11:24 – MatsExtrude
+1 Excellent (as usual)!
Have some thoughts about Prigozhin and your link is interesting.
Speculating a bit here..
As I have touched on before, it’s not at all certain that Prigozhin would be a threat to Putin.
It could be that the two are more like glue and straw and that Putin depends on him.
Wagner is just part of Prigozhin’s operations. He is also involved in massive subversive activities and probably ensures that money flows into Russia from, for example, Africa etc. He has lots of shell companies etc.
That he openly complained about ammunition shortages may have been psyops to trick Ukraine into staying and preferably gathering in Bakhmut to become an easy target for artillery.
Now the AFU started to withdraw anyway, and then there was no point in maintaining that image, and it is also not sensible to waste ammunition bombing the city when it did not turn out as he had hoped (because even if the shortage might have been fabricated, they do not have unlimited resources).
Or it was true and they were short on artillery, but he is allowed to complain anyway because he is actually unchallenged.
Putin has been described by Vlad Vexler as someone who likes to do unexpected things both to confuse and to see what the outcome might be. Putin probably thinks it is just good that the West starts to consider internal conflicts that do not exist.
That Prigozhin is allowed to criticize the rest of the army could be sanctioned and a way to put pressure on the army to show results while at the same time creating rumors of discord.
16:37 – Johan No.1
Counteroffensive in Bakhmut?
https://twitter.com/anno1540/status/1635978626909757440?s=46&t=VC5kFaicz71xQWTjxLfxUw
16:43 – MatsExtrude
Exciting, should come out via more accounts quite soon in that case!
16:46 – Johan No.1
That sounds very violent, the Accent man believed in an offensive, Gregg said offensive or retreat, and today’s deepststemap looked like it was starting to approach.
Without knowing the least, it is probably either time to do something or withdraw?
16:49 – MatsExtrude
Think so too.. It is starting to be too tight to withdraw now if you wait.
Of course, it could also be psyops by Gregg and the Accent man but doesn’t feel like it..
17:09 – Johan No.1
Addition – I have interpreted the account as pro-Ukrainian and credible. Have him on the Ukraine list.
17:10 – Johan No.1
Good at camouflaging themselves, those Ukrainians
https://twitter.com/inuaofficial/status/1635915314692079618?s=46&t=VC5kFaicz71xQWTjxLfxUw
17:14 – MatsExtrude
+1
17:16 – Johan No.1
Sad to be a rich Russian now
https://twitter.com/anno1540/status/1636015061251530754?s=46&t=VC5kFaicz71xQWTjxLfxUw
17:23 – Johan No.1
Feels like Dnipro this
https://twitter.com/secretsqrl123/status/1635828865565065218?s=46&t=VC5kFaicz71xQWTjxLfxUw
19:03 – Johan No.1
Polohy
https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1636055063192911875?s=46&t=VC5kFaicz71xQWTjxLfxUw
10:17 – Johan No.1
The delaying battle in the settlement of Bakhmut continues and a much larger area than yesterday is contested today.
However, there has been no movement north or south of the city.
I still believe that UA forced RU into fighting in the settlement in Bakhmut and that it was a deliberate choice to conduct a delaying battle through the city.
Right now I can’t reconcile the official reports with Deepstatemap but since he updates daily and has a stellar reputation, one probably shouldn’t dismiss his picture of the situation, I think.
The only reason I can see for them to go into a hedgehog defense in the city is if they have an offensive simmering.
Zelensky had a meeting with the combat leadership and they agreed on the defense of Bakhmut and they have a shared vision of the way forward if I understood this correctly – Bakhmut shall be held.
The delaying battle through the settlement is likely costing the Russians astronomically in deaths, they are partly bad at this type of fighting and then they advance with riflemen instead of using direct and indirect fire support on points and slowly moving forward. They probably want to achieve a result quickly?
Feels like Xi’s meeting with Putin might actually play a role here, he probably wants to show something positive?
If they don’t withdraw from the settlement soon, it almost has to become a counterattack north and south or they have some kind of Azovstal tunnels they can use and go into a hedgehog defense. But that would reasonably only happen if the combat leadership is sure they can retake the area within weeks?
It’s going so fast through the city right now that you almost start to suspect they are setting a trap here but I have zero evidence for that and it’s highly speculative. Step two in this highly speculative trap would then be that when Xi comes to the meeting with Putin, the whole world knows that UA just crushed Wagner and some VDV regiments and that there isn’t a Russian soldier two miles from Bakhmut.
It’s been a while since the VDV was up for discussion but apart from the offensive reserve behind the southern front that Defmon probably hasn’t managed to deploy, all VDV units have presumably been in combat now?
They have fought in Kreminna, in Soledar and in Bakhmut.
We know that 1-2 Spetsnaz brigades took heavy losses at Vuhledar and Kreminna.
We know that two marine infantry brigades were eliminated at Vuhledar.
If you try to rank this, Spetsnaz was probably the top, then came VDV followed by marine infantry and then some Guards units.
They managed to keep the VDV somewhat protected through Kherson and until January 6. In Kherson they acted as a task force during the UA breakthrough and caused quite a lot of damage.
It’s brilliant that the VDV are heavily decimated, they must be heavily decimated.
There are probably a few more Spetsnaz brigades and marine infantry brigades as well.
This Wagner guy has roughly the same thoughts as the undersigned about what is to come.
Mid-April, violent, death, etc.
https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1635333730393792538?s=20
At least Rybar thinks that all the Western media articles about how ill-prepared Ukraine is for its offensive are psyops. Since all these pro-Ukrainian debaters have latched onto this hard and walk around with their heads down, terrified of doomsday, they must almost be part of the Western psyops?
Otherwise, they have zero capacity for critical thinking, which would be surprising.
They are not fooling the Russians anyway, Wagner and Rybar are onto them, so one wonders quietly what the purpose of the psyops is?
Yes, I should drop it.
https://twitter.com/rybar_en/status/1635647117535461378?s=20
Seems like Wagner might not be as exposed as everyone claims according to Martin Kragh,
https://twitter.com/MartinKragh1/status/1635608077071155201?s=20
Here the Swiss arms industry dies because politics decrees that Swiss-made weapons may not be used in war. A couple of weapons CEOs probably got drunk and cried themselves to sleep.
https://twitter.com/mhmck/status/1635341690876882946?s=46&t=F35rnYaeP2q0iz79lUxmIQ
Then I’m late to notice that Navalny got a lot of attention at the Oscars but not Ukraine and Navalny was quite long for the war in Donbass.
https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1635419243356491777?s=46&t=F35rnYaeP2q0iz79lUxmIQ
Transnistria, stolen from another forum – The Russians placed the 14th Army there in 2014 but today there are only a couple of battalions left. The materiel is the one pre-positioned for the 14th Army.
The plan was to roll in again in 2022 but since the Russians never got past Mykolaiv the plan fell flat.
An ambitious plan where Moldova would fall quite quickly and then Hungary and Serbia would become hardcore allies down in the Balkans together with Turkey.
I feel quite sorry for Moldova and Transnistria and believe the EU should take them under its wings immediately. It seems to be moving but how on earth could the West agree to the Russian 14th Army in Transnistria in 2014?
A European country invaded by Russia x 2?
If you want to be historical, it was Czechoslovakia that was annexed then along with Crimea and Donbass – the Russians then did as they always have, press on and test and push until it stops.
I understand that they were caught off guard by the Ukraine war because it had worked for 15 years and the West remained passive even when they entered Transnistria.
Yanukovych was not a bad plan and for those who want, it’s perfectly possible to see the Russian dictatorship in all its calculated evil and how they, like an aggressive cancer, eat up countries from within.
Such an aggressive cancer would never have stopped without Poland, the Balkans and the Baltics seeing the subversive activity shoot off like a spear.
The fact that they have managed to get the entire MAGA movement and QAnon/anti-vaxxers pro-Russian says quite a lot about subversive Russian activity. One suspected QAnon was a Russian psyop but it was still conspiratorial.
Then Keynotestate often points out that Bannon helped Yanukovych to power and had quite a lot of dealings with the Russians. The US president’s master strategist has clear connections to Russian subversive activity – neat.
It was absolutely time to sound the alarm here and I partly understand the dissonance among the Russians, even though I think they are more than a little slow to read the room, because they have gotten away with so incredibly much since the turn of the millennium that they probably started to feel elevated and chosen?
Both imperial ambitions, multi-billionaire and everything is rolling better than one dared hope – can probably throw even the best off balance.