10:44 – Johan No.1
They base it on one source.
But…
There are rumors that RU is planning an offensive up in Kharkiv and over east of Vuhledar RU has been attacking for a while now. The big push at Avdiivka is over, at Bakhmut it’s at a standstill and in northern Luhansk they have achieved zero success.
Some probability for an offensive up in northern Luhansk still perhaps.
The southern front and the Dnieper?
With which units?
We usually always get information about larger troop movements and I have not read anything in that area.
On the contrary, I have read that they have further weakened the Dnieper and southern front in the past month.
11:56 – Johan No.1
I wonder if it is so that if the pumps stop working, the water supply becomes stagnant but with some pressure, so when it freezes pipes and radiators crack quickly?
Are the sewage pipes in houses affected by the houses cooling down?
These water fountains in the streets of sewage water and district heating could be spontaneous expressions of joy.
NK has already sent electric tube artillery to Russia, old antiques.
12:31 – Johan No.1
That is certainly true but the “other threats” will increase if Ukraine is not given enough to win the war now.
Then you have countries like Portugal, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France that have no “other threats” because they are embedded in a shield of others.
They should be able to send all their deployed equipment provided they don’t nervously eye each other and Germany.
The shield protection must hold but the countries contributing to the shield protection obviously cannot deplete their stocks too much, Finland, the Baltics, Sweden and a few others.
However, countries in or near the shield have given magnitudes more support to UA than the countries furthest from the shield have done – suggests that unwillingness and incompetence may play a part to some extent, I think.
12:34 – MatsExtrude
👍👍👍
13:22 – Johan No.1
👍👍👍💥
19:53 – Johan No.1
Yeah, that was a bit off topic 😀
I read through what I wrote and nuclear power does not contribute in any way to the climate crisis, I wasn’t wrong there, right?
Then there were no rational reasons to shut down nuclear power, none that I know of at least?
That electricity prices have gone up is indisputable and where we live it was a bloodbath, many older houses with electric heaters and people without money who crashed. Now it’s not only in Sweden that nuclear reactors have been shut down.
It took a while to manage to shut down nuclear power in Sweden, fired CEO at Vattenfall and a couple of new board members, right?
Then more tax on nuclear power and less on renewable energy to make it unprofitable?
The leaked report that reactors could be operated until 2035 at no cost was brushed aside.
Greenpeace has sold certificates to Russian gas – “clean air gas” or something it was called. Accounts that pushed hard for the shutdown of nuclear power on social media and the shutdown of other energy sources have switched to pushing that the West should not support Ukraine.
The same groups that pushed for the shutdown of nuclear power also started pushing to make it harder to operate hydropower, I don’t know how that ended.
Personally, I find it hard to see that Russian gas can be better than Swedish hydropower.
Yep, as part of the electricity underclass, I am very bitter about this.
As said, OT, tomorrow we continue with wet Russian in a pit.
21:27 – Johan No.1
Perpetua?
I don’t see nearly as many drone-kill videos from the Russians as from UA and that should be an indication?
RU is very PR prone and as soon as they have something to show, it makes the rounds on their accounts.
But yes, the marines lost some boats in a new RU campaign recently but if they had the same ability as UA to hunt down individual soldiers, those 300 at the Dnieper’s left bank wouldn’t have survived very long I think and they have managed for months.
07:48 – Johan No.1
Has Iran fired rockets at the US consulate in Iraq?
https://x.com/nexta_tv/status/1747031923845702012?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
07:48 – Johan No.1
Feels a bit like a suicide camp.
07:56 – MatsExtrude
A bit strange, I was also thinking I would post about that (if I understand correctly they also attacked an airbase), but now when I check my Twitter feed I suddenly find nothing..
07:58 – MatsExtrude
Guess it was probably just made up..
09:20 – Johan No.1
We’ll see what comes during the day.
09:35 – MatsExtrude
Omni:
“Iraq condemns Iran’s attack – ‘attack on our sovereignty’
The Iranian rocket attack on an alleged Israeli ‘spy headquarters’ in Iraq is condemned by Baghdad. In a statement, the Iraqi Foreign Ministry writes that it regards the attack as an ‘attack on the country’s sovereignty’.”
https://omni.se/irak-fordomer-irans-anfall-attack-pa-var-suveranitet/a/152gzX
09:53 – Johan No.1
Regarding Greenpeace Russian gas, today there will be no more OT after this but since what I wrote is correct I just wanted to highlight it since you called it “ridiculous smearing”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Planet_Energy
Regarding hydropower, I happened to work those years with consultants who were directly involved in it, even though I myself worked on other things, and I believe I am not wrong on the matter there. The consultants confirmed to me that they had heard about the first smaller hydropower producers who shut down operations because it became unprofitable.
https://www.riksdagen.se/sv/dokument-och-lagar/dokument/skriftlig-fraga/avveckling-av-den-svenska-smaskaliga-vattenkraften_h311770/
https://www.energinyheter.se/20190804/11258/utredning-slar-hart-mot-smaskalig-vattenkraft?page=%2C6
Apparently the new government put everything on hold and that is why the discussion died out.
https://www.svensktnaringsliv.se/sakomraden/hallbarhet-miljo-och-energi/miljoprovningar-av-vattenkraften-laggs-pa-is_1191738.html
“If you start spreading conspiracy theories and rumors you undermine democracy. Don’t do that.”
Thanks for the encouragement but if I post information from Wikipedia, Svenskt näringsliv and the parliament – do you really think that is conspiracy theories and undermining democracy, feels like you went a bit off track there at the end 😀
For me it is quite simple – what is good for the country Sweden and its citizens is good. Shutting down electricity production on a large scale before building equivalent new electricity production can in fact only lead to higher prices that cause industry shutdowns and poorer population and that is not good for the country Sweden and its citizens.
10:21 – Johan No.1
If you remember, I previously posted a video where some governor in a nearby oblast announced that they had shot down Ukrainian drones over power plants or similar, and there have been quite a few explosions in strategic electrical infrastructure.
Hard to say what comes first, but if it’s -30 to -40 degrees outside, everything is pretty sensitive, right?
If there is a power outage and all the pumps stop for district heating, one can guess the water will freeze and then pipes and radiators will burst?
The backup power is probably either sold off or at least the diesel cans have been sold, or it doesn’t work.
Then, as LW writes, everyone starts running electric heaters (and gas stoves), which overloads the power grid that has already been disturbed by sabotage, causing a cascade effect throughout the entire electricity area, all triggered by a small drone hitting the right place at the right time when the temperature dropped sharply.
As many have written, Russian technicians and firefighters have been mobilized to the war, which means fires and repairs take a long time on infrastructure that has not improved since Soviet times (they are not alone in having neglected infrastructure; the EU is probably not far behind in some cases, the UK’s was partly ancient as I recall reading about it at university).
A real mess for Russia this, and above all, they have shown themselves completely incapable of maintaining security in Russia around important installations.
Last winter, quite a few nuclear reactors in the EU were out of order due to technical faults, and this winter there are significantly fewer – did Russia completely give up that campaign or has the West tightened security, no idea?
(That we would get natural peaks standing out against the average seems unlikely to me, and in Russia’s case, Ukraine has partly declared “an eye for an eye,” and Russia has fired 300 missiles, as well as drones, explosions, or fires being filmed at electrical infrastructure, and city after city has been blacked out).
However, in mid-January, one can only conclude that this year it is Russia that is being subjected to sabotage in its soft parts with the effect I thought Russian sabotage against EU electrical infrastructure would have this winter.
All this is brilliant, and one can sincerely hope that the West refrains from yellow cards here; you would have to look hard to find a cheaper way to end the war.
Some will always believe that Russia made a deal with the EU and that is why there are no sabotages against the EU this year (I have read that), but I see that as unlikely. There have been rumors of a Russian deal to spare Kiev and Zelensky, but he himself has stated that about ten assassination attempts on him have been thwarted, and last winter’s attacks on electrical infrastructure and the Khakovka dam would have been a deal breaker if so 😀
The LNG cable in Russia and the cables and pipes in the Baltic Sea should not be forgotten.
Russia has done what they could, is my guess.
The conclusion you then arrive at is the following –
-Russia has this winter been unable to maintain security in Russia; in addition, there are all the fires in war-important industry, the factories producing T80 and T90 have both burned, for example (many more facilities have burned…) and the rail network has been subjected to extensive sabotage.
-Russia has this winter not been able to carry out sabotage against the EU’s electrical infrastructure to the extent they did last year, and my guess was that they would increase this year to stress war fatigue in the West.
-Russia has this winter not succeeded in knocking out Ukraine’s electrical infrastructure despite the war’s largest missile attacks.
What are we seeing unfold?
-The West is starting to wake up and takes security seriously. I noted many planned large terrorist attacks during Christmas that were discovered in time, and nuclear power plants should be easier to monitor than that (it was not many years ago that MENA terrorists succeeded with very spectacular attacks in the West, right, and we had a couple of mysterious sabotages in Sweden for a few years)?
-Ukraine has recovered enough that they have partly managed to shoot down most of the missiles and find the saboteurs (not everything is missiles!) and they have had a more robust electrical system than last year.
-Russia has not prepared at all for the war to come to Russia – I take that as an absolute truth because their internal troops have partly been moved to Ukraine or died, and after the fall of the Soviet Union, the repressive apparatus has gradually become smaller and smaller. The country is enormous in area, and they have no chance to defend themselves against active sabotage really.
I have no summary of which war industry has been knocked out, but I pieced together myself that only one factory is supposed to start producing T80 and one producing T90, and both have had extensive fires. There was some huge workshop for combat aircraft that burned a few weeks ago, and fuel for aircraft/missiles as well as ammunition production have previously been plagued with technical faults. Then there have been sabotage acts against manufacturers of key components or key expertise – it probably started last year but is increasing this year.
There are probably 3-4 facilities for upgrading tanks as well that should get visits if they haven’t already been subjected to sabotage – if you have the energy, you can check the names of these and see if they have already been targeted.
To me, it looks like Ukraine is hitting the Russian war industry very hard, which produced almost nothing even before the war; the BTR-90 existed in only a few units, for example. I summed up the number of various weapon platforms produced in 2021 a few weeks ago, and it was ridiculously few.
Mig-34 is 3 newly manufactured per year apparently
https://twitter.com/jayinkyiv/status/1743326353435312600?s=46&t=mAMSwTafBSC-3_9uzdjjaw
Those of you who have read for a while know what I think about the amount of armor, fragmentation protection, and artillery left, and then that the biggest shortage is in trained personnel because there is reverse Darwinism in the Russian armed forces.
My guess is that Russia will already in 2024 need heavy vehicles from China if they are to be able to resource their brigades going forward. The question then is whether China will contribute or if they will play the silent game.
Russia has already run a campaign to persuade countries that bought weapon systems from them to send them back. The USA immediately ran a campaign where they declared that if those countries do that, there will be sanctions directly – unclear how that ended.
Ukraine today has the number of heavy vehicles on its side and the quality is sky-high better – we went through the targeting means a few days ago and previously we went through numbers.
Then they have not had reverse Darwinism in their brigades, so the shortage of personnel is not acute, new personnel are added during rotations, and experience and expertise are transferred.
Here is someone speculating on losses, do you remember 2022 when UA lost 150 per day for a while and later when it was intense 500 per day, Lysychansk was a high record, for example, and earlier in the war UA took enormous losses from RU artillery when they dominated the battlefield – 70% of losses are said to come from artillery. Now artillery is a bit like dinosaurs after the comet, and presumably UA losses have also gone down.
I guess that 20,000 per month includes soldiers who leave their contracts, wounded and fallen as well as contracts ended in other ways but also newly established brigades.
UA brigades are 3,000 strong, yes, I have probably counted with Swedish brigade size sometimes…
https://twitter.com/militarylandnet/status/1737211122258735567?s=46&t=XoZVoz3-tEw16VVSX5VCiQ
Now this comes from Shoigu, but what he presents below could actually be a total figure for UA losses in the war.
766 tanks is roughly in line with what we have thought, and 2400 with explosive reactive armor is also not unreasonable when everything is counted.
160,000 killed and wounded at a ratio of 1:5 gives 30,000 killed and could also be reasonable, probably 1:3 and 50,000 killed which is reasonable if you compare with RU losses and that UA is at 1:5 against them.
https://twitter.com/noelreports/status/1737066728679424064?s=46&t=4WM8qiD5kfXRBs8V5wJfTw
The only thing really missing until the presidential election is a spectacular UA offensive. We will see more liberation feats against the Kerch Bridge, oil tankers from the shadow fleet (if the West can just stop with their damn yellow cards 🤬) and there should be serious havoc in the northern oblasts.
We will also see IT warfare go bananas and certainly another Swan Lake in black and white.
But the nail in the coffin for the struggling pinata would be a new Kharkiv, Izyum, or Kherson.
Right now the Russians are struggling with the weather AND Ukraine; when everything gets muddy they get some respite and then when the heat comes they only fight Ukraine – all logic tells us that a winter offensive would be smart.
Zalizhny is a risk taker who likes daring operations and coming up with something fun before the presidential election is absolutely his style.
Last winter the US went out and asked Ukraine to refrain from offensive operations, before that they prevented Ukraine from carrying out the Azov strike and to focus on Kherson instead. In 2023 they started Ukraine despite lack of equipment and demanded NATO doctrine without having resourced it.
The West has consistently not allowed (Hah!) Ukraine to enter the northern oblasts which are undefended and the same with the use of Western weapons on Russian soil. Apparently Iranian, Chinese, and North Korean weapons on Ukrainian soil are less of a problem for the West.
I have not seen anything indicating that the West does not allow offensives this winter but you can also control it by not supplying new ammunition and right now this new ammunition is not being supplied.
What would then be behind the West not wanting a UA offensive this winter?
I cannot see any reasons for that but the fact remains that the ammunition is not coming and that they chose to sell nearly 1000 Bradleys and Abrams to Morocco instead of giving Ukraine a proper armored fist.
I consider a UA offensive likely, I should add, unless the West actively stops it.
If the West hopes for a Russian soft landing that will make us return to business as usual, someone should remind the West that it is 2024 and not 2014 anymore. This was set in motion before 2014 and at every step taken, the West’s inactivity made the next war look attractive to Putin.
Just Russia’s subversive activities alone should make the West extend its claws. It would be incredibly fun if some clever journalist could prove that the parliament’s vote on shutting down nuclear power was actively driven by Russian subversive activities and thus treason or something like that. There was no real reason for the shutdown other than “the people demanded it and the rulers promised it” with some loose references to “saving our planet from the climate crisis.”
What if the people who demanded it were a Russian influence operation supported by the other Russian influence operation “Operation Climate Crisis”?
Something interesting in this context is that the next generation of nuclear reactors, it’s a bit unclear if they can be built today or if those being built are similar, use today’s nuclear waste as fuel and reduce today’s nuclear waste by 90%.
Earlier nuclear reactors used all scrapped nuclear weapons warheads as fuel after they were reprocessed.
There are good reasons to have nuclear power for another 50-70 years while renewable energy becomes commercially viable and also reduce today’s nuclear waste by 90%, I think.
But never ruin a successful Russian influence operation that has led to soaring electricity prices in the West. Our production of energy-intensive products has declined and China sells more, and the whole business with greenhouse vegetable cultivation crashed.
Then, of course, producers of other energy types have welcomed that the state, and states, lost their regulatory power so prices would start moving more and have strongly engaged in lobbying. It has been very easy in times of environmental awareness. Last winter when prices rose to several crowns, profits presumably also increased correspondingly and that without any investments at all. What other business can multiply winter profits tenfold in two years without investments?
A bit off topic I know but it is hard not to return to the Russian subversive activities that have had such negative consequences for citizens in the West.
Not to mention “the black war chest” PerraG55 constantly returns to, which has been filtered through banks in the West without problems while you and I cannot deposit 10,000 SEK in cash at the bank without interrogation.
The West has a huge debt to this war and now in 2024 the West must ensure that Ukraine gets its win.
All that is needed is that they resource the offensives and I absolutely thought early autumn that this was happening but as I said, throughout this war I have had too high expectations of the West. The fact is that when the campaign was launched to resource the next offensive early autumn, I was quite calm because I was convinced the West had plans to resource the next offensive (if needed) since they had sent enough to the spring offensive and there were quite a few promising promises. Then everything was delayed and now UA artillery fire has dropped by 70% while RU’s has doubled – incredibly lousy from the West as usual, the unwanted child delivers 🤬
Touched on OT today, will return tomorrow with more about how badly things are going for Russia in Ukraine. Operation Turn Off the Light is going better than expected, Ukraine themselves can hardly believe it when the cascading effects spread.