2023-04-13

11:31 – Johan No.1

It seems to hurt to run across the railway embankment in Bakhmut because they are not moving forward right now; rather, they are retreating.

Twitter rumors claim that both Wagner and the army units holding positions on the flanks have run out of gas, but as usual, these are the Twitter gods, so one does not dare to draw too big conclusions from it.

It would be somewhat historic if true, because then Wagner’s and the VDV’s offensive capability is low. Otherwise, they would have deployed rested VDV units that have not participated in the winter offensive to hold the flanks sipping Coca-Cola?

But if the rumor is true, they have had to bring forward already battle-weary units (hope that is true…).

Then, of course, they have not prepared deep defenses in Bakhmut because they have been busy dying instead, so it seems quite obvious that it is a good point for a breakthrough.

If the non-defense around Bakhmut collapses, it immediately opens up a threat to Horlivka, which on the unit maps is poorly defended – we discussed these domino effects about a month ago.

You can understand if Horlivka is poorly defended because the Russians in the area planned to capture Bakhmut, not defend a city far behind the active front.

One of the obvious attack vectors is thus an attempt to encircle Russian units in the Bakhmut area or just run over them and then project a threat against Horlivka (not to storm Horlivka unless the city falls when they push a bit on it).

What does the Russian team do if a threat opens up against Horlivka – they must send reserves there, of course.

Just one problem here, the Russian team has no reserves and now (then/later) Wagner and some VDV regiments have just been overrun and are lying and sobbing in the crater bottoms.

Then they have to start choosing – is Horlivka more important than northern Luhansk, for example?

This is how it will continue, and what the Russians would have needed now is 300,000 – 400,000 more fully trained reserves that they could push out into defense.

If they had mobilized in January, there would today be enough newly mobilized who have had their months of training, good or bad.

Now today, April 13, we have not heard anything about the voluntary mobilization of 400,000 that was supposed to start on April 1.

Now Johan is not a logistical genius, so if we understand that, the Russians understand it too. Then it must be due to something else that they both worry about their existence and Ukraine’s upcoming spring offensive while not mobilizing more to prevent it.

I belong to those who believe that Russian mobilization has reached its limit.

If it hasn’t and they start a mobilization in the coming months, then they are completely incompetent beyond rescue.

There has, however, been another rumor that they are beginning to lay the groundwork for general mobilization, so there is a chance here they are incompetent beyond all rescue, which would be very amusing.

We will see, both look equally bad.

There have apparently been firefights in Chechnya following calls on social media to start a revolution against the regime – I don’t know what counts as civil war or that the country is destabilized, but a lot is moving now in -stan and various provinces, that is indisputable.

Armenia is supposed to have a NATO exercise, in Georgia they want to storm the parliament, in Chechnya there are firefights, and Azerbaijan is sniffing the morning air.

I have thought that, for example, Wagner would take jobs in a province or -stan as a strong bodyguard and guarantee that province’s security.

Feels like they will have difficulty flying down to Africa in the future as a terror-classified group? Or they have such a strong presence there in several countries that they don’t want to leave and take some boat from Turkey that continues to play both sides?

Johan understands that his ideal little light blue world does not exist where sanctions are watertight!

One must not forget that the whole Wagner is not in Ukraine; they currently have a strong presence in several countries in Central Africa (is that right?) and are right now the dictators’ favorite guns for hire for genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Prigozhin has lucrative contracts through his companies and is a very wealthy man.

Presumably, he wanted to earn a good reputation with the Ukraine war and had quite high ambitions that have been severely disappointed.

But he does not strike me as a man who will go down in Ukraine in a cloud of glory and elan – he has a hard core that he must move somewhere, and he will do so before it is wiped out with drone-dropped wing grenades.

I think it is quite clear that the West is supplying the ammunition needed.

Then one must have some trust that the West has also delivered its armor, quite sure they have Leo2 and Western IFVs enough to equip the spearhead units already today, and tracked howitzers have probably arrived as well.

However, we come back to a discussion we had already last spring. The Ukrainian army must come out of this war both victorious but also reasonably intact.

After Russians dug up in craters and driven to their side of the border with hanging heads, Ukraine needs a huge army to defend its country for round 2, which very well may come.

They will take over obscene amounts of Soviet armor down in Crimea because the Russians will not empty the staging areas for all the hard vehicles with mechanical faults.

They will probably also get enough ammunition to last hundreds of years when they steal all the depots, but they need the maneuver brigades, expertise, knowledge, and capability reasonably preserved – the human capital, as it is so beautifully called.

I see that Russia can take two paths – either they turn inward and then the disintegration begins, or they prepare for round two with cultivating stab-in-the-back legends and a more repressive regime than today, probably Soviet romantics.

I see a democratic Russia rising from the ashes as unlikely, but I would gladly be wrong.
Both options require a very strong Ukraine.

A very strong Ukraine that is tied to the West (NATO is not entirely important in this context) is also a deterrent effect/threshold effect for Russia to attack the Baltics, for example.

To do that, they need a secure land border with Ukraine, and if they don’t have that, the threat is that if they enter the Baltics, Ukraine enters Russia. Now, Ukraine probably won’t do that, but the threat is projected right onto Putin’s bedroom wall.

To me, it seems that Ukraine is aiming for a totally humiliating Russian crushing defeat in Ukraine.

It may very well be so (it is absolutely so, I believe) that Ukraine and the West are trying to negotiate a complete Russian withdrawal and that it is the Russians who are obstructing.

Ukraine had directly accepted a full Russian withdrawal to the 1991 borders and when that is carried out, ceasefire, pretty sure of that.

But as long as the Russians do not agree to that, maximum heavy losses for them is a good second place and we will reasonably oppose that very quickly.

16:37 – MatsExtrude

+1 It would be wonderful if we see a turnaround in Bakhmut and perhaps it is a sensible attack vector that you are referring to!