11:11 – Johan No.1
Spring 2022 then, there was a discussion about the drone weapon, and I thought it had not become the new black as predicted.
11:13 – MatsExtrude
👍
I think the best would be for Russia to collapse, but of course it depends on who takes power.
Soon we will see the Russian front collapse anyway, and the rest will have to sort itself out when we get there.
11:44 – Johan No.1
Yep, things are moving and still no reports of reinforcements from Russia.
13:18 – Johan No.1
Took a look at the fortification map and you can’t really go “between” two lines towards Polohy.
East of Vuhledar and near Polohy there is lower density of RU units, but have they cleared mines in those areas?
I don’t know.
We’ll see what the rumor that RU will abandon the front line yields. Polohy is actually in a second line, right?
And then right in the area with dominant terrain?
What you can say is that the wedge down towards Tokmak and east of Melitopol is actually not the most logical – but it ties up Russian units.
The one west of Vuhledar makes more sense and it gets better the more units you have pulled away towards Tokmak and Melitopol, right?
Then there are poorly defended areas east of Vuhledar where we haven’t heard anything and in the area around Polohy.
But then the mine lines must reasonably be cleared first?
The Azov thrust can never become a wedge – when we described it east of Vuhledar, they took the surrounding areas in a horseshoe so they had an easily defendable “bridgehead” and then pressed down southeast.
You have to constantly protect the flanks and they went down there between two NS watercourses and easily defendable terrain.
The same applies if they get through at Staromaiorske, they widen, press on, defend flanks and try to get the highest possible speed but without losing flank protection.
When we looked at this a long time ago, there was naturally dominant terrain between Vasylivka and down towards Tokmak. Then an empty gap and then a similar line with dominant terrain Polohy – SE.
Now RU has changed all this with fortifications, but then we thought they advanced roughly in the area they are advancing now in that attack wedge.
But yes, it looks sparsely defended there, and east of Vuhledar and in Horlivka…
13:19 – Johan No.1
This was a reply to Skator and Matsextrude further up where they discussed KOS and Polohy, my two cents.
13:22 – Johan No.1
Ukraine themselves say that 80% of the wounded are back at the units.
We saw the mine clearer with a leg prosthesis which strongly supports that assumption.
We have countless stories about how poor RU medical care is, and then it seems like they send back a recovered soldier?
They may also have achieved 80% back in combat with that, but more that the trenches look like the emergency room at SöS even before UA hits them?
14:09 – MatsExtrude
Now I saw your comment. The mines of course make it really risky to tackle new frontline sections. You risk getting stuck, and then the Russians have time to bring up reserves (if they have any left). If you have tied up artillery elsewhere and can arrange a quick and effective preliminary bombardment so the mine clearers can work in peace, it can work.
But I agree that east of Vuhledar and also Horlivka looks tempting. Maybe a bit worse with accessibility near Vuhledar.
I like Horlivka, although you might get stuck immediately in prolonged urban fighting unless you go around, of course.
15:40 – Johan No.1
We definitely haven’t seen all the Easter eggs yet, Polohy, east of Vuhledar, Horlivka and the whole area between Soledar – Bilohorivka are possible areas.
Same with the whole area north of Vuhledar up to Horlivka, with the city of Donetsk right in between.
There are large reserves left and if RU weakens some area, UA will probably strike back reasonably?
22:38 – Johan No.1
😂😂😂
https://twitter.com/devanaukraine/status/1684956112380911621?s=46&t=OCCfVSAgg-_-eHpX34QJTQ
10:55 – Johan No.1
Now we are right in the middle of what we have described since sometime in spring 2022 in the most vivid and colorful terms we could.
We have not really overestimated the Russians’ capabilities, but we (I) underestimated at the start the inertia in the country which is enormous, and at least I have grossly overestimated the West’s willingness to live as democracies.
May 9, 2022, became a good calibration for the inertia in the country that has persisted.
In autumn 2022, the West missed the low point and then there were admonitions in the media to Ukraine not to go on the offensive during the winter from the USA, so it was probably a tense situation and hard to hold them back.
Today – Russian absolute low point met completed Ukrainian force buildup and a bow drawn to the breaking point.
A better situation than today will not come again before at the earliest the turn of the year, probably later, and then a lot can happen especially among the volatile West.
One should not underestimate the Russian ability to reinforce with the help of China, Iran, and the other rogue states – if they get time, they can come back.
Their Lancet drones have proven to work, so a low-odds bet is that China is secretly producing large quantities of the drone weapon and delivering it to Russia.
https://twitter.com/militarylabb/status/1684555831533002752?s=46&t=4gYWwKqVN3qwlcTcRol7RA
One never ceases to be amazed at what a Russian soldier can be made to do – an effective oppressive dictatorship where they would rather die than refuse orders. We saw a dead Russian soldier hanging upside down in a bunker that UA retook, so clearly refusal to obey orders is punished with torture and death.
Ukraine has put everything on one card, otherwise they would not have sent in their SOF to clear defense systems. These are among the most protected resources they have and they do not risk them for anything less than all-in.
It is somewhat part of the nature of war that the two opponents try to outsmart each other, you remember the discussions about getting inside the decision cycle and that UA stands right in the middle of the Russians and attacks them.
I must admit that I thought UA had better control over the minefields and that the West’s mine-clearing equipment would be tailor-made, but that was not the case, the real world vs parents’ computer room in the basement sometimes collide.
RU then did as they have always done throughout the war and went all in immediately, they defended the first of three lines with everything they had including the offensive reserves.
This has delayed UA’s advance but also means that they have less and less to defend the second and front lines with – they probably did this to try to make Ukraine or the West lose heart. Massive psyops that the offensive is stuck. But it didn’t work and then you stand there without defense in the next lines…
Big gold star to whoever said this at the start of the war, Russia has only one setting, if violence doesn’t work, increase the intensity of the violence.
Today VDV, Spetsnaz, Recon, Marine Infantry and the last Guards they have left are dying. Before UA’s offensive start I guessed a bit over 50,000 left of the (relatively) capable offensive reserve which is now being wiped out.
https://twitter.com/sarahashtonlv/status/1684291196959567879?s=46&t=4gYWwKqVN3qwlcTcRol7RA
UA has learned lightning fast from early setbacks and that is enough. The Russian team has learned nothing in an entire war.
It is a numbers game and if UA has saved half of its offensive capability while the Russians are committing their last, it is pretty clear how this will go, right?
The offensive is presumably resourced until sometime in September and they have received the ammunition they need – there will be no low point or lower intensity due to acute ammunition shortage.
UA has also learned to economize with ammunition and quite a few vehicles or artillery pieces are knocked out with drone-dropped wing grenades.
UA will continue to increase the intensity until something breaks and it will.
Russia is seriously shaken, that much I think is clear, and Ukraine is on the rise so it will get worse for the Russian team.
The mistakes Ukraine makes and has made we can discuss after the war and above all I find it hard to see that many other countries could have risen like this after the second count.
After the war when we understand the extent of the Russian atrocity we will understand that it was magnitudes worse than we thought.
There is only one way forward and Ukraine knows it, they fight with what they have, they don’t blame anything and they win.
The West should have done infinitely more and there are probably more than just Orban and Erdogan who have held back but done it more subtly.
Now even the media have jumped on that the Quran burnings were Russian psyops just as we have guessed in the thread for a long time.
The Russians are good at talking countries down and their psyops are running at full speed right now.
If a side effect of this war can be that we get rid of Russian subversive activities, much is gained also for the West.
I have pitched hard for either terror-classifying all Russian letter agencies or Russia for collusion with terrorists so that ALL who support Russian subversive activities can be prosecuted under terrorism legislation.
That the West does not increase sanctions, send more criminal cases to The Hague and promise all equipment extra everything is highly unfortunate but Ukraine keeps going anyway.
The Russians are completely overtaken here and it will be a long summer but right now their last offensive reserves are being decimated very quickly.
Unfortunately, there is no acceptable compromise as some seem to believe – it is the 1991 borders that apply.
Then everyone understands that if Russia does not turn inward there will be a round two, maybe not against Ukraine but Russia has ambitious plans in Africa nowadays for example and they stand on the same side of the midline as China so a lot of places have an unfortunate geographic location if it becomes a multipolar world.
Can it really get much worse if Russia turns inward?
Below you see which countries support RU and which support UA, I can reveal that on one side it is quite empty.
Minni Hiiri Fellarina #NAFO 🇫🇮🇸🇪🇪🇺💛💙 on Twitter: ”@Heroiam_Slava https://t.co/oFmcNUXMYE” / Twitter
(sorry but a black X is no more appealing than a blue bird but maybe that has been covered…)
One of the most likely endings of this war is actually that Russia one day simply goes out broadly with the message that the goals of the military special operation have been achieved, the citizens of Donetsk and Luhansk are saved and that NATO is eliminated as a threat and therefore the imperial Russian army will be withdrawn in a very generous goodwill gesture such as only a generous Russian can make a generous goodwill gesture. They film victorious units going home draped in flags and hugging waiting families with many children – a happy ending simply and everything is forgotten.
Another is that the army has had enough and stops fighting.
The third is a palace coup.
I believe the dictatorship would survive the first option, so the question is really why it is taking so long. It should be the least controversial of the remaining options.
Until then, we have to cheer Ukraine on to a smashing victory; the war is wearing on everyone, not least Ukraine, but there really is no middle ground that would work, that has been clear for a long time.
UA can probably turn inward quite quickly if conditions change; representatives of the country have gone on sun vacations during the war, for example, which is surely less popular with the army at the front.
https://twitter.com/christopherjm/status/1684537114661093380?s=46&t=4gYWwKqVN3qwlcTcRol7RA
We need a discussion about the ban on effective weapons that the West has imposed – cluster munitions are one, napalm (thermobaric) another, and so on.
https://twitter.com/kyivindependent/status/1684375802711019520?s=46&t=4gYWwKqVN3qwlcTcRol7RA
The Russian team has been raining thermite, thermobaric bombs, FAB500, and cluster munitions over Ukraine since day one, and they are very pleased with the results, and the peace movements are not exactly spinning out over the use of prohibited weapons…
Ukraine gets cluster munitions 1.5 years after the war started, and thermobaric weapons are presumably not available in the West?
Thousands of Ukrainians die because the West has been convinced not to produce weapons that are too effective; the peace movement has probably been a driving factor here?
You know what would be reasonable – that these weapons were produced centrally by the USA or EU and stockpiled, requiring political decisions and an escalation ladder before they can be used or something. For example, we had a bomb capsule with cluster munitions that was not allowed to be used.
This feels a bit like another very successful Russian psyop, actually, and somewhere there has to be a limit to how much you allow yourself to be deceived, right?
China obviously also has all these weapons readily available.
Drone swarms will come in the future – seekers that can hover in the air for a day or so; against personnel, you probably need 100g of charge or something, which means very small drones.
The West will naturally consider them too deadly or something similar, and peace movements and scared mink farmers will, through wild lobbying, get the West to ban these weapons while Russia and China build hundreds of thousands.
My third biggest mistake in this war was probably saying towards the spring that the drone weapon was not the new black 😀
Something that struck like lightning yesterday – or maybe it was when the power came back and the lights turned on – was that if Russia now has “unlimited soldiers to mobilize,” why then do they have to raise the maximum age and lower the minimum age to access a larger pool of people to mobilize?
That signals to me that they are starting to run out of suitable candidates in certain age groups, right?
The other thought that struck me, but not like lightning because it was pitch dark and there was a power outage, was that at all Lancet hits you only see the explosion from the drone.
We know that UA uses decoys on a large scale, and the Russian videos can partly be Lancets exploding against decoys, right?
The Russian videos always cut at the hit, and the Ukrainian ones show the entire turret shot and explosion – a not insignificant difference…
By the way, about 30 Abrams tanks will arrive in September ready to roll over the Russians in the pit, very good signal politics 👍
https://twitter.com/noelreports/status/1684682710894186496?s=46&t=iwIZJiuR3KbimK5GUbS9jw
It wasn’t clear, but UA is also attacking in the first attack vector which is west of Melipol on the western side of the NS watercourse. They haven’t advanced far, but offensive operations are ongoing.
The head of the Russian circus southern front thus has three attack vectors from the north, all threatening breakthroughs and existential for him while UA presses on at the Dnipro front.
Has a Russian ever managed to parry something like that over time (rhetorical question because this general staff makes Dien Ben Phu look like a great victory)?
Don’t forget Lex the French – when a defensive line is passed at one point, it is obsolete regardless of how many mines you have laid in that line, and the first of three lines is probably now somewhat passed?
Positive – Positive then, there is much summer left.