12:56 – Johan No.1
Johan will have to answer for himself but the big campaign plan was –
1. Bakhmut
2. southern front possibly crossing the Dnieper before or in connection with the advance.
3. plug the land bridge to Crimea.
4. northern Luhansk aka the revolving door keeps going.
5. turn up into the darkest Donbass from the south.
6. win the war.
We have reached two and should soon see three play out.
Crimea was to be left and Johan No.1 could not decide whether the Kerch Bridge should be cut or not.
12:57 – Johan No.1
Damn forgot to switch account 😐
13:16 – MatsExtrude
Thanks again for a good and readable post. It is strange how their propaganda actually works and how many are happy to jump on.
Realize that maybe it was stupid to share Röpcke’s pessimistic post..
14:49 – MatsExtrude
🤣👍
15:59 – Johan No.1
Did you do that, did I miss it?
I have only had a very short discussion with him because he said that Ukraine lacks the political will to retake Donbass and I argued that it was later in the plan.
12:21 – Johan No.1
Now we can breathe a sigh of relief that MXT has managed to carry out a presumably successful rescue operation after the code word was repeated several times 😅
That Zelensky honored us with a state visit was very significant and fun that we can live up to expectations.
If I understand this correctly, the Strv122 and CV90 are the most modern UA has in armored vehicles, and Archer has some competition but is among the top 5 at least.
Apparently Putin got angry and decided to visit the metropolis Rostov na Don, and according to Russian military bloggers, everything was done to hide the actual situation on the battlefield. That fits the tactic used of not giving up an inch, so if one were to guess, there is truth in that.
It’s been a while since we heard from Muntz, the LPR blogger—has anyone heard anything?
Russian military bloggers in general are starting to take a rather pessimistic stance and go against their country’s propaganda – whatever consequences that might have.
The Russian psyops I wrote about the other day was apparently like this according to PstyleOne – Putin in Rostov and all RU channels went out with Russian victory for internal propaganda.
The West jumped on board, repeated the narrative in full, and then it came back to Russia amplified from the West.
Why can’t the West report on the Russian military bloggers instead?
Do they have to immediately parrot the Russian Ministry of Truth’s version every time?
Does the West understand that they reinforce and legitimize the RU Ministry of Truth’s message?
As sure as I am that Putin is heading for a crushing defeat, I am equally sure that if Russia is allowed, they will rearm their combat forces magnitudes better than they were at the start of the war.
That is beyond the goal of this war, but the West will probably have to be prepared for round two unless the country turns inward, which it has every chance to do.
There are thousands more of everything in the depots, and if given years, they will refurbish the graveyard of discarded materiel with China’s help.
I had a little exchange with Röpke, and if I paint everything in light blue, he paints everything pitch black; it’s good to understand how the other side thinks, know your enemy and all that, and therefore everyone should browse Slava once a week to get a dose of pro-Russian poison. Guess if the WAPO and CNN articles are making the rounds in pro-Russian media right now “US intelligence confirms…”.
What the Russians don’t understand is that knocked-out Ptgb are nothing to show off and that all knocked-out vehicles are just knocked out until UA passes by and drives them to workshops – all of Europe is helping UA get materiel back to the fronts.
What they also don’t understand is that many targets are dummy targets.
It’s the people behind the wheel, the sight, the vehicle commander, the platoon leader, the battalion commander, the brigade commander that matter. Everything else is consumables.
This has come up many times in the thread but good that the country Russia doesn’t understand it and shows completely meaningless trophies.
Summer 2022 sometime, maybe late summer, was the end of the Russians overrunning entire UA units and taking very few prisoners. The figure 7,000 has been frequently mentioned.
Since then, the units have maintained their capability and strengthened except at Bakhmut where a number of brigades suffered very heavy losses during the defense.
You can’t say the same about the Russians at all, and now they have almost used up their last offensive reserve.
Russian soldier anno 1917 meets 2023 in all capabilities – there is a big difference between being a battalion commander and fighting as we have seen in videos from the 3rd Assault Brigade or being able to handle a personal weapon as a newly mobilized Russian with a small size mess kit.
It’s no use whining anymore that the West has delayed materiel but it’s heartbreaking that cluster munitions only arrived now, that thermobaric ammunition is not coming, that precision aircraft is not coming, that armored vehicles come in a trickle, that Russian bases are fine as long as they are on the Russian side of the border, that Tomahawks are not delivered, and so on.
Now this won’t happen but IF Ukraine throws in the towel, China gets air under its wings, Turkey, Serbia, and Hungary come out of the closet, and Moldova falls, then the EU will have a new cold war on its hands. That is what is at stake now.
Why they have delayed, hesitated, and wavered as they have when the risk is so high for a new cold war is incomprehensible to me, but then again I am not a politician or smart but sit in my parents’ basement playing Rise of Nations.
That the West has put itself on some kind of moral high pedestal and told Ukraine what they can and cannot do has led to tens of thousands more deaths. As has been said a couple of times – when this war is over we will be shocked by the losses for both UA and RU. However, RU loses proportionally much more according to what we guess. Today we can add hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths to the loss list but it will take a while after the war to tally everything. How do you think winter was in Mariupol without food or heat?
Now the above was all the other things we complained about but the spring offensive is going as it should here. UA continues to wear down the Russians in the trenches and without mobilization or reinforcements it’s pretty doomed.
I see no signs of slowdown at all really, it’s the natural rotations we see and many have reminded in the thread that Kherson was a November win.
Without mobilization RU gets weaker and weaker and UA continues to set up new brigades and has just finished training crews for about 70 Abrams.
Every time you write about Russian influence operations, there are always a couple who counter with “no, I don’t see that,” “that’s unreasonable,” or the classic “grow up.”
(I’ll get out of my parents’ basement going forward but Rise of Nations is too fun right now).
We know they pushed neo-Nazism in West Germany, it has recently come out that they were behind Quran burnings, and now a collaborator ring has been arrested in Poland that tried to drive conflict between Poland and Ukraine by posting Ukraine-hostile messages.
Do we need to go through the whole chaos in Donbass again which was a Russian influence operation?
https://twitter.com/jayinkyiv/status/1692963989892874612?s=46&t=P-Z5Ukp7sA_k0JyY3-qUpg
We see Russian subversive activity every day – most recently all the peace activists who want frozen fronts at any cost to save the children. What is a little territorial concession for peace and all media repeats or writes their own on the theme right now.
Or all the articles critical of Ukraine and that they can’t possibly win when it is Russia that is actually retreating on the battlefields.
Already after WW2 sometime the Russians started their subversive activities (in 1946 they got listening devices into the American embassy in Moscow) and during the Cold War it was chaos. In the UK for example, their counterintelligence was infiltrated, the government was infiltrated, and no one knew who they could trust.
Letting someone undermine your house until it collapses is not being the adult in the room, it is being an idiot.
China and Russia have been allowed to undermine the West for a very long time without consequences, and Ukraine is paying the entire price.
Because that is one of the most important purposes of the subversive activity – a paralyzed West.
To make decisions, a majority or some other form of consensus is needed, and if you can ensure that it is never reached, support will be absent.
And the West was paralyzed – Scholz, Macron, and that Italian pushed the Russian narrative for a long time. Deeply embedded.
Other Western countries were worried about the Red Army, and Ukraine stood completely alone.
There is no magic hand behind all this; it was enough to see Ukraine’s disappointment after the NATO meeting to understand that they have thrown everything into the ring and are trying to survive the eight-armed octopus.
You have to see this in a larger perspective, Russia dared to attack Ukraine now, and anything but a crushing defeat will motivate China to move in Asia.
Even a crushing defeat for Russia that is handled in the wrong way (high risk of that…) can send the wrong signals.
I have great respect for Sweden and Ulf’s actions in this war, and for Sweden in general, but an all-in delivery is needed and it will not come. Sweden can absolutely go first because we are already the enemy in the eyes of the Russians; there is no reputation to consider anymore.
Let NATO forward base the capabilities we send to Ukraine for a few years.
Harpsund is very nice but it is desecrated, tortured, and then Ukrainian children are murdered every day in this war, prisoners of war are castrated and have legs or arms amputated, prisoners of war are executed, civilians are tortured to death in torture centers that exist in every community and so on endlessly.
Fun with a little boat trip and dinner with the king but help them win the war instead.
We have done a lot but we can do more.
We wrote this during 2022 but now one understands how Nazi Germany could emerge and how they could carry on their war until 1945. Right now Putin and the new 1939 have failed miserably but if they get the chance, the slightest crack in the door, they will kick it in and spread their Russian peace.
Ukraine managed to hold its thin picket line against all odds but there are tens of thousands of photographs on stovetops with burnt-out candles mourned only by a broken wife and traumatized children.
Putin is like a dark virus spreading and striking everything; those who got the worst poker hand in the whole war are probably the mobilized who were sold to Storm Z – a better version of galley slaves, roughly.
Completely incomprehensible, some IT guy who is picked up and after two months has to choose between dying in some potato field in Ukraine or being tortured to death by his own.
Very positive regarding the spring offensive, rotations are complete and progress is being made everywhere. Positive-Positive thus.