11:10 – Johan No.1
It was quite a while ago, MRF, I almost thought you had abandoned us 😀
It is a collective term for the doomsday peddlers, no, I did not write the post with you in mind and it is not clear to me if you were discussing that Zelensky and Ukraine would be forced to the negotiating table. I have not written “in the thread” anywhere, have I?
It was during the autumn when Meiden 3 reached hurricane strength and everyone started discussing peace negotiations that I thought about it, it made the rounds in most of the media.
Maybe a bit unclearly written as usual but I blame it on having to work too 😐
11:42 – MatsExtrude
👍 Even though Ukraine hasn’t managed to retake that much land, it’s still a failing grade for Russia’s capability. Over 6 million have fled from Ukraine, so it’s a country with about 1/4 as many inhabitants, and originally they probably only had a tiny chance in terms of hardware compared to Russia and their old stockpile.
Still, they are holding out and have managed to retake 50% since the war started.
I completely agree with you. Russia needs help from Iran and North Korea, also gets quite a bit from China, yet they are going nowhere. Embarrassingly poor and still many believe Ukraine can’t win.
It’s damn close right now but with the advantage to Ukraine since Russia has such enormous losses.
At the same time, Russia’s economy is getting worse and worse and all other problems are growing (not least those caused by Ukraine). Sooner or later North Korea’s ammunition stockpile will run out while Europe and the USA have ramped up production.
That’s a clear advantage for Ukraine!
14:23 – Johan No.1
Putin’s first offer was now that if they get to keep all conquered land, they promise to stop fighting, so still quite far from anything sensible.
But the fact that Putin has started probing says volumes.
The thread has agreed that Putin can’t declare the special operation a success and now that the denazification is done, they want to, to save all the children, withdraw to the 1991 borders. I believed that for a long time but I don’t know the least bit about Russia either.
15:09 – Johan No.1
We have just seen one of China’s hidden cards, this is very big because it really speaks volumes.
China warned Iran that if they don’t stop stirring up trouble in the Red Sea, relations with China will deteriorate.
Under the bus?
https://x.com/spectatorindex/status/1750702921354817812?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
15:10 – Johan No.1
You can’t extrapolate too far from this but if China is not involved in the escalation in the Red Sea, maybe they are standing on the sidelines with the whole global escalation that Russia is driving?
15:19 – Johan No.1
The one-eyed reptile probably took a whole pack of omeprazole on that news.
15:19 – Johan No.1
China has just asked Iran to sit down 😲
15:21 – Johan No.1
It’s hard for me to sit still, the trampoline broke a few weeks ago in such an outburst of acute positivism.
15:48 – MatsExtrude
Good!
(It’s probably like SALLAD is suggesting. It risks hitting their already bad economy so they probably do what they can to save it.)
10:53 – Johan No.1
Throughout the war, we have had two sides – the pessimists who drag themselves along and those who see life as an opportunity and have fun – until the spring offensive of 2023, things did not go the pessimists’ way at all, and prediction after prediction fell to their great frustration.
History will probably clarify why Ukraine failed to understand the extent of the mines and the difficulties with them; we know that drones can see mines at dusk, so there were ways to map them, but the spring offensive did not achieve the desired result, one must at least acknowledge that.
The West dragging its feet with deliveries was a factor, but not everything can be blamed on that. However, it can also be blamed that the West still did not allow UA to cross into RU territory because that would have given them more to work with – when everything was down at the southern front and Bakhmut and there were a few dozen FSB up at the northern border, a major invasion would have sent shockwaves straight into the Kremlin. I was quite sure we would see that as part of the spring offensive because that is exactly how UA has fought so far, but apparently it took until 2024 before the West changed its mind.
We entered autumn with a violent suicide offensive from the Russian side, and to the uninitiated, it looked like Ukraine had completely lost the initiative and signaled a shift in the war, so the world’s media was again sniffing the morning air.
The thoughts from the doubters, when Maiden 3 was raging at its worst, were that Zelensky would either be forced into a negotiated peace or that the country Ukraine would see that as the more attractive option and jump into the negotiation booth themselves.
Since the first Russian invasion (Belgorod) and when the West publicly issued its yellow cards, we have often (resignedly) pointed out in the thread that Ukraine has had to fight with one hand tied behind its back – the conditions have not been equal.
The whole pessimist narrative has been that Ukraine cannot handle this, but the truth was evidently that it was Putin’s cheating and the West’s constant wavering that prevented Ukraine from exploiting its full potential.
Now today, January 2024, Ukraine has shown us what they can do, and it is a tsunami of sabotage (liberation deeds) in the country Russia as far away as Vladivostok.
Yes, the West is more than sluggish with deliveries here, but Ukraine has held out with less before, they have a large offensive reserve, and they have now taken the war to Russia, which has not happened since WW2.
The West has a lot to answer for when this war is over, and it is fortunate that there are no pessimists in Ukraine.
Now they fight with only half a hand tied behind their back because RU gets support from Iran, NK, and China, and the West is dawdling.
But something the pessimists always forget to write – Russia cannot win on its own either because they need support from Iran, China, and NK to avoid collapse.
That is a very unfair narrative, and now Ukraine has for the first time in the war stood up because they are getting the support, and Putin is starting to get seriously worried.
So worried that there are rumors he has begun probing a peace solution with the USA 😀
From Erik14 and a legendary night shift as usual, better earlybird than Biden gets.
https://twitter.com/Maks_NAFO_FELLA/status/1750615781295992950?t=66V119jmfBEBhqbO_V4UJg&s=19
Always forget that Budanov has also promised that all war criminals, all of them, will face court-martial and a shot in the back of the neck wherever they are and that GUR never sleeps.
Everything is based on probability, and the two war-turning events we were supposed to watch for were full Russian mobilization or Ukraine starting to retreat significantly – neither has happened.
Therefore, we have the positive message to the pessimists that their doomsday forecasts will not come true again this year.
Then we must also point out regarding Western support that it is the USA that has collapsed – the EU has stood up as one man and is throwing tanks and other things at Ukraine right now and is stealing the mantle from the USA.
Germany has enormous support for Ukraine for 2024.
Cesar wrote something yesterday about some project in the Arctic where everyone withdrew due to sanctions?
Then there is full speed on demolishing the terminals in the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea, and when it comes to transit through Ukraine, they hold the key.
Worth noting that the Russians, who cannot get a better hit pattern than a city block, have managed to miss all infrastructure precisely for the transit gas 😀
(Hint: the Russians are not bunglers).
It is starting to look like Ukraine is trying to force hyperinflation in Russia almost, they stole Russia’s gas weapon plan and turned it back against them?
We are probably right now so happy about all the mushroom clouds, blacked-out cities, and burning oil that we might not discuss the whole picture, but reasonably all this is connected, and they are trying to speed up breaking the Russian economy?
My colleague the Peruvian got going in the car on the way to work yesterday when my other colleague from Malaysia thought Ukraine were murderers who shot down a plane full of their own prisoners.
“The worst thing about Ukraine is that they aggressively just demand all the time and want more weapons and money for free, they have no shame, and the EU takes money from its poor population and gives it to Ukraine, you are just getting poorer, and it’s Ukraine’s fault.”
I kept quiet and sat thinking of ways to strangle him from the front seat.
I asked how many drones have been jammed, and 30% seem to have had technical faults or been jammed, 19 in total. That’s a good ratio 😀
https://x.com/secretsqrl123/status/1750173049188495760?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
The return of the Reaper planes or those “model airplanes” my father used to fly when I was little.
https://x.com/covertshores/status/1750415186693951847?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
Don’t forget that Reagan had “oil wars” and that there was an oil crisis in the 70s, if I recall correctly – the world moved on.
Now let Ukraine conduct this war in the way they can to win, and then it will work out for everyone except Russia, which is generations smoked out. I’m not so dumb that I don’t understand that everyone, including the FSB who reads the thread, are very small fish, but there is always someone who finally pours gasoline on the dangling luxury pinhat and lights it, and somewhere broad layers in Russia must feel that this is going completely the wrong way.
However, I believe more that it will be other villains aspiring to power who take over, but where the direct bonus effect for everyone else will be that Russia turns inward so Ukraine and many other colonized minority peoples get an opening to wrest themselves free from the colonizer’s grip, which is already very weak today.
That is the opening we need to reach, and then it is NATO’s task together with the EU to ensure security for all liberated former colonized indigenous peoples (see how evil Russia is, all boxes with things you are not allowed to do get a cross) and above all to steal as many as possible from China.
The EU eastern border is secured with a new Maginot Line and Ukraine has good relations with the six oblasts bordering it.
We will do the best we can with the other new countries, and some will lean towards China or MENA, which we cannot do much about.
This is a geopolitical atomic bomb set in motion that is impossible to stop, and above all, there will be no end to this where Putin or others can retreat and arm themselves like mad for round two.
The country has already begun the journey of turning inward, it is quite clear.
I want to see connections in everything, and as Erik14 suggested, maybe UA now has the capacity to start going after RU drone groups now that the artillery has rolled over and died?
https://x.com/noelreports/status/1750488042329051441?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
I could not have been more wrong in my vivid descriptions of the cascade effects on all infrastructure when UA puts a drone in the substation.
They have even blown up the sewage treatment plants if anyone still thought this was technical faults 😀
https://x.com/ukikaski/status/1750519374153138687?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
This is T…p, and what he says is not entirely wrong, is it – reduce systemic corruption and stop oppressing average Joe, a bit like a workers’ revolution and right after Marx where the decent citizens come first. Then, of course, every communist revolution has ended in chaos and death since the concept was introduced, and nobody thought the arch-capitalist T…p would become a communist in his old days.
There is only one problem here: since he is completely unpredictable, he often says what he thinks and then praises Xi and Putin, who are the worst kinds of dictators.
He is not a decent president for average Joe who does what is best for the USA and the citizens’ welfare.
https://x.com/heatherthomasaf/status/1750421795587633404?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
Iran has a ship near the Red Sea which there are good reasons to believe is sending targeting data to the Houthis’ anti-ship missile batteries on land.
Iran can thus be directly linked to the attack on international shipping (US signals intelligence!)
When I..el are done with H…as, there will probably be a big bang on Iran, maybe?
https://x.com/mercoglianos/status/1750235609963356324?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
There are periods when Johan No.1 sees everything in light blue while everyone else has a pitch-black picture. I have set up a couple of markers for myself that I look for, and if I don’t see them, I make assumptions about the situation based on that and then apply a layer of probability that has surprisingly often proven to be correct.
We have often discussed that we have a positive bias in the thread and overvalue Ukraine and their efforts but rarely make the connection that this is exactly what everyone has done with Russia all along.
Right now, the country Russia’s oil industry is being completely knocked out, their cities are blacked out, and the sabotage against the rail network and war-important industry is enormous.
They have lost all the street cred they built up internationally and the world laughs at them – no one wants to buy their weapons anymore because everyone can see they don’t work.
In Ukraine, they are not advancing an inch but have so far managed to conduct a barely successful defensive fight – do we think Ukraine has learned from the mistakes.
Their nuclear threat is basically nullified because the nuclear carriers that were impossible to shoot down can be shot down by Ukraine with both advanced MANPADS and disrupted with EW.
Their Black Sea fleet was supposed to impose a proud naval blockade of the Black Sea but has now fled to the eastern corner in panic.
The only reason this war has been allowed to continue is that the West, in our higher moral and spiritual wisdom, has forced Ukraine to only fight within the country’s borders and then given them just enough weapons so they survive but cannot clear out the Russian dugouts.
Then NATO officers, completely blinded by their own wisdom, gave Ukraine terrible advice and forced them into a plan they themselves were not keen on but had to accept because they needed the weapons.
Despite that, Ukraine managed to scrape together what they had and have retaken over 50% of the conquered territory and have decimated the Russian artillery to firing 6,000 – 10,000 shells per day instead of 63,000.
They have also burned through almost the entire contract army and decimated the proud Russian vehicle fleet enormously – so enormously that the pessimists claim it simply cannot be true. Even though we have videos when they attack near Vuhledar, Avdiivka, or northern Luhansk and lose hundreds of heavy vehicles in a few days and we are flooded with videos of drone-dropped winged grenades.
I am of the opinion that Ukraine is significantly more street-smart than we are led to believe.
Now that US support has ceased, they have presumably thrown off the yoke and gotten countries in Europe to take the war to Russia – which they have now done. We have discussed for a few weeks that the yellow cards have not appeared despite carpet bombing over Russia. Have they also thrown out the arrogant NATO officers from headquarters?
I believe we will see Zalizhny offensives going forward and that we are not far from that. It would be very un-Ukrainian to sit on their hands and let Putin win the election in peace, mobilize about a million, and then fill the dugouts. What is possible now will be impossible then, and they will presumably be sitting in the dugouts sometime in June?
Or maybe that is what Budanov is telling Dengamle whose WhatsApp has come back to life again 😀
-Positive -Positive thus, we were supposed to watch for cracks in the facade and that they run in and out of the revolving door to the UN and start seriously probing an outcome are very broad cracks.
It does not get worse than that January 2024 was the month with the greatest losses of “special equipment” in the entire war and that was after an extremely violent autumn.
Putin’s existence is shaking considerably right now.