2023-05-06 -

10:59 – Johan No.1

If you look at Deepstatemap, one area just south of the Antonovsky Bridge is contested. The previous report was that the Russians had withdrawn east of the larger watercourse Hyumlusha.

It has been quiet around this area, very interesting if you look at the maps – you can go on the defense and there are two watercourses that RU must cross to reach them, and UA is also under its own artillery umbrella.

The area has been contested since April 23 when we had the second increase in activity.

Further south (but north of the islands which are also contested) there are a couple of interesting port facilities or docking possibilities in dredged pockets.

It is not bad terrain to create a bridgehead in, and strange that the Russians have not retaken the whole area?

The terrain down there is at least open quite far east, and further north at Khakovka there are only open fields directly after the settlement of Khakovka.

The best terrain to try to advance with some type of cover along the entire Dnipro front.

Then it is worrying that RU has allowed the Khakovka reservoir to fill up too much, flood risk on the left bank of the Dnipro unfortunately.

There seem to be two artillery brigades, about ten army brigades, and a bunch of special forces in the Dnipro area.

At Marinka, Deepstatemap has registered UA advances recently (days). I think Erik14 is on about Oleksandrivka?
At Nevelske, Pervomaiske, and Krasnohorivka, UA has also advanced recently, and that there is movement in the areas around the city of Donetsk is almost sensational.

There has also been movement at Vesele NE of Soledar which is probably a vector for a massive operation on Soledar and Bakhmut if one dares to think that big behind the keyboard.

So a lot is happening right now that we are not really discussing, and Deepstatemap is still marked up so not just loose rumors from the Twitter gods.

That was also the reason I sounded my gong the other day because I believe the window for offensive operations has begun.

In fact, Erik14 has in recent days highlighted these areas several times. Vuhledar, Mariinka, Avdiivka, Bakhmut were all focus areas for Russian attacks. Now UA has recaptured terrain there in recent days.

As is well known, I am the only one pushing that the 1st and 2nd Army Corps will lay down arms when they realize the race is lost, but the defense of the cities Donetsk, Horlivka, and Luhansk is largely by the rebels.

Low number of Russian BTGs, high number of rebels.

If you, like Johan No.1, believe that a dialogue is already ongoing today with the rebels, it could get quite lively when they either lay down arms or switch sides.

Now it is the bubble list and you cannot predict outcomes on that unfortunately.

Something that has not happened (or at least we have not heard anything about) in the quiet diplomacy and negotiations is that the Russian dictatorship accepts to withdraw even before the spring offensive starts. We have seen no indications of that.

That was somewhere on the bubble list.

What has happened, however, is that BRIICS have turned their backs on Putin, but I guess one dares not write that.

Any other country would have given up already, but here apparently it is full speed ahead.

It is very unwise because the only bargaining chips RU has left are conquered territory, and if they lose these in a fair war, then they have nothing to negotiate about at all.

The West, on the other hand, has 500 billion in seized assets, tough sanctions, and lots of ICC warrants.

Why should the West ease up then, they can use these pressure tools to control Russia going forward?

The West can be the adults in the room and demand extradition to The Hague for a few hundred prominent war criminals, huge reparations to Ukraine, demilitarized zones.

Then they promise to consider easing the brakes.
The negotiation situation is going from very bad to catastrophic for Russia here and time is not on their side.

Does Putin and his circle really have such good control over the entire elite and security apparatus?

In Ukraine, the army openly fights with Wagner, they fight each other, officers are constantly being fired, everything is chaos and nothing works.

I then think that if Russia works the same way, can they really have such good control over the country and the opposition.

They control the flow of information so we probably do not have the same insight as we have in Ukraine.

Provinces or sub-republics declaring freedom – what can they do?

Power struggle in the Kremlin and between agencies – they have 500,000 weapons among them.

Anyway, that is on the bubble list too and no outcome can be predicted – it is on the agenda next month for change and they have really dragged their feet.

If I may guess, the tensions among the Russians right now are enormous, they just have to be.

Existential crisis in our political parties we get with just a fraction of this mess Russia has jumped into and they can’t even swim unlike our politicians who learned that in elementary school.

When I scour the unit maps I really come to only one conclusion – UA can attack everywhere.

They currently have capacity on all fronts except maybe up in northern Luhansk but there RU has weakened so much that they probably have it anyway.

So it does not matter what the Russians know or what they do, if they figure something out and pool units to one front, UA attacks another weakened front with existing brigades there.

It is unfortunate that Putin is too far gone to accept that the war is already over.

Then I want to put things in perspective. We always talk about huge distances, incredible areas and so on.

Between Vasylivka, which is the barbarians’ stronghold on the southern front right at the Dnipro, and down to Melitopol it is a whole 58 minutes’ drive on half-bad roads.

So it is not longer than that.

If you drive 20 minutes more you have cut the land route to Crimea.

Yes, there are lots of Russians in between warming up in the sunshine like lizards and then we have mines but the distances are not longer than that.

Like Stockholm up to Knivsta roughly.

All three attack vectors on the southern front are roughly the same distance.
Then Crimea is cut off.

If you do the combo crossing the Dnipro, there will probably be a spontaneous flight to the perceived safety down in Crimea and then a spontaneous flight to the relative safety in Russia (before the civil war starts) a few weeks later.

Before there is a storm of angry comments – yes, I understand there are multiple defense lines between the two points but I think more in terms of logistics which must be included, these are not large DISTANCES to achieve the combat objective “the chess move”.

At Kherson we saw UA advances for a couple of months before it collapsed I think?

From what I can now read, UA has increased pressure almost everywhere and they will continue to increase pressure.

The Kherson front was a limited area that was prepared by VDV for many months and was also defended by VDV. The front collapsed immediately when VDV retreated.

My guess is that there will be a breakdown in some front section quite soon when UA increases the pressure going forward.

Everyone says that Prigozhin is playing a clever game, but what if the contract soldiers told him they were leaving and he is trying to save face?

See the video below to see how much fun Wagner is having in Bakhmut right now.

Bakhmut is, in any case, a low-odds candidate for collapse; if there are 25,000 Russians there as we were told a few weeks ago, then UA now has 30 brigades there including a full five (5) artillery brigades.

Wiping out a square kilometer that the Russians didn’t have ammunition for and had to abandon is probably something Ukraine has now implemented, one would think 😀.

This is how much fun Wagner is having in Bakhmut now, soldiers without AT weapons against a tank. It’s not very surprising that Prigozhin is absolutely furious?
https://twitter.com/pstyle0ne1/status/1654574371518775296?s=46&t=CqsT3J6n8Dol5-CxjJKeUQ

At first glance, it looks like Shoigu is inspecting rows of brand-new T90s with all the extras, but if you look deeper, many of the vehicles are T62s with lots of add-ons to make them look a bit nicer.
https://twitter.com/secretsqrl123/status/1654550782941724672?s=46&t=CqsT3J6n8Dol5-CxjJKeUQ

You can feel a bit of Zelensky’s calm now, the ball is rolling and preparations have been made as best as possible. Now the unit commanders have to solve their combat tasks and then it will be command on the move.

Gregg wrote in today’s update – “almost all our home guard forces have received marching orders and are in place or almost in place at their assigned positions.”

My guess is that they are the last to be mobilized and that the spearhead has long since been deployed and that the second line is also in place. Since UA has such a short drive time to various front sections, they can probably hold back the spearhead a couple of hours’ drive away so RU has to guess where to strike.

It was a successful Friday pub, we arrived at the chosen serving place before the battery was completely drained, large bottles of Heineken arrived immediately (which were opened at the table), the food tasted good and it wasn’t too late so I still had the ability to speak when I got home. A fairly reasonable and balanced Friday routine 👍

15:24 – Johan No.1

Full of energy, I have thrown myself into the forums where trolls lurk and there is a persistent rumor that the Russians have stored away thousands of T90s in mountain caves in the Urals.

The only thing I know is that in the “far east military command” they stored the oldest vehicles in mountain caves ahead of a potential war with China, JS2 was there for quite a long time, for example?

What does the thread think about thousands of T90s kept secret until now? To me, it sounds like a tall tale?