13:23 – MatsExtrude
👍👍👍
14:16 – Johan No.1
This thing about whether it’s offensive or not, and I fully understand how the thoughts go around the “major offensive” but I want to point out that to claim that you miss that Russia has lost control of a city with 40,000 inhabitants 10 km from its land border.
Surely that must count as offensive?
Or even invasion?
That said, I fully get the reasoning about the major offensive but a lot is happening in these “recon fights”.
14:26 – MatsExtrude
For my part, Belgorod feels like strategic trolling, a kind of pre-offensive. Even if it is successful, in the end it’s a kicked-out Russian you want to see.. But sure, the offensive has actually already started!
14:38 – Johan No.1
Yes indeed, invasion was the wrong word.
Liberation would have been more fitting.
14:58 – MatsExtrude
I didn’t oppose your post or your term, it was more that for my part I’m mainly waiting for them to start pushing the Russians out of Ukraine.
What’s happening in Belgorod I see more as a way to get there and not a goal in itself. But I’m totally for it! Suggested it myself earlier this spring even though I didn’t think they would dare do it politically.
Didn’t think then that they could use Russians.. (so damn smart of them even though everyone understands Ukraine is behind it).
15:20 – MatsExtrude
Wonder if it could be that AFU is just waiting to get the maximum out of the situation in Belgorod. Only when Russia seriously moves forces there do they increase intensity elsewhere.
15:39 – Johan No.1
Absolutely, agreed 👍
I forgot the laughing yellow face.
15:47 – Johan No.1
Increase pressure in Belgorod?
https://twitter.com/pstyle0ne1/status/1665326034261008385?s=46&t=-hdaBB-VFMYGJD0Rrs3byQ
15:58 – Johan No.1
Today you have chaos at the northern front and at Bakhmut. Northern Luhansk is probably not reinforced for offensive but if RU is weakened too much they will probably advance?
Between Horlivka and the city of Donetsk they keep up the pressure.
At the southern front you have the crossing of you-know-what and three attack vectors towards Azov – at least two are quite lively right now, the outer edges.
The above is just as you write and when I’ve counted on this they have evenly distributed 20 brigades on these different front sections, northern Luhansk a bit less and Horlivka – Donetsk enough for defense and some pressure.
19:42 – Johan No.1
Something seems to be happening in St. Petersburg?
Yellow-blue balloons in a police station.
https://twitter.com/xsovietnews/status/1665386109482811392?s=46&t=-hdaBB-VFMYGJD0Rrs3byQ
21:36 – Johan No.1
A bit under the radar here in the thread, there is almost an invasion, or liberation, of Belgorod if you believe the Twitter gods.
Seems to be a 30 km wide front that is now 1/4 of the way up to Belgorod from the border.
There were reports during the day that mechanized forces were crossing the border and if they have started establishing themselves as broadly as the Twitter gods want then it’s no longer just companies.
07:17 – Johan No.1
Thanks for the night shift.
Seems like the same thing happened as at Bakhmut, Bilohorivka and in Belgorod – when UA pushed at some points at the southern front they got through a kilometer or more.
It’s going to be a long summer but the trend seems to hold, they are poking at RU defenses and they are retreating from that place.
13:04 – Johan No.1
Now that I embarrassed myself in the medal race, I hope a post can be accepted as atonement,
The closer we get to offensive operations on the southern front, the more subdued one becomes, it is there that Ukraine can be expected to take heavy losses and the waiting is probably wearing on the families right now.
The video of the father who came home and the daughters who started crying hopelessly hit deeply – the children carry a lot of worry and the parents are so stressed themselves that they are not enough.
May all the angels in heaven protect them, I think that fits (again and many times more).
The Lions
https://twitter.com/ukrainiansquad/status/1665073039682174977?s=46&t=yEFHa6rQ6WOGQg018mXG0g
https://twitter.com/ukrainiansquad/status/1664981570501988353?s=46&t=yEFHa6rQ6WOGQg018mXG0g
To refresh the memory a bit, the Azov thrust (forgot who coined the term) is also the “checkmate move.” That is, then it is only a question of when this ends, it is irreversible.
What is down on Crimea is trapped and a matter of time before they are defeated.
As soon as the checkmate move is delivered, 1-2 brigades are parked at the land tongue down to Crimea and then 20-40 brigades (depending a bit on where the other army corps appears) are freed up, which can swing up in a huge uppercut “behind” (east of) the city of Donetsk.
The Russian team is then minus all the defense that has fled down to Crimea and everything that remains burning behind the southern front, and that attack vector goes straight up into poorly defended areas like an uppercut against a tired opponent in an MMA fight (apparently that’s what it is when I tried boxing last time).
If you want to figure out where it will hit, it’s not a bad idea to look at where the armored brigades are stationed, right? No real news, I think.
Same with a couple of the “new” brigades that we know have Leo2 and Bradley. Unfortunately, I didn’t take notes earlier when the brigades showed off Western armor during training, but the guess that they are pooled against a certain attack vector is quite reasonable.
The only thing that surprises me right now is where one of the focal points lies; I thought the other army corps would appear somewhere else, but right now quite a few units seem to be preparing to cross you-know-what.
Of course, it could be wizard-level in warcraft and they appear at another front; we went through that attack vector a month ago and reasoned about a bridgehead.
That bridgehead, together with the Azov thrust, would project such a strong threat that RU completely on its own emptied the area behind the southern front. To succeed with that, the combined show of force must be very violent, and at least I get the impression that it has been built up towards that.
We have discussed many times that it does not matter what Russia puts up against this offensive resource at all – it is unstoppable.
If they want to pool defense where it comes, UA fakes an attack on another front, they are hopeless.
The other focus point for tanks is something that makes Erik14 happy because then he gets to keep a five hundred.
Up in Belgorod it is absolute chaos and that is among the most fun things that have happened in the whole war. I think like this – why should UA stop something that is going beyond expectations.
A city of 40,000 inhabitants in Russia they have just lost control over, apparently the citizens have left and the rebels are sniffing around in the suburbs. After almost two weeks of fighting, they have not managed to stabilize the situation at all.
https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1665283409248153604?s=46&t=yEFHa6rQ6WOGQg018mXG0g
This is presumably a rope trick they will continue with until it stops.
How Russia could be so absolutely risk-prone is a mystery to me, but they have been – it’s like asking to get beaten up.
The Russian border with Ukraine is infinitely long and if they can’t defend 50 km, you can guess what it looks like where UA has not yet conducted any raids.
Today we found out that the Russians are raining thermite over their own city in Belgorod – they are really just destruction, a swarm of locusts.
https://twitter.com/thedeaddistrict/status/1665222242786062336?s=46&t=yEFHa6rQ6WOGQg018mXG0g
When the first Belgorod raid hit Twitter, we wrote that one should not underestimate the mess Ukraine caused here, undefended border and Belgorod Peoples Republic, BPR – a page from Putin’s playbook and all that.
I’m starting to feel that it was an underestimation 😀
It seems that the Russians cannot maintain control over large areas and it creeps closer to the city of Belgorod. Now there are some battalions having fun with raids here and there, but what do you think will happen when 20,000 Russian citizens with a year’s combat experience in Ukraine seriously press towards Belgorod?
Or Kursk, or Bryansk?
What they are doing right now is creating chaos and then pulling in Russian counterattacks under their own artillery umbrella and knocking them out.
The air force also enters their air defense umbrella and takes losses.
In this way, they drain the units up there and can in the long run come up with something even more troublesome for Putin 50 km east or west.
Then, as I try to write daily, it is far from calm in Bakhmut.
They were supposed to pause S of Bakhmut to work with indirect fire against the Opytne line – southern Zaitseve and instead press N of Bakhmut, and now it seems to be moving a bit up at Soledar according to Gregg?
Suddenly it will release around Bakhmut when they withdraw to Svitlodarsk – Popasna line.
Seeing Scholz go full ape and completely speak his mind was very liberating. With his background and the circles he might have moved in, the integrity was total.
Presumably, the man Scholz has decided to do the right thing no matter the cost. Hats off.
Van makes his appearances and reads our praise texts to Germany, and it would be fun if the other person who tried to defend Germany and Scholz in the beginning could jump in again and read the positive. He had it a bit tough.
The video has been up many times, posting it again just for my own archive.
https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1665032138847027201?t=zGrOeJqAOhL_ZQVwUwJ0BQ&s=19
If you want to hear an echo of what we have discussed on the blog about how this war is going, you can read Girkin’s latest.
https://twitter.com/s1epans/status/1664941308635500544?s=46&t=yEFHa6rQ6WOGQg018mXG0g
I think the legend MXT was first out saying it is messy in St Petersburg, looks quite lively actually.
https://twitter.com/golub/status/1665119400540643328?s=46&t=yEFHa6rQ6WOGQg018mXG0g
https://twitter.com/golub/status/1665252618967326721?s=46&t=yEFHa6rQ6WOGQg018mXG0g
But not only that – a Russian man throws stones at pro-war women in Moscow and is not arrested.
https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1665281803547029506?s=46&t=yEFHa6rQ6WOGQg018mXG0g
Some believe there are more videos of mine clearance now than before, a good measure if you want to push on with mechanical failures.
https://twitter.com/noelreports/status/1665261409356185601?s=46&t=yEFHa6rQ6WOGQg018mXG0g
Then apparently China wants increased military cooperation with Ukraine – is this throwing under the bus, asks a worried friend in Altai.
https://twitter.com/anno1540/status/1665099077661474819?s=46&t=yEFHa6rQ6WOGQg018mXG0g
It’s going to be a long summer but the bubble list is boiling and Ukraine has come very well prepared here. The offensive reserve is simply unstoppable.
Unfortunately, my howl was not included in the committee meeting about predicting outcomes from the bubble list but the Belgorod raids should not be underestimated.