/31/france-australia-to-jointly-send-new-ammunition-to-ukraine/
The US seems able to increase to 90,000/month in two years – 1 million 155mm shells/year
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/24/us/politics/pentagon-ukraine-ammunition.html
Rheinmetall themselves say they can produce half a million 155mm/year.
https://www.voanews.com/a/rheinmetall-eyes-boost-in-munitions-output-himars-production-in-germany-ceo/6938145.html
So just one company – Rheinmetall, can produce half of what can be produced in the entire US?
No direct numbers but Poland and the Czech Republic are exponentially increasing their ammunition production.
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/11/25/ukraine-war-arms-made-at-pace-highest-since-cold-war-as-europes-east-aids-kyiv
There is also guided ammunition than I knew of, the French are supposed to produce with Australia’s help “thousands” of katana (it sounds terribly effective).
https://www.armyrecognition.com/defense_news_january_2023_global_security_army_industry/australia_and_france_to_launch_joint_production_of_155mm_artillery_rounds_for_ukraine.html
UA therefore needs 730,000 – 2.2 million artillery shells per year if we go by the article above.
The stocks are not empty yet and if the EU + USA + Korea + Australia increase their production, they will probably keep pace I think but if a spring offensive from Ukraine completely fails (it won’t) and they shoot away everything in an offensive it could get worrying.
Ukraine is also getting better at managing its ammunition.
The shrewd notice that the US and Krauss Maffei talk about 155mm and the need is presumably the total need for all calibers for indirect fire.
This includes 105mm, Eastern bloc calibers, and GRK.
If Krauss Maffei produces half a million 155mm rounds, how many can they produce of 82mm and 120mm winged grenades?
Then we have the “South America deal” – there was ammunition there but I don’t remember how much.
I can’t dig deeper than this after a Google search, but I am quite sure we will never see Ukraine run out of ammunition to the point that it gives Russia an advantage. And I am also quite sure that the spring offensive is fully resourced.
– It is a psyops threat dangled to create concern in the West.
On the other hand, the one recruiting Palestinians for its army and asking for North Korean ammunition – that is Russia, and they seem to be short of both soldiers and ammunition, otherwise they probably wouldn’t have gone to Palestine 😀
09:29 – Johan No.1
I think a nuanced picture of the YLE article emerged during the day yesterday, partly explanations from the thread participants, then Gregg, and then two more who spoke in YLE – Knasapelle posted.
None of them really disagreed or went harder but tried to nuance the picture, which I find quite telling.
Something that struck me during the day yesterday and never came up – which units has the Finn trained during his time in Ukraine?
UA officers have been trained in the US since the early 2000s and since 2014 the UA army has been actively trained in a US-led program.
We have all seen videos of the strangest mechanized failures where they spin like Indians around a wagon fort and we have our own image of mechanized combat. The only thing I remember from our mechanized combat was juice mixers all over the fields and a reserve major with a shiny forehead who smelled of anxiety.
You can wear out a mech brigade in hours with a bit of bad luck, thousands dead. Ukraine has not done that during a year of high-intensity war – is that a weakness or a strength (I know what the anxiety-smelling reserve major would have said)?
Moreover, the Ukrainian army has combat experience which not many others can “brag” about, not even Finland today even though they have previous lessons to benefit from which obviously still apply.
UA is probably training 3-4 brigades for breakthrough this spring and if the territorial riflemen do not master combined arms warfare, maybe it is not decisive for the war?
Pretty sure he was not training GUR/SBU because then he would not have expressed himself as he does, it is one thing to train to kill Russians and a whole different thing to do it every day for a whole year without being seen.
09:42 – MatsExtrude
+1000 Very well written, laughed heartily several times, “You could stand and slap Putin when he stands behind a red line with the text red line underneath and get away with it” 🙂 🙂 🙂
09:50 – MatsExtrude
+100
10:09 – Johan No.1
Hasn’t Russia first taken from its reserve stocks, then from Belarus’s reserve stocks, and now lastly from North Korea’s reserve stocks?
Isn’t everything connected so if the North Koreans send their ammunition to Russia, South Korea can send their ammunition to Ukraine, I think?
Hägglunds could increase production by 700% with existing factories (risking that I remember wrong) so I think there is some redundancy with other weapon manufacturers as well, or is Hägglunds the only one in the world that has redundancy in the manufacturing chains?
10:15 – Johan No.1
I then wonder if yesterday’s tweet from Free Ukraine is true when they said that the GRU drone group knocked out six tanks in one night with drones.
That is an incredible number from a group in a small front section but here it sounds like you run out of space to carve marks on the drones before they finally break?
This drone-dropped winged grenade thing I find incredible, the Russians are defenseless after a whole year and it is the world’s simplest weapon.
10:29 – MatsExtrude
Unfortunately, the Russians have learned to do the same thing (drone dropping). Fortunately not to the same extent as Ukraine but considering that consumer drones are used, they probably have no problem importing them from China.
Here one might have wished that not so many detailed videos had been released from the Ukrainian side.. Admittedly they have not shown how, for example, the release mechanisms work but otherwise you can find all the info needed.
Sorry, now I might have sounded a bit negative so I’ll finish with:
Ukraine seems to be further developing it and they probably have a solid lead (thinking of the one with double armor-piercing grenades for example). Also, we have seen videos of them hijacking Russian drones.
11:12 – Johan No.1
In all these weapon races, it is my clear impression that Ukraine can scale up to a global scale and the Russians are still struggling to get it to work.
Yes, they have Lancets, they drop grenades and use some countermeasures against drones but they don’t get it to the level Ukraine can deliver.
My observation and opinion.
11:30 – Johan No.1
That said Tankfri, I completely agree that the US does not want to start dipping into the reserve stocks and there is probably some Pentagon doctrine that they are not allowed to do so either?
11:44 – Johan No.1
Yes, I was satisfied with that one 😀
13:07 – Johan No.1
12:10 – the winter offensive went to hell, Ukraine refuses to give up Bakhmut, Ukraine sends clouds of drones towards Moscow and Russian rebels post videos from inside Russia and call for revolution.
This feels quite coordinated and above all it feels like more of the same is coming.
Very pleasing to see, the positivity radar is at +200.
13:09 – Johan No.1
The bubble list went to hell.
13:10 – Johan No.1
Brilliant way to force Russia to leave Ukraine and turn inward.
13:44 – MatsExtrude
I raise and turn on full radar + 360!
13:57 – Johan No.1
Yes, Kiruna Swedes it should be 👍
Good article here 👇
https://www.dn.se/nyheter/varlden/svenskar-lockades-till-arbetarnas-paradis-mordades-av-stalins-bodlar/
No, they did not escape poverty care, now I am doing my homework and linking.
“The first Swedes, a group of 30 people, arrived in Karelia in 1923. This group consisted of factory workers with families. After that, people from Kiruna joined where many were miners [3] and others who believed that communist life would improve people’s conditions.[4]”
https://sv.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirunasvenskarna
15:54 – Johan No.1
Wagner wants to show that they have taken one of the tall buildings in Bakhmut so they drag up three guys with instruments and one with a flag who get to stand and play while the drone sweeps over.
You don’t know whether to laugh or cry, so incredibly much work put into this short video.
https://twitter.com/Militarylandnet/status/1631269767351787521?s=20
09:13 – Johan No.1
The accent man was barely able to sit still while watching, we usually nag about them having the 2500 suicide drones to unleash when the ammunition shortage comes up (painting!).
https://youtu.be/_Fk3qAvhcWU
It also definitely feels like a full-fledged campaign to take out everything within 150km right now. There are explosions every day all over the staging areas.
The last time this happened, we got about a month of it before it died down (ran out of targets?).
Then that they are really going deep against high-value targets – you remember that Russia was supposed to unleash nuclear weapons if a single shell fell on Russian soil, now drones with the Ukrainian flag are falling around Moscow 😀
They are complete walkovers for the Russian dictatorship, not a single red line was a red line. You could stand and slap Putin when he stands behind a red line with the text red line underneath and get away with it.
I see the nuclear threat as Russian psyops, conscious or unconscious, and that not even a Hulk-crying Putin with a bright red left cheek would manage to press the button, the chain is probably broken anyway.
This drone campaign against targets inside Russia has probably led to acute panic attacks everywhere and it has only just begun, which is hysterically funny, and in the middle of Ukrainian ammunition shortage as well…
Something else that has made rounds together with the ammunition shortage is that Ukraine’s brigades are about to break from all the losses, and the one about Russia’s long-game war (all three were sorted out yesterday), that Russia “will go all in”.
That variant is supposed to make us believe that they have nothing to lose and therefore will win because we have something to lose and because we blink first, and because they just go on without blinking (how dry their eyes become from that is not clear).
My take on this – Russia consists of a couple of circles of elites, of which those with the most power have private armies or are tied to agencies. Dog eat dog society and the biggest weapon wins. They murder each other and sleep is surely a scarce commodity when you sleep with at least one eye open and constantly wonder if someone has bribed your bodyguard’s loyalty.
Russia has seriously overplayed its hand here, there was a good video yesterday from Icarus society that someone light in the thread posted, all credit to them.
We know they ran an Afghan straight through the whole package (probably also the rocket troops) but their doctrine was always “large bark but very small dog”. Have parade battalions and give the impression of being a big player but actually not – that doctrine spontaneously emerged after the Soviet collapse because apparently the oligarchs spend more on luxury yachts than the navy gets.
What is the Ukraine war – it would be a land grab and a staff expedition that Russia got away with, nothing else.
The existential war against NATO is rhetoric they laugh heartily about privately after a glass of mash and some pickled cucumber.
Now the winter offensive was all in and that is very telling – it tells us that Russia does not at all feel that they can handle a long war to wear down Ukraine, which they have tried to fool us into believing they can and want.
The winter offensive ended before they burned through everything due to the weather so there will likely be a spring offensive from the Russian side as well in the same spirit – all in. Where I get that from I have yet to figure out, haven’t thought that far.
But after that?
They are not mobilizing today, March 2, and I think a million Russians with weapons is a bigger threat to themselves than it is to Ukraine.
Sun Tzu has been incorrectly quoted (I think) that you should always give the opponent an out but then in terms of giving up land in Ukraine.
You should give them an out but that is what they get to keep/get back/not be exposed to if they leave Ukraine.
The Russian elite has a couple of tough choices ahead –
-arm the country Russia and see what happens, will it be 1905 or 1917 all over again or will we become a great power (lack of mobilization is a not-so-subtle hint, we are far past the latest mobilization date already).
-Voluntarily leave Ukraine as long as they still have bargaining chips. Get through a negotiated solution with China’s help and then blatantly lie to the citizens of Russia that they were the adults in the room but that Ukraine is now both denazified and no longer a threat. And then go back to theft and live like gods in an even more repressive state.
-Another is to keep going and see how it goes but now the winter offensive was presumably promised as a game changer and it has absolutely not delivered – the miracle at Vuhledar went so-so and the video with the tank crew in a trench can almost represent the whole winter offensive. The slightest analytical ability and access to Google is enough for even a medium size mash jug to understand that it is high risk and that is their family tree on the other side of the scale.
-The last is to start positioning for an internal land grab which is really a civil war.
A Russian elitist is not stupid, he has climbed the ladder in a staircase that looks like the one at Gröna Lund when you enter the funhouse. A constantly shifting power order where a single misstep results in a jump from a high balcony and he is only outmatched in cunning and ability to balance on a tightrope by our friend Lukashenko in Belarus.
They obviously cannot arm the people – then they will hang and dangle within a few weeks. Why keep going in the same rut when the winter offensive went as it did despite all promises to the contrary and increasing the temperature to a land grab makes the Gröna Lund staircase speed up tenfold and the risk of a jump from a small balcony increases exponentially.
Medium to large size mash jug oligarchs would prefer everything just go back to normal, they want to steal money and live like gods – guys like Shoigu and Gerasimov also have family and relatives they would rather not see wiped out and there are very many in Russia who are wondering where this is heading now.
The out should come in peace talks and therefore you cannot go as hard as Zelensky wants/promises so that a retreat from Ukraine seems sufficiently attractive. We will probably spit and hiss at the peace terms in the thread and the pro-Russians will call them completely reasonable.
Then the question is whether the free West has decided to break Russia’s back or if it is an end to the war they want – at least I have seen the US formally state that Ukraine should throw out the Russians as soon as they can.
Then I have also seen them formally state that they warned Ukraine not to go on the offensive before they got Western weapons.
I also see no double game in the deliveries in the sense that they intend to prolong the war, 2600 fragment-protected vehicles and 745 MBTs of various models is an enormous amount no matter how you twist and turn it.
In any case, I believe that the elite in Russia can also count and have understood that everything they no longer sell to Europe has now been taken over by the US market, and that China and India pay less than half and also delay payments – Russia has given its biggest market to the US completely free and on a silver platter.
They have also given all the -stans to the US on a golden platter.
And now the question they have to wrestle with – should we also give away a bunch of provinces in Russia on a golden platter to the US or is Belarus and Kaliningrad enough?
Or – should we give the rest to China.
Do you want to continue having a united Russia and live well or do you want to become a warlord in a province that was the one you managed to steal when everyone else ran away like a handful of ants released on the ground and when all the rules changed overnight.
-It is yet another psyops lie that Russia has nothing to lose and is going full throttle is my personal opinion but we shall see.