12:48 – MatsExtrude
+1
Sitting here behind the keyboard and having difficulty waiting for the offensive, one realizes it must be almost unbearable for the Ukrainian soldiers.
13:29 – Johan No.1
There is an enormous energy built up ahead of this offensive.
Yes, one really hopes for a good fairy tale ending here – dead Russian and Putin dangling from the gas station like a burning piñata.
13:33 – Johan No.1
First of all, a plane or helicopter is infinitely more advanced than a tank.
If they have driven an Afghan with tanks, they have probably driven an Afghan with air and army aviation as well, right?
Pilots must be in short supply.
Engines must be in short supply – they have flown for one year.
They started dropping SU-24s a while ago and then they have probably dug as deep as to the T55 for tanks?
Sure, there is air but they also need current information.
I know air superiority is A to Z but I have thought that air control is enough to at least deny the Russians air superiority.
And then they use drones to perform their own air force tasks?
15:00 – Johan No.1
I have been adding up the materiel delivered – it is enormous amounts of materiel.
UA has 20 brigades at inactive fronts and 100 brigades total.
The US had about 700,000 in Desert Storm total, UA probably has more in the entire armed forces.
The number of mechanized brigades is disproportionately large – the tip is very strong.
I may be wrong but have guessed that this is something very special that is happening 😀
08:17 – Johan No.1
Regarding RU not having a shortage of equipment
https://twitter.com/pstyle0ne1/status/1651830619092008960?s=46&t=dveBZfRoPBITNIzpKFMMUQ
12:22 – Johan No.1
The concern that there will be no breakthrough is great but the force is greater (positive force) and the lightsaber is light blue.
At the southern front, the first line of defense stretches from the Dnieper to south of Vuhledar somewhere.
It is of varying quality but the Russians have built it with their sweat since spring.
At some point (early autumn?) they started building a second, third, and apparently a fourth line.
They are probably not continuous but in dominant terrain.
They built them when it was warm outside so watercourses were considered impassable, so the mines are probably not placed behind watercourses, for example.
UA has continuously mapped mines and defenses and you have all seen the OSINT high-resolution satellite images, so UA has even better data than that – they know what is where.
Now it seems UA is focusing on the attack vector in the middle which is dominant terrain.
As soon as they get up on it, it is probably easier to work forward in some kind of cover, I think, than over the wide fields?
Then when they go on defense, they hold the dominant terrain.
If you break through at one spot, the entire line of defense becomes obsolete – Lex Maginot Line.
All the defense built then is no longer usable and you have to retreat to the next line.
It is likely that UA, for example, will use bridge layers over watercourses to completely bypass minefields and they have a very large number of bridge layers now.
Then everyone understands that there are impregnable points and that there are poorly prepared stretches of these defense lines.
The trick in seeking a breakthrough is to find the weak passable point.
The offensive start is not far away – weeks.
Then there will probably be a gradual increase, if they attack on all fronts at the same date and time they have gone from wizard level to champion level.
I believe the brigades have windows to relate to and then they have a geographic area and depth on the map as attack targets. They break it down into battalions and the battalion is probably the cohesive unit where the battalion commander directly leads combat.
It does not feel fair to call the very active reconnaissance an offensive start yet if that is what we know.
There are several reasons why it will be a violent offensive with much death – May 9 is important for the Russians, if you wait too long they reinforce more, they have an enormous number of brigades in the field now and combat value decreases over time and ammunition and fuel depots will be logged by the Russians over time and shot out.
The offensive is resourced, we see armor with spruce branches on now and that won’t last too long.
Sure, people are worried that UA will not attack until it is too late and they binge on chips and dip to handle the pressure but I see no practical reasons why they should wait.
China has now established diplomatic contacts with UA and Xi Jinping has had a personal conversation with Zelensky.
https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1651184756623802368?s=46&t=sbIUeR7sLfkjbe2D-uO4Sg
This is significant to me.
Now maybe it is part of some mediation role for the war, we will see, but UA doesn’t have to say yes to anything, right?
They have the 1991 borders as a very reasonable demand and the whole West behind them.
The fact is that if Zelensky were to accept giving up land today it would lead to civil war, the bow is drawn to the breaking point and the arrow must be released, anything else is completely unreasonable. Zelensky has many talents so he naturally understands this too.
The post-spring offensive if it completely stalls is another matter but it will not stall, both Budanov and the coffee grounds say so.
The unifying factor is to throw the Russians out of Ukraine, or kick-ban them as the blogger says about the trolls in the thread.
If you don’t reach that, there is enormous energy that needs to be released elsewhere.
This is a whole country that for 200 years has been abused under Russian-Soviet-Russian rule and now got its chance to get back. Russia lied and manipulated itself into a dishonorable war start and they desecrated children and women on their looting march through the country.
Ukraine has now prepared one of the most powerful offensive resources we have seen in modern times and they are in no hurry, they hurry slowly.
They are convinced they will win this summer because the panic and car salesman smile are gone. They are tired but confident and convinced of their victory.
The Russians have nothing to oppose, they have played all their cards already.
In terms of offensive, UA has formally announced that intensity has increased since April 10.
Then between April 19 – 21 there was further noticeably increased intensity.
However, it is not the all-out war everyone is waiting for.
https://twitter.com/pstyle0ne1/status/1651219811966263299?s=46&t=aJKAI_I0LhF4JKee4qheYw
Ukraine has shown itself to be pragmatic, professional, balanced and with full integrity throughout the war and you don’t see that very often.
A flash from a brilliant well-trained legend with a lot of hair on his head (not early hair loss) posted in yesterday’s thread this morning. No one believes this is an isolated incident and it makes clear why the remaining T80 and T90 are standing and gathering dust instead of storming across the fields in Ukraine – they can’t. China can of course help with this over time but now it’s probably the end of tanks.
They have driven an Afghan through the entire armed forces.
https://twitter.com/thedeaddistrict/status/1651439228054646784?s=46&t=5rncOCQRVU7TopXHeLEXpw