2023-04-21

10:32 – Johan No.1

I don’t think we mentioned that Macron has had a severe relapse in his addiction. He is moving far outside the preschool playground right now and almost constantly manages to get it wrong, which should be statistically impossible.

That tells me that nothing affects the baguette eater – he has had a year to calibrate but it is obviously impossible, he is too far gone.

I feel it’s probably best to ignore Macron going forward and best to convey to China that the baguette eater stands quite alone in the EU and the West in his pursuit of French honor and fame, the Germans have landed perfectly and become the best in class, and Italy has also come to its senses so the troika is no more.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/ukraine-war-peace-macron-china-b2321917.html?amp

The baguette eater can well join the goulash baron and the bazaar sultan’s little outcasts and not be welcome in the drawing rooms. They can be seen in the Élysée Palace eating brie cheese with jam.

You can really feel the ground shaking when brigades of mechanized troops are revving their engines right now. If you stand close to a tank company passing by sometime, it’s a dizzying feeling, it causes ear ringing and the ground vibrates under your feet – Ukraine has divisions of mechanized troops now, you can basically stand and shake all day until your body starts shutting down in protest.

May they strike very hard against the Russian hordes, God gives the hardest battles to the strongest soldiers and the Ukrainian lions have been on the front line for over a year without faltering – God is with them.

One morning we will wake up to Gregg’s joyful shout, the usual Twitter mafia will do somersaults and Dengamle will drop his morning drink in his lap so excited will he be.

Of course, there are many unknown variables and above all the human factor, and this is war – but what we have seen since last autumn is that Ukraine comes very well prepared for this offensive of theirs, unlike the hypocrite train’s winter fiasco.

With a small part of their maneuver brigades, they have defended themselves against the screaming horde’s directly embarrassing attempts to take Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts while preparing a whole herd of heavy elephants to run over the remaining Russians.

They will lie in rows pressed into the black soil with impressions of Ukrainian soldier boots on their backs – it will look hysterically funny.

We all probably understand just like Zelensky and the Ukrainian combat leadership that now is the time, if they don’t reach all the way there is a real risk that something will freeze and that this will escalate.

Ukraine doesn’t strike me as the country that will fail but they will send many thousands of soldiers to their deaths to achieve the very high combat goals and the losses are, and will be, higher because the West has both delayed and been stingy with the materiel.

Ukraine has never leaned on the West, they have tried to get the support they can but have always counted on standing alone in the final battle and that they must find the strength within themselves, this they accepted a long time ago. I don’t think anyone in the West knows when their offensive will come, where they will strike first, and what their combat goals are, they trust no one but themselves.

Gregg keeps returning to this – Ukraine is prepared to make this sacrifice and they will never yield, it has never been on the negotiating table except in the disillusioned pro-Russian worldview and a weak West that believed it could sacrifice Ukraine for a peace that never would have been peace anyway. That they don’t know who Chamberlain was is quite obvious.

The Russian team is more than sluggish here in reading the room and I can understand that, they have had imperial hubris for too long and completely lost touch with reality. Now Russia is a country that often swings to extremes and this is likely a high chance they will turn inward (again).

To be a bit pragmatic realist, it’s probably not a bad thing if Russia breaks up into smaller parts now, partly it would be fun for provinces and republics not to be colonized in 2023 when it’s no longer trendy but also that the threat becomes smaller going forward. A round two they will definitely try if they get the chance, maybe not against Ukraine since they probably will learn too but someone weaker.

Demilitarize Kaliningrad, Belarus turns to the West and suddenly the border against the Russian threat is quite manageable.
If the country Russia becomes even smaller – perfect.

On the Ukrainian side, it is whole corps with several divisions that will solve their combat tasks on the different fronts and there is no magic hand controlling. When this starts, it is division but above all brigade commanders who sit in the driver’s seat and anything can happen. Knowing Ukraine now after a year, the units probably have the same freedom of action we had, attack objectives on a map and freedom to solve the task in the way they find best down to battalion and company commander level.

The brigade commanders who have survived this far with soldiers who have fought for a year are elite units who will solve their tasks in the best possible way prepared to make great sacrifices and they all have an end goal – uprooted Russians in a hole up to Ukraine’s 1991 borders.

All the reconnaissance battles along the southern front are the different brigades preparing to solve their combat tasks according to the orders they have received.

They may not have received their attack order yet but have heightened readiness, when they are called to the briefing and receive their written order they probably have a time window to relate to for attack start, a width of X km on the map with other brigades on each side and then D, C, B, A attack objectives in depth on the map?

If it breaks loose completely, they call up the division commander and ask for permission to continue past attack objective A and I have the feeling that UA command chains are fast.

A little repetition as rumors start coming about offensive start, increased intensity across the entire southern front, counterattack in Bakhmut and crossing of the Dnipro – all Twitter god rumors of course so one should refrain from the highest gears.

The Azov thrust has three attack vectors –
-Melitopol
-high terrain in the middle
-east Mariupol

Any of these attack vectors achieves the goal of isolating Crimea.

To confuse the Russian combat leadership, crossing the Dnipro is likely. I have previously thought that they run over infantry who go on defense in communities and to remove that flank threat the Russians must attack under UA artillery umbrella and CAS – otherwise they accept a bridgehead that UA can exploit.

From what we have seen with wading vehicles in various configurations and assault boats, UA seems to be a notch above that in ambition level.

Then they have withdrawn all the marine infantry brigades and if you pair that with delivered river boats, my guess is that they will be landed not only across the Dnieper but also between Kinburn Spit – the bridges to Crimea at suitable locations.

The Russians at the southern front then have to counter threats from 3 of 4 directions and of course they will not manage that – it will collapse quite quickly and with a bit of luck we will get Kuwait Highway 2.0 down towards Crimea.

Up at Bakhmut it is logical to attack at the flanks and try to encircle the units in Bakhmut.
Wagner comes by buses and is not fast at all and if they have sent in VDV in the built-up area they probably don’t have many vehicles with them.

I don’t remember exactly how it could go (place names) but they seem to have a lot of ptgb in that area, the defense is weak against armor and they haven’t really built fortifications so it could go really fast there.

Between Soledar – Siversk the Russians are noticeably weak and there you can almost suspect an advance towards SE to open a threat against the city of Luhansk, they go “under” the Siversky Donets.

The critical mass is in UA’s favor and they can basically attack everywhere. They have even moved heavy maneuver brigades north of Kupiansk and the Kharkiv area so now the Russians have to deal with that threat as well.
If they had been anorexic on brigades they wouldn’t have stationed any of the better NG brigades and an armored brigade in that area, period.

In northern Luhansk it flew by the other day that UA got the Russians “on the run” in the Kupiansk area. They are presumably conducting the same reconnaissance fights there as well?

If RU has weakened northern Luhansk as much as the leak suggested, the critical mass is also in UA’s favor up there now. A thin picket line is suddenly an advantage.

My guess is that RU will quite soon be forced to defend the larger cities – the city of Donetsk, the city of Luhansk, Horlivka and Crimea when UA opens threats against them.

To do that they need to abandon the area behind the southern front, abandon the area between Bakhmut – Bilohorivka and abandon northern Luhansk.

If UA can project threats against Belgorod that would be even better but already today RU must hold 5-6 brigades along the northern front since UA has offensive capability up there now – that removes what, +10,000 at the tip who cannot fight in Ukraine.

It will probably become clearer after a while but today we write waiting times again.

17:23 – MatsExtrude

👍 Lovely Friday reading combined with a premiere sitting out in the sun on the terrace (hear how Obolon calls from the fridge that it is soon just right cold).

#SpringIsComing and Slava Ukraini!