11:54 – MatsExtrude
👍
Apparently, these are the moonboots Putin likes the most: https://www.yoox.com/images/items/17/17441748BK_14_f.jpg
Regarding China, for example, Tibet and the Tibetans are also an example of their oppression. That alone should be a reason for the West to cut ties with China, but unfortunately most things are about money.
(Music tip, The Chant by Gojira which is about the Tibetans https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkRrend3sIw )
Covert Cabal and his tanks are interesting but of course must be taken with a grain of salt. I think I will come back with my own post about it.
What you write about the ammunition is also thought-provoking. They might start to run short of both this and that (maybe also tank ammunition?).
13:28 – Johan No.1
Exactly, those are what he shuffles around in 🤣
13:29 – Johan No.1
I also want to dive into the remaining materiel but that kind of thing takes a lot of time 😅
17:57 – Johan No.1
Strangely enough, Ukraine is also ground zero for stopping everything, Ukraine is the only point on the map where you can get to Russia and ultimately get Russia to turn inward.
You wrote it well the other day, when you start speculating about the scale of this, you struggle with how incredible it is and that it sounds like a fool’s defense, completely unreasonable. I write every time that China has not shown its cards because they haven’t, and one sincerely hopes that China will prove to be the adults in the room – we’ll see.
Exactly right, it should be Ukraine in the thread, sometimes it spills over 😀
10:47 – Johan No.1
Sorry for the somewhat messy post and parts around global conflict are very speculative.
Before we dive into the post, it’s nice that UA has lost so few Western armored vehicles – it’s clear that they are conducting a very effective offensive.
https://twitter.com/GwarWorin/status/1718253748978417873?s=20
This while RU has neutralized 8 brigades in Avdiivka, northern Luhansk not included – it’s clear they are still fighting with personal weapons.
https://twitter.com/glasnostgone/status/1718179834411499944?s=46&t=GllhM3ijETUDcBRTXe3TKw
According to a link Grankovitch posted, GeneralSVR is part of the Kremlin’s psyops around Putin. That was expected and I thought the initiative was brilliant and it gives some insights into Putin’s daily life today and going forward. As you know, I have good insight since he is an extremely worried person who has to ask about everything all the time and seems to think my made-up answers provide something.
This weekend Putin refused to get out of bed, someone at FSB had managed to include in the daily briefing that he is called the Slime Gnome on a big blog in Sweden and he is apparently completely devastated. He also kept asking me all evening what a slime gnome was and, being kind, I tried to smooth it over a bit; it’s never fun to see someone completely crushed.
There will also be new readers of the blog from FSB starting today, the previous group got 35 years in prison without chance of parole for the mistake that was classified as subversive activity because Putin was so upset that he refused to leave the room for several days.
Then Putin has discovered moonbots that he likes in the bunker, he has cold feet problems and there is a lot of shuffling to keep up the heat. He looks like a big L with a curved back sneaking around the corridors wondering why no one likes him anymore as he nibbles on the edges of his digestive biscuits. Apparently, it’s a thing to eat the edges around the whole biscuit before he can go for the middle.
Gerashenko has made the same analysis as the thread, we wrote when it started in MENA that now Putin has got the escalation he never managed to get in Ukraine.
https://twitter.com/gerashchenko_en/status/1717994700005683461?s=46&t=YswuWcUO_xwSC1UjsL6qDw
We also wrote very early in the war that there was a risk of global conflict but that it could be stamped out in Ukraine and that China would crawl back into its burrow, and that everyone sitting on the fence and waiting would retreat. Early 2023 it almost looked like it would work, the West united, China backed down and things went terribly for Russia in the potato fields of Ukraine.
The West acted too little too late (to our bright red angry emojis) and now that escalation has happened whether we want it or not. If you remember that post that was delayed until the next morning, it laid out a free fantasy about how the escalation could play out.
Yesterday Iran and NK came out saying we are on the brink of World War III and with I..el attack into G..a both Iran’s and H..az’s “red line” have been crossed or how (then whether they do anything is the next question).
https://twitter.com/vtchakarova/status/1718340213108248907?s=46&t=wNciQVIBqfiIcuZos6ObJA
Something that caught my interest is the information below, now that we have seen Ukraine’s spring offensive – don’t the target choices that H..as and H..a are aiming at look like preemptive strikes?
Preemptive strikes for what, is probably the very next question?
US’s CRG is just support as long as they float and Iron Dome doesn’t have unlimited ammunition.
We have already written about that US destroyer that had all systems shut down in the Mediterranean earlier.
https://twitter.com/thestudyofwar/status/1718470345710039293?s=46&t=wNciQVIBqfiIcuZos6ObJA
Erdogan has just come out full Ottoman – expected.
https://twitter.com/golub/status/1718536159192601013?s=46&t=wNciQVIBqfiIcuZos6ObJA
Keep an eye on Egypt because it could get lively there. All moderate countries in the area, and all others too, are now struggling with huge demonstrations that at any moment can turn against the sitting regime. I worked just under two years in Egypt after the Brotherhood fell, or that the fail-safe with the army worked in contrast to Turkey. The engineers I worked with were all active believers but did not mince words about the chaos that occurred under the Brotherhood. A country with runaway corruption and a military that took over instead over a hundred million angry citizens.
Now I..el will likely go hard in G..a and many countries in MENA have a tightrope to walk so high risk of further escalation is my guess even from countries that were not on board from the start.
That H..as and Iran are in Russia speaks volumes…
Either China’s move will come or it won’t – China has not shown its cards yet and it is too early to say. Biden and Xi are to have a meeting, it is driven by Biden and we will see how it goes.
China, however, is no pushover, they cut cables to Taiwan almost all the time according to reports and this is how fun the Uighurs are having WARNING!
https://twitter.com/kiborgzzz/status/1718310532740993128?s=46&t=wNciQVIBqfiIcuZos6ObJA
Every Western country should have a few things on the next staff meeting – escalation, food security, fuel shortage, weapons manufacturing and close contact with allies.
The West must start taking DEFENSIVE measures for a worst-case scenario but there is no need to unleash nuclear weapons preemptively.
The EU eastern border will soon be plugged, the Russians just have to get out of Ukraine first but that will come.
The rest has just begun to play out, Africa, MENA and then the presumed escalation in Asia depending on how China moves (we have not seen China’s cards yet). I have zero knowledge about South America.
A bit wilder speculation than the above wild speculation –
If this is a multi-stage rocket then economic warfare is included – global gas weapon with oil – the famous tanker that gets sunk in the Strait of Hormuz for example.
The telecom cable and Baltic connector are both parts of economic warfare by the way.
Terror attacks on our electricity infrastructure this winter as well, a wrench in a nuclear power plant.
If China wants to be extremely violent they will wipe out all the companies they have bought in the last 20 years so all production and all services crash and they default wildly on bank loans – as an example.
However, I thought the other day what a perfect influence operation it would have been if it was Russia behind the drug smuggling up to the USA from South America. Have zero evidence for that 😀
One sentence is interesting,
“A second period, from the end of World War II to the 1960s, saw the professionalization and greater organization of trafficking as networks of traffickers emerged.”
https://origins.osu.edu/article/shifting-terrain-latin-american-drug-trafficking?language_content_entity=en
Everyone knows about the leftist guerrillas in Latin America and the US’s support of dictatorships, right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_guerrilla_movements
Then I wondered if Russia might have influenced the election in Slovakia, Slovakia believes so…
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2023/10/02/slovakia-accuses-russia-of-election-interference_6143750_4.html
Then the covert cabal started the discussion about Russia having unlimited MBTs and IFVs left in storage, 3500 MBTs and double that in IFVs, right?
He states that that number of MBTs is in good condition.
I haven’t dived deep into this, but if you guess, the best have been sent to the war, but if given time, of course, thousands more can be made operational. Guidance systems and other technology will probably come from China going forward.
The artillery was interesting because they have cannibalized barrels from many remaining vehicles, which signals that the barrels are worn out.
The artillery we saw yesterday was apparently from North Korea, so why does Russia need to pull old artillery from North Korea if they have thousands left in storage ready to use?
https://twitter.com/smartuacat/status/1718227195795997109?s=46&t=wNciQVIBqfiIcuZos6ObJA
When we discuss ammunition, we always talk about artillery ammunition and then that they are critically short on infantry fighting vehicles, but how is it with other ammunition?
The artillery fires constantly and has run out of its ammunition, but all liberated depots have presumably also decimated other ammunition?
Don’t know, but interesting, and something that is well established is that they are short on key competencies for all weapon platforms.
But then we also got the information that they have to wait 10 months for new vehicles and that tank crews are being sent forward as infantry due to lack of vehicles.
Why don’t they just send these 3500 vehicles to the fronts then?
Among the Russians, reverse Darwinism prevails, so they keep getting worse and worse, but with Ukraine, if you guess, there are units today with sky-high capability and competence and above all, they seem to have a system where they supply reserves and transfer competence before the units are too heavily decimated.
Russia runs its units into the ground constantly and starts from zero.
As messy as my desk 😀