11:46 – Johan No.1
Yesterday Erik14 posted a video of rows of Ukrainian snipers standing and looking out over a river – presumably the Dnieper 😀
There is nothing worse than waiting and the Russians are probably spending the time breaking down even more mentally, which is perfect.
Of course they will cross the Dnieper, they have more bridge layers than they currently need and we have seen videos of various amphibious vehicles crossing water bodies more times than we can count.
11:47 – Johan No.1
Or of course in my post about how the spring offensive will play out, but then again I am not the Ukrainian command either, unless one wants to be too definitive in statements.
11:53 – Johan No.1
Since I have quite a bit of connection to Portugal, I want to applaud them a little extra for their Leo2 donation.
They are not a rich country and traditionally they are not particularly generous with anything of value so 3 from them is very nice to see 👍
12:20 – MatsExtrude
+100
Generally, I think there has been a lot of fuss for a while on Twitter. Not just among those you mention but also around many others. Accusations of embezzlement among those who help, people being exposed. Internal conflicts and much more. Often supported by newly created accounts that take one side or the other. I suspect the Russian propaganda machine quickly seizes on any hint of a crack. At the same time, we also have the accounts you mention and others where they attack each other. Unfortunately, it feels like more and more are losing focus.
It would of course be good if Ukraine could decide or at least achieve major successes in the next six months. Otherwise, there is a certain risk that it will become frozen fronts and we get roughly the situation that has already existed in Donbass since 2014.
But I believe and hope that we in the West realize (if Ukraine does not fully succeed) that it is time to increase support further. There is plenty of equipment, ammunition must be possible to solve.
A divided RF is probably the best in the long run.
14:15 – Johan No.1
We all sit at our jobs and complain about everything all the time and if I got the chance to portray those I work for freely, it wouldn’t look good.
There are always those who can paint a lousy picture of Ukraine because they have experienced a lousy picture of Ukraine.
You probably have entire companies sent straight to death through sheer incompetence several times where the survivors and relatives are completely furious.
The overall picture, however, is that Ukraine is fighting smart and winning.
14:16 – Johan No.1
Forgot – it’s all Putin’s fault.
14:22 – Johan No.1
Sure it has, lucky that Ukraine sticks together and doesn’t do like the Twitter gods.
Then the feed is constantly changing, I created a super good list that I basically stole from LW but it barely appears in the feed at all…
14:26 – MatsExtrude
Exactly, everyone else is an idiot! 🙂
Yes, you can’t draw any conclusions from a single testimony. Of course, a lot of mistakes happen (and situations where the enemy is actually overwhelming so there’s nothing you can do even if you don’t make mistakes).
As long as it’s not a systemic error so that you make fewer mistakes than the Russians (and you don’t).
Ukraine gets a hell of a lot of help from outside to correct mistakes and the Russians don’t have that advantage.
Yep, down with Putin!
20:51 – Johan No.1
Yes, we will see some burnt-out Western armor before this is over, absolutely.
Yes, Ukraine is not Predator from the movies.
They have, however, navigated this war very smartly and now they have their peak strength when the Russians have reached a low point.
Leaving WWII and the rewritten history the Russians fuel aside, it has quite often gone like this – they get epically beaten.
Small countries like Chechnya and Georgia they could absorb but now they have provoked a very defense-willing country that is also pissed off and with the entire West’s weapon depots behind them – they are hopeless.
The big threat is the mines and then the special forces/fire brigade from competent units. Yes, they also have air and army aviation but not enough.
I believe the best will make the breakthrough because it has to succeed but as said, time will tell. So far UA has never “sacrificed” units to save the better ones and there is some kind of warrior culture – the hardest front section gives the highest status.
I seriously believe that when Ukraine launches the spring offensive, the house of cards will fall quite fast. It’s probably rather UA that has hidden its capability (I think) 😀
If UA fails with its spring offensive, we have a bigger global conflict so it’s probably best that this goes well actually. I also believe that UA has gotten enough Western armor and ammunition so that the spring offensive is resourced.
11:18 – Johan No.1
It might get quite a full boat ahead, I feel, after all an archipelago boat has limited space.
Still perplexed by the pro-Ukrainian bloggers who topped each other in their criticism of Bakhmut and that the city would be abandoned – and that they don’t backtrack.
Bakhmut was smart warfare and the only thing that went wrong was probably that the undersigned misinterpreted the deepstatemap gray zone and that the delaying battle was not as advanced as guessed. They have burned out the “real” Wagner and lots of VDV in the area and now the shooters who go on foot are alone in the area according to the Twitter gods.
However, it now seems like the delaying battle in the city is still ongoing?
Bringing in as much as possible into the city and then striking the flanks could be clever and deadly?
According to the Twitter gods, RU, or Wagner, is preparing for one last big blow in Bakhmut, now it is unconfirmed like everything else but it is not the end of March yet and then the whip is probably still cracking from Putin et al?
Today there will be mockery of Russian capability (again…) but before we dive into the fun it is good not to forget that capable materiel is also flowing into the Russian side.
https://twitter.com/pstyle0ne1/status/1639869982954668032?s=46&t=NdWasR-PYrgGGR4vwvgqqg
The spring offensive is very important because if the Russian team gets half a year they can also get organized, so better not to give them half a year thinks Zelensky.
They have many new ideas now on how they can conduct war and if they get time they will also have a drone weapon, night fighting equipment and PV and then they can at least go on the defense.
They also have weapon systems for laid mines, different types of mines, Wagner has fought outside Russian doctrine the whole war and so on.
Imagine if Russia sent a few hundred thousand Wagner copies from other contractors and from agencies that only go on defense?
Wagner has fought as competently as Russian capability allows I think, decentralized and with the cunning of professional criminals.
China can with relatively small deliveries top critical capability which together with everything else would make a difference.
An effective and quantitative countermeasure against drones would be a knockout blow for UA for example.
Right now, half a year more or so and they won’t be able to go on effective defense and UA must then reach a decisive outcome.
My guess is that these are on their way to the front, looks like such a transport, directly embarrassing to be a Russian officer when mobilizing Stalin organs last used against the Germans.
I know it sounds incredible and that one was up but they don’t look 9 May painted out and it’s a mix of materiel – we’ll see…
https://twitter.com/tendar/status/1639886322822266880?s=46&t=NdWasR-PYrgGGR4vwvgqqg
Then this guy says in words we all know are the truth, that Oryx is miles behind in their calculations because there are depots in the rear full of broken materiel just standing there – we already knew that but now everyone knows it, after a tweet.
https://twitter.com/secretsqrl123/status/1639850178650726405?s=46&t=NdWasR-PYrgGGR4vwvgqqg
Some believe Ukraine is working quietly for a real smashing offensive…
https://twitter.com/secretsqrl123/status/1639866969095561216?s=46&t=N49S6E9CySZ8Q3HB0vyWPg
The legend Svante Turlason posted this from Trent Telenko why UA figures on dead Russians are reliable – I continue to stick to UA figures, and 1:2 in losses mostly because no war in all history has been 1:1.
https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1640403149662961679?s=20
Now we have probably reached a new Russian low point that they created entirely on their own. They could have gone on defense in winter, held back the capable units and forced UA to take losses in offense. Now we have the Putin factor that ensures everything becomes sh1t evenly, like Ozymandias but not gold.
With a better battle plan the Russians would comfortably have all terrain east of the Dnieper River today but they chose death – good for everyone except Russia that they are so astronomically incompetent.
A few days ago Grankovitch had a generous post about Budanov and his articles – anyone who wanted could there read how Budanov was a few months ahead in his assessments of what has actually happened in the war since the interviews – we have the answer.
Found here – GRANKOVITCH2023-03-27 00:29 – 00:29
Going forward – according to him it will be dead Russians, retaken Crimea and a liberated Ukraine soon.
Then he actually takes it a step further – will Russia only be forced to give up what they have occupied or will the country split up into its components – let that sink in.
Quite high on the bubble list is that Russia turns inward and China has a meeting with everyone -stan.
– do you think Budanov is completely wrong when he has been right about much of what he has predicted so far?
Russia is like the old boxer with osteoarthritis that everyone is still terrified of.
I think from the start we have seen Ukraine conduct smart warfare, have the highest morale and be willing to die for their cause.
That is a good combo, just being willing to die but not fight smart you won’t get far.
Having the best training in the world but not being willing to expose yourself to risk is not world-leading either.
In some wars everything coincides, imagine if the West had supported Finland with offensive weapons during/before the Winter War.
Or if the West had not driven a Russian and supported Poland in 1939.
Sometimes everything coincides for the best possible outcome and in this war we probably got that.
Russian incompetence and corruption may well have been decisive but as a good second we have Ukraine’s capability lift since 2014.
And third that the West has rallied.
I belong to those who believe that Ukraine would have won anyway without Western weapons, they could have flooded the Russians with shooters but taken astronomical losses.
USA probably thinks many steps ahead and they have now built up a Ukraine as defense of the EU eastern border – a depleted Ukraine that got a Pyrrhic victory would have caused headaches later when Russia prepared for round two.
Now there is a real chance that Russia turns inward.
Then on the subject of the Russian army’s incredible cruelty and whether it is isolated incidents, sanctioned or if the whole country is like that.
The Russians give you – cannibal wages…
https://twitter.com/fasc1nate/status/1635273304029413379?s=46&t=lpoxoQ2EF6f2_KOKA7SnSQ
A small test with a self-sufficient gulag farm with prisoners on an isolated island that ended in cannibalism and where the strong (men) tied up the weak (women and children) against trees and used them as living pantries where they cut pieces out of them while they were still alive.
If it hadn’t been for the Ukraine war it would have felt too violent to even start taking in but now at least the Ruski mir is fully on my radar here.
You won’t be surprised to hear that quite a few who went to the invigorating camps were Ukrainians and Kazakhs.
Then an interesting passage about how all the police and others just tried to fill their quota of arrests and how a pregnant woman with a valid domestic passport ended up in the Gulag.
To be completely honest, I don’t think there is any grand plan for all the diabolical murders in Ukraine, it is completely sanctioned, it has always been done this way, soldiers (and others) have a whole battery of sexual sadistic diagnoses and when the Ukraine war started, it was a natural escalation. We can guess how they have rampaged in Donbass since 2014 and if they are eager for EU membership now.
Germany came and went but Russia has been doing this for hundreds of years against other countries and its own population.
When Zelensky, Budanov and others talk about Russia having to fall and be broken down into its components, they are not wrong because the smaller the area the criminal gangster clan occupies, the fewer people they can torture, castrate, murder, violate and all the things they are doing now. Ruski mir has probably always looked like this but now, for once, they made the mistake of attacking someone who fought back.