13:35 – MatsExtrude
+1
14:11 – Johan No.1
Exactly, they showed strength that was directed strength and roughly what they showed.
I remember for example Zapad where they had learned to operate at brigade size. In Ukraine, they barely manage group movements without starting to shoot each other.
They had about 250,000 men in a large exercise that went like a well-oiled lock. 190,000 in Ukraine got stuck five kilometers after crossing the border.
There are surely many examples but they must have lied blue about all the exercises?
14:14 – Johan No.1
+1
14:19 – Johan No.1
This is what I’ve been saying all along – if you interpreted the peace proposal from China as it was written then that’s how it is.
I got the whole thread on me so I had to sneak a drink one weekday for that – now we have it in black and white that there was no alternative interpretation of the agreement as it was said to be the one that applied.
The ambassador to the EU is no small fox and in China you don’t freebase statements as you please because if you say something wrong you get fired immediately.
China has thrown Russia under the bus was what I wrote that almost made me tear up and get goosebumps 😀
14:59 – MatsExtrude
🙂
(I myself kept quiet in that discussion. I know too little about China to know how their statements should be interpreted.)
15:27 – Johan No.1
Speaking of the Russians not caring about sanctions.
They are at least making a great effort to try to circumvent them.
https://twitter.com/TheDeadDistrict/status/1643600705716989952?s=20
15:55 – Johan No.1
But damn MRF, now they’ve said it formally three times?
China does not threaten the West with anything – we know that.
China does not give Ukraine offensive weapons – we also know that because we would have seen them.
They act exactly according to what they say but we are supposed to interpret all kinds of patterns that we don’t see – because these patterns exist just because you say so?
Otherwise, you often write – “it’s usually how it looks”, but that doesn’t apply to China?
17:04 – Johan No.1
Exactly, that’s how I see the situation too, Macron has also stated that the priority is to persuade China to get the Russians to make peace and then not on the nonsense terms that are on the Russians’ yellowing A4 page.
China probably has only one interest when it comes to Russia – that it does not become a lawless country.
Then they probably want the Russian market.
And they definitely want to maintain relations with the West.
The meeting was downright embarrassing to watch, Xi didn’t want to be there at all and Putin was terrified.
01:08 – Johan No.1
Throwing this in as well, Girkin is depressed.
https://twitter.com/secretsqrl123/status/1643746698425167874?s=46&t=YM34OPIvD0_vsHASIvcDAg
12:20 – Johan No.1
JIV brought up yesterday that China has stated that they do not recognize Crimea and the oblasts as Russian.
https://twitter.com/front_ukrainian/status/1643553968080003073
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/05/world/europe/eu-china-embassador-russia-fu-cong.html
China had already officially stated this in January 2023.
I know there is no consensus in the thread on how to interpret Chinese agreements. Apparently, with China, it is important not to interpret things as they appear, as is customary with everything else.
What is really interesting about China is whether they will try to influence the war to Russia’s advantage in some way through offensive weapons or pressure with negotiations.
Anyone who does not want to interpret China’s statements as they are written absolutely cannot produce any evidence that China is actively influencing negotiations or sending offensive weapons to Russia at present, or that they have firm plans for it – like stockpiled equipment at transport hubs.
The fact is that at the summit between Xi and Putin, there were no references to helping Russia win the war in Ukraine.
So far, one can either interpret China’s statements as they are written and also conclude that they are not influencing the war in any way.
Or interpret that they do not mean what they say but find no signs that China is trying to influence the war to Russia’s advantage.
Now that Ukraine, through intermediaries, has scoured China for parts for 100,000 drones, it almost feels like China has helped Ukraine more than Russia here?
Sure, they have given Russia equipment mainly for manufacturing and certainly also ammunition, but what Russia needs today is either frozen fronts or offensive weapons in large quantities as well as instructors – we do not see that from China and then Russia loses the war.
Then we have this statement from ISW (Omni) which further supports the assumption that China is trying to slip away –
“When Putin yesterday held a meeting with 17 top Russian diplomats, he instead chose to highlight Russia’s relations with Syria and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and did not mention China, writes ISW.”
For my part, I have enough grounds to consider that China will not actively try to influence the war to Russia’s advantage and it is not far from throwing them under the bus 😀
Over to Russia, now benefiting a bit from a different time zone here and could guest star in Erik14 and Lunation’s epic night shift for about fifteen minutes yesterday – I felt like a winner before crashing on the couch with a broad smile.
All according to the Twitter rumors below and it is in the area of cracks that we are watching for –
The Russians have started an anti-terror operation in Ingushetia, a Russian republic which is largely Muslim?
They have already had a lot of activity there in connection with the mobilization, for example.
There was also a Twitter rumor circulating that a call to rise up against Kadyrov in Chechnya – another Russian republic which is also Muslim – has been going around.
This is an area that is constantly boiling so there is no reason to dismiss it with a “won’t happen”.
Then I guess that the Muslim minority is among those who feel furthest from the ethnic-Russian rule (or whatever the correct term is). They have a different culture, religion, customs, and so on.
Historically, they have also been treated very badly by Russia-Soviet, and finally Russia again. Always treated badly, that is.
Now the Russian army is zeroed out, washed and done but there are 500,000 soldiers in all agencies, Rosgvardia and other PMCs in Russia.
They are for crowd control and precisely for things like this but if things move in too many places at once they are hopeless and that is the “bodyguard” for the country Russia so when they are stretched to the breaking point there is nothing behind.
If chaos breaks out in Belarus again soon, they are probably close to the breaking point if the citizens in Muscovite Russia get tempted to demonstrate against something…
Then there was a tweet flying around that I didn’t dare to pick up since it was from non-pre-qualified accounts but when Gerashenko posted it, and Lunation posted it in the thread yesterday, it feels credible.
Putin gave a speech and none of the audience applauded – he gives several indications that it is time for applause, he gets none and finally leaves in front of rolling cameras completely without applause with a very nervous smile.
https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1643702297992519683?cxt=HHwWhoCzxYCizc8tAAAA
You can see for yourselves, it’s all in front of rolling cameras. Pretty sure this is a big deal if no one can prove that it is not what it looks like.
In the country Russia, people fall from balconies for very little and here Putin is humiliated by easily identifiable Russians in front of rolling live cameras for the whole world to see – I see a huge crack that one can fall into.
You can’t help but like Zelensky and when he receives Poland’s highest award it feels good.
The fact that this war has gone as it has is largely Zelensky’s ability to navigate a variety of roles, to surround himself with competence and allow own initiatives at all levels.
Very un-Russian so it must have been very non-Ukrainian too and absolutely war-winning.
If he had accepted the USA’s offer and left Ukraine in the first days, probably anything could have happened.
He is a unifying force who keeps/has kept the anthill in check.
https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1643555242787631106?s=20
Today we are not showing the torture victim which I managed to do two days ago – sorry for the mistake and the rule violation, improvement promised.
Take a look at how those who watched the film clicked, 99% give thumbs up or laugh-cry and a few are negative.
Do you remember the film posted in the thread with the soldier who was hit when he was in a stream and drowned over about a minute?
It was a Russian and at most a few comments in the thread said “terrible ending 😬”.
I think this says something about a broader behavior that we suspect but maybe don’t quite want to believe (yet).
For me, it signals a fairly high level of radicalization to be able to laugh at something like that, the worst thing you can see is people when they die or are under torture, and die.
The same phenomenon I thought I saw during ISIS rampages where people happily shared films of the worst tortures leading to death and laughed themselves silly. Every returnee has an image in front of that fence with severed heads, for example – it became a status symbol.
There were some French psychologists who took on the task of “deprogramming” children under 10 years old of returning Syrian terrorists, and they concluded that it was nearly impossible (if I remember correctly).
The country Russia has probably never been thought of in terms of difficult radicalization, but one starts to wonder actually after what has been seen in this war and how the home front has reacted to the most serious abuses that they themselves usually avoid looking at.
https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1642253112923619329?s=20
Two days ago we had the factory that was supposed to produce Russian tanks by the hundreds but which had been dismantled for a couple of years.
Now we have this – large factories fail to complete armored vehicles because vital parts are missing, targeting systems above all.
Consider here that when the West scales up its production, they do not suffer from material shortages and what, 30-40 countries contribute production capacity that already far exceeds Russia’s, which also has bottlenecks in production to struggle with.
A slippery slope…
https://twitter.com/pati_marins64/status/1638913309217898500?s=20
On the subject of the slippery slope, the Russians transfer oil between ships off African ports to circumvent sanctions – it’s not going well for them at all now, the imperialist Russia is smuggling dirty oil off Africa’s coast, what a fall 😀
https://twitter.com/TheDeadDistrict/status/1643600705716989952?s=20
Here’s another one counting losses, if he’s right it looks bad for the Russian chaos team but no source I know of from before so utmost caution is advised.
https://twitter.com/HerrDr8/status/1643250306128531456?s=20
Transnistria has been a bit on the edge of going up in flames here for a month or so.
Bakhmut is otherwise quite obvious – a large number of offensive units and the Russian army has, according to rumors, left Wagner to its fate but we don’t know that.
That preparations are underway on the southern front is indisputable.
Northern Luhansk is progressing – if you look at the unit maps there are more heavy units in that area now than before and UA has advanced in the famous forests in Kreminna where VDV goes in and no VDV comes out.
Between Soledar – Siversk is also quite an obvious attack vector now that the Russians are apparently low on everything there.
Ukraine has the opportunity to go on the offensive practically everywhere can only be the conclusion 👍
Speaking of digging deep – the Russians have lost 75 T62s documented by Oryx so probably double that.
That’s quite a few, it would be interesting to see the graphs for when different tank types have been lost actually if one can find any trend.
The bubble list is boiling and the spring offensive is one day closer to its start.
According to yesterday, I am quite sure that negotiations are ongoing behind the curtains here, anything else would be unreasonable.
Also quite sure that the condition of the Russian defense is not particularly good, now that is not officially confirmed in any way so it has to be parked but the probability of a Ukrainian breakthrough is high in my opinion.
Girkin also seems to think that the condition of the Russian team is not the best but that is Girkin as said, what he writes is however completely logical.
https://twitter.com/secretsqrl123/status/1643746698425167874?s=46&t=YM34OPIvD0_vsHASIvcDAg
I wonder if Russian soldiers look extra deep into the mash tub over the Easter weekend?
11:48 – Johan No.1
Very liberating to read the Germans’ (yes, I know it was one person’s opinion) takedown of the Russian army and how it collapses under its own scrap weight + mash container.
The absolute humiliation for a diagnosed positive would be if you listen too much to the pessimists, move the goalposts, and then Ukraine strikes and goes on to win the war by knockout just when you’ve started convincing everyone around you that at least two more years of fighting remain.
Must not happen – good that the Germans bring you back to reality and the impending purge of Russians in various sized pits on the Ukrainian potato fields.
The fact is that the Germans went from suspicion of Putin-links to best in class very quickly, how broken the meeting rooms were and who could leave without LHR we will never know but damn what they can do when they want. As I said, it would be fun if the guy who tried to defend Scholz in the beginning came back so he can shine a bit – he deserves it.
Geopolitically, the Germans have done a complete turnaround and they were quite a driven Putin ally – a noticeable loss.
Putin has lost the entire European market – it stings.
Putin has completely lost his credibility as a major threat that he and Russia have thrived on since the end of World War II – a high and hard fall. It probably really went up in smoke in 1989 but they somehow managed to live off old stock and project a new threat in the form of the Potemkin facade of the Russian army’s rebuilding.
It looked dangerous at parades and on paper and just as the experts were wrong at the start of this war, they were equally wrong in their assessments of Russian rebuilt capability.
Russia is basically the definition of cooked books at a company, really, they inflate, pure lies, stock that is pledged both once and three times and so on. But now the tax authority has caught wind of them and the mills have started grinding.
Looking at the unit structure and that all T72s were very modern in the 80s, at least I am inclined to think they were a threat back then before they ran an Afghan campaign.
But then the Swedish defense was 800,000 strong and it probably looked the same down in Europe except Germany where the peace movement succeeded beyond expectations with a bit of Nazi-shaming.
Everyone simply had more barrels, but Central Europe would probably have been pretty devastated.
Putin’s ravages are good for the EU – an external enemy unites and a particularly evil and sadistic external enemy unites even more.
Hard to disagree when the alternative is castrations and violated small children.
I have completely forgotten about Sweden’s problems for a whole year, before the UA war it was some political misstep that got your pulse up. The electricity underclass is a bit different, it hits directly against the Asian lunch buffet on Saturdays or the amount of chips you get on a Friday so harder to let go.
Here we probably have a part in the air skirmishes against Russian defense systems – the Israelis’ ammunition for GRK?
https://twitter.com/pstyle0ne1/status/1643183536709435392?s=46&t=GH-KP5trAVbap51dxx6mU
I was watching some drone-dropped grenade videos mixed with direct fire with tanks against defense systems – pure murder nowadays.
I was quickly struck by the obvious fact that the Russians rarely give up, I remember Desert Storm and all those wars where everyone just stood up immediately with a white flag and surrendered.
Ukraine clearly takes prisoners and they pump out information about this to the Russian army all the time in the clearest possible way.
They have the blocking battalions at their backs so the smart thing would be to surrender, I have thought for a long time.
I can only imagine deeply indoctrinated people acting this way.
That tank that crushed the Russian group in the defense – if they had surrendered they would be alive today.
In the waiting times, anxiety always grows but we can be completely sure that those who have the most anxiety are the Russian team when they see the videos of how Ukraine’s tanks run over them with the tracks.
Darth Putin praises Finland (in his own way), better than my way 👍
https://twitter.com/DarthPutinKGB/status/1643243160385060865?s=20
Germany delivers a huge number of mine plows (or whatever they are), Germany takes the lead, Go Team Scholz can never be said too often 🥇
https://twitter.com/SebDog83/status/1643298629711454227?s=20
Here is one of the tank factories mentioned as one of those that will produce Russian tanks in large quantities. Just one problem – it is demolished 👎
https://twitter.com/secretsqrl123/status/1643220758942851075?s=20
This guy got UA brigades up to +160, he is definitely ahead of me.
https://twitter.com/secretsqrl123/status/1643037065708204032?s=20
This one is probably not entirely applicable to Russia but university communist meets exile Cuban Babylon Bee style.
I thought it was worth watching but it is Babylon Bee.
https://twitter.com/TheBabylonBee/status/1640828689595129858?s=20