2024-01-28

12:44 – Johan No.1

The Lions
https://x.com/ukrainiansquad/status/1751297029274243487?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w

Always fun when you scroll through yesterday’s thread in the morning and see that you made a guest appearance in the night shift. There were probably both pre-party and after-party in the thread a few Saturdays and rules of conduct were followed but I can report that it is difficult.

How the West actually planned to end this war is quite a mystery.
-they give Ukraine just enough so they can defend themselves (and it’s not due to lack of materiel), then Ukraine performs miracles with the materiel anyway and then they get even less – like a municipal unit’s budget that sucks the will to live out of everyone.
-the sanctions are absolutely completely pointless.
https://x.com/mylovanov/status/1751267373166776565?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
-Ukraine is not allowed to invade Russia and NATO is no threat so Putin can send 97% of the ground forces to Ukraine. In a normal world he would need border protection but not even the border with Ukraine is fortified with more than customs officers and when Ukraine had the audacity to break the rules of conduct the West got very upset – invasion of Russia is not acceptable.
Two years of large military exercises near Russia’s border in Europe and the Far East that tie up troops – have we seen that?
We probably made such a suggestion in the thread at the beginning of the war when they were running everything on the Trans-Siberian Railway westward if you remember?
-Western weapons may only be used within Ukraine’s borders but the West felt they could not have an opinion if Ukraine used domestically produced weapons in Russia – after all, this is international law and practice should be followed.
-but we did anyway (and broke international law and practice when we couldn’t help ourselves) – after the attack on the Novorossiysk oil terminal Zelensky was bombarded with yellow cards from all Western leaders according to his own statement.

Ukraine has shown that Russian nuclear carriers are shot down with EW or air defense – the escalation dangled before us does not exist.

-Russian military materiel production is a bad joke.
-China has shown the world that they will not join the war in one way or another.
-Russia continues to carry out sabotage where they can against infrastructure in the EU.
-Diplomatically and politically everything is unlocked – when a type of weapon has been sent you can just send infinitely more of it, right?

20 ATACMS took out what, 25 helicopters at once?
The USA has thousands more in various versions that are to be phased out but are not sent.
The 12 frontline military bases and all the air bases and depots right on the Russian side of the border that are protected and can calmly train the next CAA to be sent to Ukraine 🤬

Give Ukraine 15,000 – 20,000 hard vehicles of all types so they no longer have to skimp. Just the fact that they are to be sent gives Putin the signal that it is over.

The risk for the West is absolutely zero in this war and the upside is enormous – we get rid of the criminal clan Russia on the world stage when they turn inward and our time’s global conflict is over.

Right now RU is also increasing greatly in Africa – they are taking torture centers to countries that have an even harder time defending themselves and are the most fragile states in the world with a high risk of flare-ups in the area.

Russia can keep fighting through proxies forever but in Ukraine you can actually get to them and Ukraine also gets to the country Russia (now) – an absolutely unique chance to get back for all the old cheese over hundreds of years.
How much of the bad decisions are driven by Russian subversive activity is unclear but the Russian subversive tentacles reach far, that we must be clear about.

All the “it can’t be done” suddenly went through about half a year later and none of the terrible things happened.

I don’t believe the thesis that the West wants to prolong the war to inflict maximum damage on RU because then they wouldn’t have forced UA into their offensives and then they would have allowed UA to take the war to RU much earlier because that is where maximum damage is inflicted.
What we see is Poland 1939 again – the West is simply slow because we are democracies that are easy to influence and Russia are experts in influence operations. But the West has gone one step further than 1939 and put a lot of rules of conduct on Ukraine, the Poles at least got full freedom to defend themselves.

Something has happened here though – US support has completely stopped, Ukraine has taken the war to Russia and is jumping on the West’s red lines while UK, Scholz and Macron increase support.

And no one protests anymore when Ukraine levels the Russian oil industry to the ground.
I get the feeling that the USA has been a restraining factor and that they have used their support for extortion.
I also get the feeling that Ukraine has risen up and told the EU what will happen going forward and that they expect EU support, they took back the baton.
They have received some kind of strong guarantees so they feel they have secured support and now they are going for it.

China is a possible factor, not only have they asked Iran to sit down and keep quiet, they have also put forward proposals to join the operation to eradicate the Houthis.
https://x.com/johnkonrad/status/1751356783895920846?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w

The wind has simply turned and if you go by Putin’s and Russia’s actions last week they don’t like it.
We must not forget the IT war either – UA has spectacularly gone in and erased huge amounts of information in various systems that were worth protecting and it seems to be increasing.
https://x.com/noelreports/status/1751179676716814794?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w

Everything the West is afraid of here is like a bad movie – it is beyond all doubt that Russia cannot escalate and now China has grown tired of their attempts at global escalation through proxies instead.

Yes sure they can start blowing up nuclear weapons around them but then the line is crossed and the world will stamp out the country Russia and the chance that any of the carriers will get further than up and then straight down is quite small. It is very likely that China and India behind the scenes have told Putin that the red line of nuclear weapons must not be crossed.

It has been my main thesis for quite some time that China does not want escalation, they have not shown all their cards yet but the first thing we saw was positive.

If we take it one step further – what prevents the West from turning the Ukraine war into an I..el or Houthi operation?
There are many things that could have been done that have been diplomatically and politically unlocked for a long time –
-no-fly zone over western Ukraine
-take over border protection against Belarus with Polish SOFs in customs uniforms.
-Air defense in western Ukraine operated by the West.

These three had freed up a lot of resources for Ukraine and had spared western Ukraine, which could then function normally.
When NS1-2 went down, was all this reasonably unlocked?

Posted the link below yesterday and the complexity and level of influence operations are absolutely astronomical.
https://x.com/zarinazabrisky/status/1751002655923507213?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w

Democracies are by definition easy to manipulate because we have freedom of speech and free will. For decisions to be made, consensus needs to be reached, and the Russians are Olympic champions at disrupting this.
That said, we are two years into the war, and if decision-makers and officials in the West cannot identify this and start making the right decisions, one becomes somewhat worried. Yes, they have had wrong data for a long time, but now even the thread has figured out how things stand here.

It’s quite simple – RU must be hit harder than UA in this war for UA to win.
That UA hasn’t been allowed to take the war to Russia in two years is a dereliction of duty, but unfortunately, we have abolished official accountability.

Russia has now cut off the internet and various apps in a whole bunch of republics and oblasts, why do you think that is?
https://x.com/gerashchenko_en/status/1751192337286336517?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w

Bashkortostan is going to explode any day now, the internal troops have gone too hard.
https://x.com/anno1540/status/1751488983610081407?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w

When they shot down the A-50, it died out pretty quickly, right, but the shooting down of the IL76 is blowing up considerably. I get the distinct feeling that Russian psyops have started, but I don’t understand why.
Could it be that the plane was full of twelve-pointers and their own air defense that shot it down maybe?
Or was it all a psyop to get Western condemnations going and they discovered that no one cares?
It will probably become clear eventually, but an IL76 with material for the war shouldn’t get the whole troll factory working overtime.
https://x.com/noelreports/status/1751296497071673765?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w

According to the source below (which I cannot assess), most of what is written about the National Guard at the Texas border is lies. “Someone” is trying to light a fire where there is no fire to light.
https://x.com/fordjohnathan5/status/1751432553641148924?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
With everything said officially, I was quite sure that the National Guard had stepped in to uphold the rule of law and that applicable laws were followed, but apparently not, according to this source.

Houthi has hit a larger ship, and the risk of an ecological disaster is probably imminent?
https://x.com/johnkonrad/status/1750974765161214368?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
The US had quite a high profile here but has de facto failed – the route through the Red Sea is unsafe.
Then a hit on a destroyer is only a mistake away, and that is naturally what Houthi and Iran hope for here.

Another geopolitical atomic bomb is that the US’s role as world police is a bit shaky and that maybe China will get the axis of evil to sit down again – it would actually be quite funny if it turns out that China wants business as usual, manages to de-escalate the war, and gets a top-notch relationship with the EU after the cooperation.
A multipolar world but not with the axis of evil, instead a rising EU with China.
(subject wild speculation 😀)

The picture that explains why everyone is stopping contributions to UNRWA
https://x.com/drelidavid/status/1751286151577555063?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w

Perpetua’s loss ratio is running wild.
https://x.com/andrewperpetua/status/1751492354584797461?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w

Proof that RU has deployed non-standard caliber artillery to Ukraine. Maybe the artillery is running out too?
https://x.com/gerashchenko_en/status/1751294793664045348?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w

Then when no one believes in UA offensive plans anymore, they themselves announce that they are expanding at the Dnieper (why then?) and that they are decimating the Russians hard along the fronts (also called pre-battle suppression).
They obviously think it is worth the losses and ammunition to do so.
https://x.com/anno1540/status/1751497653429436889?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
The blogger has also written about them retaking defense systems at Robotyne and Verbove.
If they had zero plans for offensive operations, they probably wouldn’t have done all this?

There is a lot simmering right now – RU subversive activities in the USA are at full throttle, and that support package that was supposed to stay 90% in the USA can probably be forgotten.
But looking at what different countries in Europe are sending, I am starting to feel that it is enough here.
Ukraine is now conducting “reconnaissance offensives” or what everyone wanted to call the spring offensive for way too long, but now such, maybe local offensives are more appropriate.
They do it to improve their positions, and the pre-battle suppression is intense.
Ukraine has also taken the war to Russia in a very spectacular way, and no one in the West protests anymore – it must sting Putin incredibly.
On top of that, China has just asked Iran to sit down and keep quiet and has suggested to the USA that they should help with ships in the Red Sea.

October 7 was a sad day when Russia pressed the global escalation button, and I have been waiting since then to see China’s card – now we saw the first one, and it was positive.

I believe Russia is starting to have real problems now – the war is going badly, the global escalation is going badly, and Ukraine has managed to take the war to Russia (or now they got it…).

The fact that Russia has started shutting down the internet in several regions speaks volumes, in my opinion.
Now the West should continue with their amplifiers, and Ukraine should continue pressing Russia, and the chance that the country turns inward will increase.

The election is a huge mistake by Putin, very careless, but the fact that his first peace overture was to keep the conquered land signals that he still does not understand how serious this is, he thinks he has cards left to play.

13:56 – MatsExtrude

+++++ 👍