2023-05-02 -

10:43 – Johan No.1

Lion ✊
https://twitter.com/ukrainiansquad/status/1652318676362620930?s=46&t=eSJc3QSaTLJvUdDm2C_-hQ

Now everything has been reused and said so I guess I’ll start posting links for a while late at night during the night shift 😀

I have leaned towards a gradually increasing intensity once the offensive gets underway but I’m wondering if it won’t be a somewhat simultaneous start for the simple reason that I think it has the greatest negative effect on Russian combat command when it’s burning everywhere.

Then there are defense areas – divisions – brigades and down to battalions that need to get organized to solve their task so it will never be simultaneous but possibly within a window.

The challenge will be when you start going deep and logistics have to be included, partly it’s about protecting it but also that TOLO happens when it should so units don’t end up stranded without fuel or ammunition.

The faster the offensive plays out, the less strain on the logistics chain. At first, the battalions and brigades have what they carry with them but pretty soon they will need to be topped up from front-line depots that must not be knocked out by the Russians but also need to be replenished, and it’s moving forward all the time. At some point, you cross the threshold where the depots start running low and finally the threshold where you can’t fight as you want.

Then the LV screen must come along and you must be able to get indirect fire when needed.

If Ukraine manages this, they are at legendary level. In Sweden, you have brigade exercises with one battalion and it’s probably not until you start fighting with actual numbers that the weaknesses in the logistics chain become apparent.

UA has so far not even been close to fighting with the numbers moving forward to the grouping areas now. It is my opinion that this is the largest offensive in modern times and that the spearhead is probably bigger than Desert Storm but those are my guesses and thoughts and as is well known I know nothing.

The low-intensity increase we are already in the middle of, it has been increasing since April 10 according to UA themselves. In the past week, we have had several successful counterattacks from UA. It is obvious that they are preparing for offensive operations across the Dnieper, on the southern front, near Bakhmut and up in Kreminna.

There will also be other vectors as diversions or to project threats that RU must reasonably allocate resources to.

I am of the opinion that May 9 is an important date to sabotage as much as possible. For Putin, it is so important to take Bakhmut by May 9 that he has put all his chips on the table and burned the entire offensive reserve.

If Ukraine can give him a broken front and fleeing Russians instead, the likelihood that Russia turns inward increases exponentially – that is a guess from me but consider that the country has historically had revolutions during major crises and right now UA is creating a big crisis for them.

Ukraine is cunning and pragmatic – I hope that this time they will be able to show panoramic columns of prisoners and fleeing Russians for the worst possible humiliation effect at home in Russia to increase the chance of internal unrest. They seem to be able to hack everything so when citizens see VDV surrendering by the thousands, it could cause shockwaves. Especially since the dictatorship has concealed and lied about the war for a whole year.

Maximum negative PR for Putin et.al.

What will now increase among pro-Kremlin is the demands to leave Russia alone when they have been thrown out – “they have already been punished” type.

For Ukraine and all other countries bordering Russia, it would be best if Russia broke up into smaller parts. It would also be best for the colonized minority peoples that no one has ever cared about despite decolonization being very important in recent years.

Why should they continue to be colonized when everyone else gets their freedom?

It doesn’t have to get worse because of it, it could get better too?

I suspect it is a pro-Russian narrative that if Russia were to lose a single province the situation would become 10 times worse. Worth taking a chance and seeing how it goes maybe, it can hardly get worse than threats to take Lisbon and full extermination war in Ukraine?

We know what they planned and for my part I’d rather see a broken-up Russia than them doing this again in 5-10-15 years or however long it takes to restore (relative) capability.
(don’t come now with the nuclear weapons…)

When I say that Crimea will be emptied voluntarily I’m probably a bit wrong because before Ukraine blows up the bridge but the countdown has started it is likely that the Russians will try to block the exit on the mainland if spontaneous flight over the bridge begins.

But then we have reached a point where there will be mass surrender instead so the outcome is the same.

I think we all understand that the Russians have nerves on edge (some shining legend in the thread who introduced that expression 👍) right now and that they jump at the slightest sound.

It was enough for the oil tanks to explode for the bridge to become jammed with cars.

What do you think will happen when Ukraine rolls out the pre-battle seriously over Crimea at the same time as the countdown until the bridge is blown has started?

The kicker with Crimea is that the Russians will leave astronomically heavy equipment behind.
They have large depots with non-operational vehicles down there that Ukraine then captures and can repair.

They will probably take the fleet to the mainland and it would be fun if it turned into a street race.

There is a worrying exhaustion among the soldiers in the videos now and there are reasons to try to get a decisive outcome before the army is worn out. There’s no point trying to paint it positively, they have taken a hell of a beating and I am of the opinion that the country depends a lot on the offensive itself so that the air doesn’t go out of them.

One really wants this war to end every day 🤬

That said – the Russians who are captured hardly look like soldiers anymore, more like a wandering beggar camp, and their condition is probably absolutely terrible now.

Captives have testified about no food, no water, no command, no ammunition and general misery. UA finds more and more drugs on the fallen and prisoners.

In Bakhmut, UA is beginning to note signs of despair among those running across the fields swinging their sabers (I think they more sweep the saber in the grass than wildly swing it?) – even the Russians understand what is happening now when they have been pushed back at Avdiivka, Vuhledar and Bakhmut quite easily and never manage to take Bakhmut.

Could a negative date for the Russians themselves on the ground be May 9, when the air goes out of them?
We thought so last year and nothing happened because the inertia of the Russian team is enormous so it’s way down on the bubble list for that.

Gregg has returned to this for a while now, the Russians moved up an entire artillery brigade to Bakhmut to support the murder snails, or if it’s the VDV now, but they haven’t opened up yet, it’s been about 4 days since they finished grouping and UA expected a rain of artillery. The shooters keep pushing forward and Prigozin is screaming on Telegram.
Either it’s a new level of dirty tricks from the Russian army but why move up a whole artillery brigade and then not provide support?
It could also be ammunition shortage, we will probably see that quite soon.

Then the Russians were supposed to save their missiles for the UA offensive – that’s why we didn’t see 80 missiles with that two-week or three-week interval for several months. The last big missile attack was probably before Christmas?

Suddenly, maybe as revenge for the oil depot down in Crimea, they make a pathetic missile attack and manage to launch a total of 18.

Why only 18?
That doesn’t exactly project strength when they used to launch 80-100?

If one guesses, they have few missiles left, Erik14 has pushed that hard and it’s supported by how they act.

Then we know that UA is as cunning as beavers so they probably have a countermeasure against the JDAM carriers and will strike when the Russians try to go all in at the start of the offensive.
Russian CAS and army aviation can also be fought with MANPADS.

I guess UA has a couple of surprises to pull out when the offensive rolls out.

Now this is wild speculation, want to flag that, but if they have “many dozens” of fully trained F-16 pilots, the F-16 is a flight time and refueling away from being able to participate in combat in Ukraine.

We also don’t hear much about UA air force but we know that quite a few Mig-29s have been delivered and many spare parts.

UA air force is presumably not at all counted out and considering all the Russians’ losses of air defense platforms, their air defense capability might be a bit on the decline like a Russian who just sucked in the dregs from a medium-sized mash jug and laid down to digest the food.

They have probably read Sun Tzu but above all the Russians are completely helpless against something new for several months before they have gone through the entire chain of command and argued about how to tackle the new threat so it would definitely be smart to introduce some new trick.

Russian JDAMs are unpleasant but they can’t handle moving targets, UA presumably has fixed depots out of their range and the weapon carriers are vulnerable.

We have already seen what UA has managed to achieve with the Russian team – someone posted the loss figures in the thread a few days at the start of the war for some reflection and they have absolutely decimated the Russian army during the past year.

In the Kuwait wars, the US cut through the Iraqi defense directly and we learned that numbers didn’t matter. The US has always had a weakness and that is own losses.

In the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, we learned that new technology crushes Soviet doctrine and materiel.

In Operation Storm (not the desert variant) we learned that Western support and training could work wonders.

Now we have a year of warfare and Ukraine with the whole West has started to learn how to fight.

I consider it obvious that they have both learned lessons from previous conflicts but also built on experiences gained in this war and that command and control defense has been completely disconnected from command and control offensive.

Now UA is fiddling with the starting blocks and it is battle-hardened commanders trained during the year by the West and who are damn tired of all the repetitive sandbox fighting now.

The brigades are all battle-hardened but have been in training, rest and recovery some since last autumn others since the winter offensive never happened.

They have the training, experience, will, weapons and ammunition behind them to succeed but the combat goals are somewhat astronomical.

However, Ukraine has already without using this offensive reserve liberated 40% of the country’s area and I think Crimea is more difficult to defend than we are led to believe – the Crimeans at least don’t seem to trust the peninsula’s invincibility.

The slow part has always been the darkest Donbass but if they get in “from below” it could get exciting.

If there is fighting in towns it will be and then UA will win in the end anyway because they have night vision that the Russians now lack and their own as well as the whole West’s SOF who have learned their night fighting.

I know I’m nagging but a friend keeps asking me what it takes for China to have thrown Russia under the bus?

Now China decided to also support that peace can only be relevant if Russia leaves Ukraine to the 1991 borders in a vote. Is a vote also just saying something and doing something completely different or is it doing something?

Waiting times.