10:44 – Johan No.1
Yesterday we discussed the world’s best infantry. There is of course a downside here as well where they are quite heavy-handed beyond what we in Sweden could accept regarding individual freedom and so on – after the war one can start to dive into all that and quite a few Western SOF have complained about it and left.
I also believe that when history is written it will come out that Zelensky demanded an offensive in autumn 2022 in order not to lose the West and that they have refrained from attacking Russia because the West demanded it – Ukrainian soldiers have died completely unnecessarily.
It is very easy to consider oneself able to afford a higher moral standing and to refrain from excessively violent weapons when one does not die on a field in Ukraine, leaving behind a broken wife and traumatized children sitting in the ruins of what was once their home.
The West should be peppered with obituaries like these every day.
https://twitter.com/euromaidanpress/status/1685880970745147392?s=46&t=Y8mTxQf_t1A1n_OSQ53fZg
Now that the Russians have learned what it feels like to be cluster-bombed, the next step should be for them to learn the sound of incoming thermobaric enormous bombs.
The US probably has quite a large arsenal of bunker busters, Tomahawks, and other exciting weapons – send over the whole palette.
Together with Five Eyes and a missile swarm similar to what the Russians have launched against Ukraine (but only against military targets!), Russia would be crying loudly at the UN and demanding peace on any terms after a few months.
There is one thing that bothers me a bit in the daily loss figures, and that is the high losses of air defense units.
Ukraine barely has an air force left, and currently they do not intend to achieve air superiority by defeating air defense units since the Russian air force still exists even if Ukraine gets planes from the West.
However, a missile swarm or a drone swarm would benefit from defeated air defense units.
I have also decided that there will be no new mobilization. How would Putin et al. dare to do that when they were almost lynched by 25,000 Wagner mercenaries?
A mobilization similar to last year is needed to make a difference, and that means 300,000 new, now quite angry Russians with a weapon – impossible.
Thus, they have come to a dead end here, and when the army is run into the ground, it’s over.
An indication as good as any is that the voluntary mobilization that began on April 7, 2023, did not yield 400,000 volunteers; unclear how many, but it was few.
Information about mobilization is thus an attempt at strategic communication by the Russians to scare the West – so now we have seen through it.
The Russian elite can survive this war, and a palace coup means a reshuffle among the elite and is probably part of the job description.
A popular revolution is their worst nightmare – then no rules apply anymore, and one wrong step when you have no idea which way to go, and you end up hanging from some lamppost.
My guess is they would rather endure humiliation and leave Ukraine than risk a popular uprising.
Adding 300,000 to an army that already seems ready to turn its weapons inward is something not even Putin would do; even a Russian large-brand oligarch probably hasn’t missed some history lessons and knows how it usually ends when wars don’t go as planned.
Especially since the Rosgvardia and FSB seem to have been decimated in the war in Ukraine.
Yesterday, the legend on two legs and possible cornu overdose victim (according to himself) MXT posted a link from Tatarigami where he identified two bases with 50 + 80 hard vehicles.
The conclusion was that Russia does not lack reserves, but those were probably two battalions in training or something?
Apparently there were more bases, so a few more battalions, but for some reason he couldn’t post them.
https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1685672583667007488?t=KHYpQBW0dyY7v-8AOdln9Q&s=19
Not even a tidy dinner with a couple of beers helped yesterday – I got completely furious at the West’s sluggishness here.
A Twitter user has, with the help of commercial satellite photos, identified a number of bases where hard vehicles are lined up and where training of replacement personnel is ongoing.
In absolute arrogance since they KNOW that the West does not allow Ukraine to fire any long-range weapons at them – what gives the West this right to be morally high-minded with the result that Ukrainian soldiers die in droves instead.
These bases should have already been cleared out in a cloud of Storm Shadows long ago.
It is indeed my belief that there are no more than a few thousand and that they have mediocre training, but that they get to train in peace right on the Russian side of the border is absolutely blood pressure raising.
It is actually hard to find anything more self-righteous than the West here; just because you haven’t lain in a muddy hole and been run over by Russian armor doesn’t mean you have to behave like the emperor of any country who has never seen anything poorer than the royal court.
Just so as not to give the pessimists a free point – the rant is not because Ukraine is losing, it is because the West is dragging its feet so tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers die completely unnecessarily so that we can pat ourselves, and each other, on the shoulder and say that we only used environmentally friendly and humane weapons in this war.
It is an absolute moral swamp the West finds itself in right now.
I understand that Zelensky is going completely crazy about this; these are two worlds – in one, children as young as five are tortured and murdered, and in the other, there is a 1.5-year debate about whether to send environmentally damaging cluster munitions or not.
The positive thing is that more and more openly criticize the West’s strategy now, very good.
https://twitter.com/ehunterchristie/status/1685660545578340353?s=46&t=4Yp1Btd_-Vbjz6qxDjbRrg
Anders Åslund really speaks plainly here – well said.
https://twitter.com/anders_aslund/status/1685484031482224640?s=46&t=UEpymcMOvT6whOLS4FA7KQ
Just so one understands the scale of the ethnic cleansing – according to the Russians themselves, they have kidnapped 700,000 Ukrainian children. A national trauma.
https://twitter.com/irgarner/status/1685798621004828672?s=46&t=Y8mTxQf_t1A1n_OSQ53fZg
Then I had completely missed that former officers can now be called up to the war up to the age of 70. This is Russia, where the average age is around 60, so they probably are not in fresh Swedish pensioner shape who go hiking and eat healthily. Things are going well for Putin…
https://twitter.com/defencehq/status/1685890342250221568?s=46&t=Y8mTxQf_t1A1n_OSQ53fZg
Read below the translation from the NG brigade in Orihiv – as we guessed, the intensity will increase according to them.
https://twitter.com/ng_ukraine/status/1685668097103908864?s=46&t=Y8mTxQf_t1A1n_OSQ53fZg
All arrows up and light green.
11:08 – MatsExtrude
👍 Good summary of the situation!
By the way, I saw that they have now raised the age up to 70 to be called up as reservists..
Sounds more and more desperate and that only means one thing. They have serious problems getting enough people..
Only if the West can continue delivering and ignores Russian propaganda will this work out. But of course, much more should be done..
11:52 – Johan No.1
The worst thing about the whole platform is that everything disappears in the feed and can never be found again. There is a bookmark function for it, but it gets quite long very quickly and you have to be very selective.
Then there is never any guarantee that Twitter won’t suspend accounts that are pro-Ukraine, and then the stuff you saved probably disappears too.
Basically worthless, and since the teenage years, I’ve had content on I don’t know how many platforms that, if you didn’t lose the login, have been shut down.
Yeah, hard to find the account with that meaningless name 😀
11:57 – Johan No.1
This blog as an archive is therefore absolutely brilliant 👍
12:05 – Johan No.1
If I tell this, Dengamle will go completely crazy because he’s sitting on the first wagon with a Swedish flag waiting to move forward. According to the company commander, he has been sitting like a hermit on the wagon for four days wrapped in the flag, and the pile of empty beer bottles below the wagon is growing. They haven’t figured out yet who keeps slipping him all the Obolon beers, but apparently it keeps him calm because in the beginning he was extremely eager to storm forward “like in the good old days.”
There is supposed to be some movie where the hero stands on the front wagon waving a flag that they saw in the barracks, and this has completely stuck with Dengamle who gave a smartphone with a camera (which he stole in Georgia) to the shooter behind so they can film him, and he has a device with straps so he can stand up (well, somewhat) reasonably when the vehicle is moving.
It’s apparently on his bucket list since the Battle of Lexington when they took the regimental flag from him after he accidentally laid it over a foxhole during a march pause and it got completely torn apart.
On topic – I have for a while had the feeling that UA has enough units on the southern front to accomplish the task, right or wrong, and that they have an offensive reserve, strength unknown, that is not needed at Bakhmut and clearly not up in northern Luhansk.
At one of the four weak points, more than that and I could get serious trouble with Budanov…
12:07 – Johan No.1
Yep, I have that in the other post that’s in the freezer – completely crazy 😀
16:24 – Johan No.1
Considering there is video evidence that the Russians are involved in – castration, torture, desecration, and murder of children down to five years old, starvation, excessive violence leading to amputations, and a whole lot more very serious abuses, the best guess is probably that it’s the Russians who are stealing organs from wounded soldiers?
It wouldn’t surprise me in the least actually and fits quite well with all the other atrocities they are committing.
10:39 – Johan No.1
This is well-coordinated – offensive on all fronts simultaneously with increasing drone swarms and destroyed bridges. Maximum amplifier, only a new invasion of Belgorod is missing.
Very nice of the UK to go big with the retaking of Crimea and to train UA SOF for it – that’s how it should be communicated every day all week across all different areas.
Putin should be showered with bad news every day so he has to take more omeprazole.
More and more hints in the media now that Russia is ready to be the adults in the room and have peace talks to save the Ukrainian children. I’ve seen about a dozen articles and tweets on the subject in the past week with different angles.
Also starting to be quite sure that the Russians are beginning to panic now – if the West can just refrain from being talked down by the Russians, this is a smashing victory in the making just as we outlined earlier in the war.
If the West now refuses to release their amplifiers and chooses to hold back materiel, the next best thing is that they keep completely silent and do not initiate dialogue or start leaking to the media that the West wants a compromise peace.
Russia is working very hard right now to try to talk the West down,
https://twitter.com/euromaidanpress/status/1685621511892410368?s=46&t=UEpymcMOvT6whOLS4FA7KQ
Let Ukraine really crush the Russians properly over the coming months and Putin’s peace envoy will turn into increasingly loud cries for help.
It would be hysterically funny if Putin finally asks for help from the international community against the violent and cunning Ukrainians.
80 destroyed T62s is quite a high number at Oryx – that’s more than destroyed T90s and suggests that there are more T62s than T90s on active fronts, which is good.
Oryx also has a destroyed BTR-60 and hundreds of BMP-1s, those are ancient vehicles.
I am quite sure that the Russians are not holding back materiel when the remaining VDV, Spetsnaz, Marine Infantry, and Recon are making a frog march towards their last battle.
The fact that the 3rd Assault Brigade Azov has been able to fight for over two months without losing momentum suggests that Ukraine is restrained in sacrificing lives here.
We can reasonably assume that their offensive reserves and other brigades (apart from the Bakhmut defense and the brigades in Avdiivka) are in good shape and that the losses we see are often a company where a large part of the infantry and crews can retreat and then the Russians run a hundred films from different angles for their psyops.
As LW put it very nicely – the armored vehicles, especially Ptgb, are a consumable to protect the infantry, they are replaced and the infantry survives.
Each brigade fights well with a battalion or two on the active front which they rotate and a company that has taken large material losses just rotates back to rest for a month and then they are like newly manufactured after vehicles and replacement personnel have been supplied.
If you look at Staromaiorske and the 11-13 km left to the frontline (main defensive line) you quickly see that you can roll all the way to Staromlynivka as the terrain is unfavorable for RU.
Here the Russians are actually forced (for once) to carry out violent counterattacks or else UA will soon be behind the main line and can spread like a handful of ants released on the ground.
RU will fail in their counterattacks but they buy time – the question is how much will to die Russian units still have down there – we will soon see.
In any normally functioning country that would be enough for them to pull back but with the Russians it’s impossible to guess, they go from victory speeches to palace coups overnight – completely hopeless.
If the West can just refrain from giving Putin hope this will soon be over but the West MUST play along.
The army on the ground is extremely difficult to assess, probably many units live completely in an information vacuum because the Russians like that and there is a hierarchy within the units and then blocking units in the form of FSB and Rosgvardia which all seem to deter choosing life. However, the jungle drum must also exist in the Russian army and when it breaks at Bakhmut and the Southern front it will become generally known quite quickly.
I take a couple of things from this war –
-The infantry is king in the bar and will always be so with the right training and MANPADS.
-Mines will never become obsolete.
-Long-range missiles you should have a lot of, very many.
-Intelligence gathering is also the bar’s uncrowned emperor.
-The drone weapon will develop enormously going forward – a poor man’s weapon that works.
-For a war against a qualified opponent you need endurance.
It is extremely strange that Ukraine is not allowed into Belgorod but the Russians are allowed to drive nuclear weapons into Belarus and start provoking Poland with Wagner – the West is completely silent here.
If you look at all unit maps Ukraine has a number of brigades with a hard bite on the northern front.
I understand it is getting really tedious but UA must win this, send all Taurus and Storm Shadow in the stocks and let them strike all military targets five eyes can find in Ukraine and Russia and carry out the raids.
Get the Gripens and F-16s over, send more armored vehicles and ammunition and an article a week about the West supporting Ukraine to the 1991 borders forever with some different angles.
Then I think Ukraine has had enough and will go hard on the northern front quite soon, just a feeling when stirring in the swamp. Belgorod, Kursk and Voronezh are a few days of fighting away from being overrun.
China can never get advanced weapons to Russia in time before the war is lost for Putin, it simply can’t.
They have certainly already sent ammunition, drones and MANPADS in large quantities but armored vehicles and artillery the Russians will not learn to operate fast enough so there is still about a six-month window if they were to be sent.
Then we wait for the last Easter egg – there are now 3-4 front sections that are poorly defended and the 10th Army corps has not yet been committed to battle. It will be a deviation from the big campaign plan but you seize an opportunity and exploit it so it could be approved – Budanov has received the green light.
Now we just wait for increased intensity and Easter eggs.