14:15 – Johan No.1
There are two sides there and it has been discussed many times and usually becomes a long discussion.
Most recently, Ukraine stated that there were 450,000 or so in the occupied areas and that this probably did not include FSB, rebels, and Rosgvardia.
David D has considered that the total is 1.6 or 1.7 million who are or have been engaged in the war in total, including rebels, all branches of the military, FSB, and Rosgvardia.
Since there were neither FSB nor Rosgvardia up in Belgorod or at the Wagner coup, there may be some truth to them being in Ukraine?
The Russian police wanted to mobilize 400,000 police officers just to maintain order in the occupied areas, FSB is supposed to be 100,000, and Rosgvardia was 400,000 on paper.
The losses, in my opinion (and many disagree), are at least 300,000 dead and 600,000 wounded.
15:04 – Johan No.1
This needs to come from some other channel than Ukraine now, but the West has been too cautious so far.
Ukraine, even if they are completely right, can always be dismissed with “they are a party to the conflict”.
Yep, if it turns out that Russia has been driving this, Israel probably will not be so forgiving going forward.
The same with the Baltic connector, the EU should start paying serious attention if anything comes out, we will see.
15:06 – Johan No.1
This needs to come from some other channel than Ukraine now, but the West has been too cautious so far.
Ukraine, even if they are completely right, can always be dismissed with “they are a party to the conflict”.
Yep, if it turns out that Russia has been driving this, I…el probably will not be so forgiving going forward.
The same with the Baltic connector, the EU should start paying serious attention if anything comes out, we will see.
15:28 – Johan No.1
Filter has previously done incredible investigative work and uncovered critical information that one has stood and gawked at in questions I am passionate about, but they have always been selective and the conclusions always end up being that it is not the Soviet Union or Russia behind it. As in the case of NS1 and NS2 – the purpose of the article is to show that Russia is not guilty, no direct culprit is needed, just that no shadow falls over Russia.
In such matters, one must try to weigh the evidence one has and the sources of it and then try to come to a logical conclusion, and it is always subjective, but in the case of Filter I feel that they have a conclusion and then piece together the chain of indications to fit.
In the article about Andromeda, the ship that was over NS1 and NS2 was excluded with convincing arguments – the same ship that has now been over the Baltic connector and that has the capacity for seabed work.
(well aware that as soon as the Finnish state says it is not an attack, this argument will be greatly weakened)
They believed that Russia would not attack Ukraine and now they have backed down on that point but they held on for many years about the “Swedish Russian panic”.
https://www.resume.se/alla-nyheter/nyheter/mattias-goranssons-mal-doda-myten-om-den-ryska-bjornen/
https://www.flamman.se/kejsaren-ar-faktiskt-naken/
And before the war in January 2022, everyone who was worried about war was wrong.
https://magasinetfilter.se/filterbubblan/den-svenska-reaktionen-pa-hotet-fran-ryssland-ar-mandag-hela-veckan/
15:42 – Johan No.1
Throwing this in again so it is clear that the ships have the capacity for seabed work and dry submersibles.
https://twitter.com/Hugo_L_P/status/1653610876438446084
17:29 – MatsExtrude
Thanks for the informative reading!
18:31 – Johan No.1
Thanks MXT, you got well-deserved credit yesterday and Erik14 the day before – I think Labbibia said it well that you also get the small invisible ones who write to feel welcome 👍
13:02 – Johan No.1
A bit much here with all the senior managers and then you have to read through the night shift so you can calibrate today’s posts and manage to remove the worst missteps. I also find it hard to let go of I..el but try to stay on topic and hope I am, and in the absence of breaking news from the fronts, it becomes a bit mixed.
It is interesting to see how Russian influence operations started immediately after the I..el attack.
For example, Ukraine warns that equipment the Russians have captured has been driven to H..s so it looks like Ukraine is arming them – I think the blog was first with that yesterday.
There were rumors about it already on the first day that “Ukraine has armed H..s” and then the evidence would presumably be filmed on site, one might think?
https://twitter.com/motytchak/status/1711334072465645853?s=46&t=4u25xczLkz5261OljE-vLw
If anyone thinks the Russians are not involved in this, think again. If you have prepared influence operations, you presumably also have knowledge, and H…as has been to Russia on a visit this year.
On the subject of influence operations, Filter can go to hell with their Andromeda article, now the same ship that was right over NS1 and NS2 in a very large Baltic Sea where they can be anywhere if they were spying on the West’s naval exercise has been seen bobbing over the Baltic Connector as well.
The audacity on the part of the Russians is not small here, they have submarines that can sneak in instead or they could have been miles away and let a dry submersible go in towards the target but they lie with this ship completely openly over the target and blame everything on a sailboat.
https://twitter.com/erikkannike/status/1711490846351073769?s=46&t=WO9GDocT9G7fFwgYRKgmhw
If you ask me, the terror attacks on our electrical infrastructure have now begun, but maybe I am reading too much into this.
There are rumors that UA will cross the Dnieper with maneuver units and I have been interested that UA is pushing towards Kopani as hard as they are.
UA has for several months had a bridgehead south of the Antonovsky Bridge because RU retreated behind the smaller watercourse and left the area to UA and in that area they are now expanding.
Over at Vasylivka RU is weak and at the Dnieper they are weak.
If you can get over the Dnieper and behind the southern front, you can tear a big hole in the southern front in a morning without much effort.
According to the one who wrote the big campaign plan, there are four attack vectors at the southern front;
-Dnieper
-Vasylivka and down west of Melitopol
-East of Robotyne is hilly dominant terrain, there was an attack wedge right in the middle of the dominant terrain.
-East of Vuhledar and down either west or east of Mariupol.
>The charm of going towards Azov is that Ukraine only needs to break through at one place and then the entire defense line is obsolete – lex the French.
I have my thoughts on what the overall battle plan looks like and what they are doing at the southern front, we will see… simply put, Erik14 should get his five hundred back in the end because it is suspiciously passive in places.
The Azov push has been what possibly could decide the war, I think, it will be too difficult for Putin et al to remain in power when they lose the area behind the southern front and Crimea.
Autumn 2022 was the first chance that the West chose to miss.
Summer 2023 was the second and they chose to miss that too and rather have thousands of MBTs and IFVs in storage, not give thermobaric ammunition and no advanced aircraft and keep deliveries at a “keep Ukraine afloat” level.
Now the development has reached a point where RU has managed to start a new conflict, probably the world’s most infected.
Yesterday I had a few more suggestions for additional potential escalations, some likely others less likely.
The more parallel conflicts that start up, the less relevant the Ukraine war unfortunately becomes and even if Ukraine goes and wins hard, maybe the global situation is already such that Putin can stay in power if this goes on too long.
We discussed this quite a bit in the thread during 2022 I recall, right?
Even in Russia this is being diluted now and if it looks like a war against the West then the country must unite and so on. Less room for opposition that wants to take power to move and normalize the situation accordingly.
Every half year that passes makes it harder to roll back the tape unfortunately.
It is directly frightening to see what the BRIICS side (I know it’s not them but all the countries on the evil side are there so I use that word) has cooked up.
Restarting the world’s most infected conflict is completely inhuman but so is the Ukraine war.
We are moving faster towards a worse security situation in the world and you can be sure that more surprises have been prepared ahead.
Nothing changes the Ukraine war in essence and they must throw out the Russians to the 1991 borders but when that is done there may be new open conflicts in the worst case.
Something that unfortunately fits into this is that China is moving towards Taiwan. We have not seen any signs of that yet and we have guessed that China will not sacrifice its economy.
But the worse the security situation gets, the greater the risk that China will take the big leap in our time and carry out the millennium’s most failed amphibious operation and thereafter that conflict will also be on because they will blame the whole fiasco on the West and drum up popular anger that the West had the audacity to sink their entire fleet outside Taiwan when they were only going to denazify the island.
I don’t think China will be forced into this, I think everything is connected and that admittedly the Russians failed badly in Ukraine and the Balkans but that does not prevent the other steps from igniting, right?
In Africa it is already a hot situation and now in MENA, only South America and Asia remain if you want to broaden further.
If you remember the discussion, a Russian crushing defeat would make the other rogue states crawl back into their holes. Every half year the war goes on makes the rogue states smell morning air and every state that throws down the gauntlet and joins cannot then withdraw.
H..s cannot back this, nor can I…el.
If you have gone all-in, you have, and Russia is currently pulling more and more into this mess. Feels a bit like when China accidentally released Covid and then persuaded WHO not to recommend stopping flights before the spread had occurred (not speculative other than I guess China pressured WHO because their recommendation was very strange not to stop all flight routes and close borders).
Russia probably wants to get its entire side of the fence involved in this adventure now so they don’t end up there alone and crashed.
I have to admit that I have based my view of how this will play out on the book Total War 2006 by Simon Pearson with the subsequent star rockets before they hope that the BRIICS rocket reaches orbit and we get this wonderful multipolar world.
There is no shortage of previous statements from representatives of BRIICS and especially China and Russia about what they want to achieve and how they want the world to look.
One should also be clear that what we interpret as completely incredible statements from lower-ranking representatives reflect the general thinking in a country. That Russia has great imperial ambitions is indisputable; we are flooded with statements that show this.
Now the British MoD has spoken out and is confident that there will be no mobilization. We have yet to see anything from that mobilization that was first supposed to start in September and then October 1.
I stand by that unless RU mobilizes a significantly larger number, this is hopelessly lost for them, so it is good that they are not mobilizing.
https://twitter.com/defencehq/status/1711620312679211144?s=46&t=QTUzNa9YcvKjCnq7kFiv7A
This is a positive-positive, to say the least.
Some concern about this MENA escalation but now I..el, in a serious attempt to de-escalate, has reached out to He…ah and simply let them know that if they get involved in this, they will be wiped out. We can hope that this is deterrent, an attempt at de-escalation from I..el’s side as good as any, right?
I wonder if it is the West that influenced them or if they came to their senses entirely on their own, but the fact that they have not jumped on the West B..en or up north directly is very positive.
The hope is that the UA war can be ended with a Russian crushing defeat and then it was the great war of our time since the West has gone into war economy and thereafter we can have our long peace.
The worry is, of course, that we manage to do a Chamberlain and then it starts rolling, but so far it looks bright and we have the Ukrainian infantry to thank for that, they have sacrificed their lives for us.