16:07 – MatsExtrude
Thanks for the wonderfully positive status report! 👍
16:41 – Johan No.1
There are all kinds of elections this year if I have understood this correctly?
Then you have republics, oblasts, and provinces that are not the least bit pro-Putin.
An election tends to put some focus on politics and in this election, Putin as a person.
He seems to take it very seriously and wants good news to present, and that is probably why he is ordering offensives?
There is another factor that if too large groups feel that they have not voted for Putin and he pulls down 90%, there could be some unrest.
Don’t forget that the repressive apparatus has largely been depleted in Ukraine.
All it takes is a spark to ignite the fire, and I think a better opportunity than this will probably not come again. Then maybe nothing will come of it, but worth a try.
16:42 – Johan No.1
Thanks yourself for a violent obituary this morning 👍
19:41 – Johan No.1
This is how frozen apartments are in Russia 😂😂
Like a bad movie
https://x.com/heroiam_slava/status/1746526137755279873?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
22:21 – Johan No.1
Russian AWACS shot down over Azov – twelve-pointer.
Apparently a transport plane also went down, hope it was full of generals or politicians.
Russia doesn’t have that many AWACS and at least one more was probably damaged by drones earlier?
22:22 – Johan No.1
Five points on that but credit for the original choice of word “twelve-pointer,” didn’t see anyone else use exactly that word.
13:08 – Johan No.1
Now “operation turn off the lights” has reached hurricane strength, the lights are out in Rostov na Don and even Peskov feels compelled to go out and comment.
Very nicely done by UA and the fact that the infrastructure is ancient and all the technicians are fighting in Ukraine does not make things worse – Ukraine has now taken the war to Russia.
The low-intensity war of technical failures and natural outages, let’s see when the media figures out what’s happening.
We will also soon see how long the citizens think it is worth freezing to death so that Putin can continue fighting in Ukraine, after all, there is an election in 2.5 months and then the citizens get a unique chance to say what they think.
There was a discussion early in the war that we would not be able to make any difference at all, I don’t remember the name of the one who used to mock us, Tankfri maybe? The purpose was of course to get us to stop engaging, which is why he now thought it was a target.
The drone weapon has proven to be so effective that private initiatives have absolutely influenced the war, I usually donate a symbolic amount from the electricity underclass to drones4ukraine confident that it goes to reconnaissance drones and not drone-dropped wing grenades (some irony).
The other day we learned that the marine corps had quite large losses due to drowning and now the life jacket collection was fully subscribed in a day or so, but has now been expanded to other brigades.
I am quite sure that they get their life jackets faster than if it had been state support and then the thread has de facto helped reduce losses of the marine corps which is among the most protected resources Ukraine has.
Previously there have been other targeted efforts, the mine packages from Jonas for example which also attracted a lot of support and saved lives.
The thread definitely makes a difference 😀
The blogger’s post yesterday that UA managed to jam a number of missiles with a new electronic warfare weapon (or whatever the correct term is if you want to Swedish-ify EW) made it hard to sleep, absolutely incredible and a big hole in the children’s trampoline resulted 😐
Above all, a couple of very sweaty senior RU officers are currently sitting and pondering the overall consequences of this.
A worst-case scenario is that their missile weapons are unusable in the constant cat-and-mouse game of measure-countermeasure because Ukraine got some DARPA project that is light years ahead and proved to work after some Ukrainian creativity – good that they are sweating.
A likely consequence is that this year’s missile rain will be even worse than +90% shot down now that they have finished beta testing this new weapon.
What should not have escaped anyone is that Ukraine has also announced that their own drone fleet is now immune to EW weapons so while they got at the Russians’ missiles, they deny the Russians EW weapons against their own drones – welcome to 2024 Putin 😀💥
Now we are just waiting for some long-range Made in Ukraine weapon that can neither be jammed nor shot down and then we have our Hiroshima moment but that is probably hoping for too much. I do know that on Budanov’s list the first point is a Grom-2 in the Kremlin but the West will never give its approval for that operation.
It is highly likely that Iranian and NK missiles are even easier to jam so their planned deliveries are no longer a big threat after yesterday.
Then a thought about the missile stockpile – they fly past flashes about crashed missiles with presumed technical faults and LW usually picks them up and discusses how many are crashing.
In the big triple operation, partly missiles manufactured in 2023 were used and I have the impression that the number of planes roughly corresponded to the number of missiles.
If you remember earlier, the number of planes sometimes far exceeded the number of missiles logged by Ukraine.
What if they were older missiles where the rest crashed?
What if those who counted the remaining missile stockpile only counted those registered by Ukraine and not those that crashed over Russia?
How many have crashed?
There is some probability that RU has even fewer than those 800 that have become a truth but then Iran’s and NK’s future missile deliveries are not included.
Then apparently NK artillery ammunition is completely substandard so there is some risk that their missiles are just as lousy.
The winter missile rain suddenly appears less threatening and manageable by Ukraine and much more than that Putin does not have to scare with, the “meat wall” or Terminators have also worked equally poorly.
This is what a Russian “high knees” attack looks like for those of you who thought I had wildly fantasized in my vivid descriptions of saber-waving and screaming runs across the fields. Posted by Erik14 early December and bookmarked for the archive.
https://x.com/Ukrainene/status/1737054079174500563?s=20
The meat wall is probably another popular expression that is quite fitting.
Do you remember the film of a Ukrainian soldier who with single shots took down 10-12 upright running Russians, just as they move in the film?
There are a couple of doubters who have argued the thesis that Ukraine will run out of ammunition before Russia runs out of soldiers – with the above two films in mind, do you think they are right or have they thought completely wrong in their honest intent?
Tannenberg meets after all 2023 here with automatic carbines and improved sights – who do you think will run out of what first?
Zalizhny went out saying he thought the huge Russian losses would be deterrent but Putin et.al are cunning and thoroughly evil. They sent all unwanted to Ukraine and that was a win for them.
https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1739951756887380062?s=46&t=6UP5Zbhu0Ixh_CBe3zVPcA
That does not mean that Russia is immune to losses because fewer boots on the ground in Ukraine means it is harder to carry out offensive operations – which is what we are now seeing, but it also means that it is harder to defend if Ukraine were to get the idea to start offensive operations again.
Early on we probably wrote that we would have to cross off sweeping drone footage of brigade mechanized casualties in this war from the bucket list and that will come in 2024.
UA maneuver brigades are today largely mechanized, NG is mechanized and even the home guard has started to mechanize.
UA has received over 8000 armored vehicles, they had their vehicle fleet at the start of the war and they have captured a lot. Sure, they lose tanks but they have probably managed to put together a patchwork of mechanization so far.
Then half of Europe’s workshops are working on tank maintenance so they get a lot back out to the units.
A Russian eyewitness describes the drone swarms at the southern front and the Dnipro front – for those who thought I had exaggerated earlier 😀
https://x.com/maks_nafo_fella/status/1746461795240337630?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
This was a very violent drone that drops 10 grenades in one sweep – welcome to 2024 and the bomb-math drones that make life even sourer for Russians in a hole.
https://twitter.com/parrot_reborn/status/1741814415098282424?s=46&t=L53rSBS3xvSNqHvQyn_R1w
As mentioned, it undeniably looks very good and the problems are piling up for Putin. How he could be so arrogant as to call for new elections is an absolute mystery to me, but now he owns the entire problem and has given Ukraine a unique chance to influence opinion in Russia, and so far they do not seem to be missing that opportunity.