10:50 – Johan No.1
At the end of the war, the US Navy consisted of 64,000 ships 😲
10:54 – Johan No.1
There is much to learn from this war and our organization until 1989 was roughly well suited.
Finland has never let go of the ball – they have that preparedness industry that they have paid for all these years which has now gone into full production.
They have already built their bunkers and fortifications.
They have conscription and can quickly scale up in a full mobilization and their conscription is also adapted for war.
Do like Finland and prepare for war if you want peace is probably the message 😀
11:49 – MatsExtrude
👍 Hope is not completely lost for Avdiivka yet, maybe they can still turn it around. The gut feeling says it’s time to withdraw now, before the loss ratio reaches 1:1.
The West is dragging its feet and the USA has completely frozen while Ukrainian soldiers and civilians die every day..
We should simply be ashamed.
OK, if one has been deluding oneself that we will have eternal peace before the war, but now two years have passed and Ukraine cannot fire more than 2,000 shells per day?
It may be that 2024 will be frozen lines while there is a race between Europe and Russia over who can speed up production the most. Russia really shouldn’t be able to win because of its weak economy but I’m starting to get a little worried that they might be able to do it anyway. If Russia bets everything on winning the war while the rest of us are too stingy and slow, it might not be enough (if the USA falls away).
12:19 – Johan No.1
The West has now started to scale up production and will catch up.
But.. Russia had an early start and has burned through 50% of its stockpiles.
The West has REFUSED to even open the stockpiles for two years, what is needed is obviously for the West to open the stockpiles before new production reaches the units.
I’m beginning to suspect that the West has only been sniffing business here and put everything into new production and then hoped for the best.
12:20 – Johan No.1
But yes, now we will see the counterattacks play out and then we have the answer, anything can happen.
12:33 – MatsExtrude
Yes, Russia has of course burned through its own stockpiles and if North Korea hadn’t helped (where China probably in turn helps behind the scenes) both sides would probably be at 2,000 shells/day.
Then maybe Russia really can’t produce that many. When NK/China start running out and don’t want to send more, maybe we’ll see Russia drop to around 2,000/day as well.
It’s not impossible that 2024 will be a race for production and it will show towards the end of the year who comes out the winner.
10:47 – Johan No.1
I believe that the UA counterattacks at Avdiivka will now play out and then we can probably sound the gong for whether it will be a retreat or if the fortress can be held. New units have been brought forward but commanders have expressed concerns about “operational encirclement”.
https://x.com/friaukraina/status/1756610841133068571?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
After yesterday’s update on Deepstate, things are not positive and this has also been the reason for my brief relapse as a pessimist. Unfortunately, RU has also started bringing armor into the area according to some Twitter experts. The factory area in the north is now cut off from the southern settlement in Avdiivka.
According to Accentmannen, the road towards Siverne is under drone fire 24/7 but one should not overestimate the need for maintenance here – there are huge stockpiles in Avdiivka.
The potential problem is the extent of the settlement in the south that is about to happen and also note that RU has advanced marginally in southern Avdiivka.
According to Accentmannen, a counterattack in the north near Krashnohorivka is most likely and we reasoned about this yesterday that it has been tried before and that they then have to get up on dominating terrain – if RU has a decent flank defense it could be a bloodbath.
According to Accentmannen, only a minefield stops the wedge east of what looks like a lake (but might be an open-pit mine) in the northern part of Avdiivka, so there is some risk that RU will get going there as well once they clear the mines.
What is worrying is that RU recently brought forward strategic reserves that are well equipped and they got a breakthrough right at the start.
RU is inside the UA decision circle right now and UA is reactive – not a situation a commander wants.
Must-read about Zalizhny and Sirsky – I personally get the feeling that Zelensky started interfering more and more in Zalizhny’s decisions and that they took the chance to fire him with the spring offensive as a pretext, for better or worse.
If you remember, Zalizhny went out a few weeks earlier and wrote that he had a war to win and no thought of anything else or whatever it was. Then they chose not to do a Johnny Depp but that’s just my personal opinion.
https://bsky.app/profile/johanno1.bsky.social/post/3kl5spxpfts2o
As written earlier – we really have to hope that Zelensky had the right motivation for this decision because this is among the world’s most important appointments right now.
I believe that Zalizhny’s decision to reevaluate how they fought during the spring offensive largely saved the Ukrainian army. Lack of air support and the Khakovka explosion were two factors that contributed because they couldn’t cross the Dnipro in time (as I later understood) and they lacked LV close to the front so the Russians’ Ahkp and FAB500/1500 rained down on them.
Throughout, late Western support has been devastating and read the end of the article – if Ukraine had only managed to push the Kupiansk sprint they would have reached one of RU’s main supply routes but they simply didn’t have the strength. We have discussed this so many times in the thread that it has become tiresome but the West accepts an unreasonably high risk here and has done so throughout the entire war.
Sirsky has fired all of Zalizhny’s subordinates and brought in his own, one commander heard about it in the media.
Just there you can see some dissatisfied officers lower down in the organization whose trusted boss got fired via SMS.
https://x.com/noelreports/status/1756657441536668023?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
The appointment of the head of the home guard is a bit strange, he hasn’t held a position in combat units and is an old commander who suppressed the Maidan protests. He doesn’t feel like the first choice and maybe he was chosen for loyalty or something?
Now after two years, merit should be practical work experience in a suitable position above all else and there is no shortage of such personnel.
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/02/11/7441370/
Sirsky is considered loyal to Zelensky which means he will do what politics tells him to do, unlike Zalizhny who at the start of the war kept the 72nd brigade up near Kiev despite political orders to send it to Donbass and with that he saved Kiev.
Sirsky has a bit of a “the butcher of Bakhmut” reputation – he does not spare lives.
It is an ambitious review of operations they have in mind but when you read the article you get the impression that politics has held back here and there during Zalizhny’s time as Chief of Defense – will all this change in one sweep or is it a bit like election promises from any political party in Sweden – if they are not broken it is a modern miracle 😀
Then the focus for the entire operation is now “active defense” and that is probably better than a failed huge offensive that wears out all units, and Sirsky has after all carried out some of the spectacular offensives.
We of course hope that Zelensky had the right motivation for the dismissal and that Sirsky is the right man for the job. There are a few hundred brigade commanders who now have to learn to work with new superiors in the middle of an ongoing war where someone else is allowed to decide whether you live or die.
This war will probably continue similarly to 2023 – a prolonged Russian suicide and then Ukraine will eventually get resources for its own offensive operations – the sooner they are resourced the sooner they start and if they are not resourced they won’t start. The course change to “active defense” may be because the West signaled something we don’t know? The West may have felt that Ukraine used too much materiel during the spring offensive and that alternatives were discussed so the West can catch up with new production, since the West are cheeridiots and do not send unit-equipped materiel from countries that are safely distant from the front lines?
It was damn lucky that Zalizhny refused to throw the entire Ukrainian army through the minefields straight towards Tokmak last summer so that offensive reserves remain – NATO commanders completely lost it there in the fog and lucky that there was a commander with integrity.
There are probably about a dozen brigades being formed and then some offensive brigades are rotated out from active fronts to rest and be equipped so something similar to last year in offensive capability exists.
Between the lines, you can start to read that it is difficult to attract new personnel into the organization, the benefits are not perceived as sufficiently attractive. Zalizhny wanted to solve this with a larger compulsory mobilization, politics has held it back.
I find it very hard to understand that PR agencies have not been allowed to work throughout the West to recruit volunteers but it is what it is.
In the absence of resources for a violent offensive, Ukraine has now switched to classic guerrilla warfare, they have stolen a page from the IRA’s manual.
They usually say you don’t win wars with terror bombings but Russia is not a country like all others – it is a colonial power that is absolutely hated and we should probably see this a bit like the liberation movements in Africa really. I did try something earlier that went so-so according to the comments it tore down – someone wondered if I wanted to restore Rhodesia 😀
There is currently an active guerrilla war ongoing across Russia, and Ukraine is the Russian army’s special operation against the rebels in the “jungle.”
When the oppressed colonized indigenous peoples rise up, Russia will split into about a dozen new countries, and then the “threat” left will probably be under 100 million strong from ethnically Russian areas. Ukraine will likely have good relations with the six oblasts around the country even if they are ethnically Russian and would then not be part of the threat, and St. Petersburg also wants to move closer to the EU.
Say we then have a threat left in an area with under 80 million weak – then Russia is essentially neutralized and can’t do much.
Kaliningrad will definitely be demilitarized and receive some kind of status within the EU.
Belarus would have been liberated if Russia hadn’t filled the country with internal troops, and the citizens of Belarus will not miss this chance, we can be confident of that.
The West has not wanted to accept this fact, but those of us who have listened when Budanov speaks know what is coming, and 2024 seems to be the year the West has capitulated.
Zelensky looked more than a little nervous when a very serious Budanov received his medal, so there is some sense that Zelensky feels he can’t quite control Budanov – we sincerely hope no one starts interfering with Budanov’s wish list here.
Now Zelensky has spoken in terms of “active defense,” and then we might be heading towards a rerun of the African liberation struggles; active defense sounds better than copying Angola’s freedom fight.
What is then done is to prevent the Russians from advancing through a mobile defense, which we have seen before, and try to decimate them as hard as possible with SOF and indirect weapons while Budanov gets a free pass to clear out in Russia.
Provided China does not intervene, Russia will over time not be able to do its job as a colonial power, and it will be 1989 all over again.
A little flashback – Putin et al. (or the Criminal clan) had planned a quick smash-and-grab to solve the problem with democratic currents. We can assume that the Siloviki have been worried about Ukraine and Belarus because they are nearby, and it would be unfortunate if the citizens of Russia got ideas about individual freedom.
Everyone keeps saying there won’t be a revolution in Russia, but in Ukraine there was a popular revolution and in Belarus too – are they so incredibly different from the citizens left in Russia?
I don’t think so.
The different pillars – time, terrain, resources – are what wins the war – if you are in a hurry you sacrifice resources to take terrain quickly, and if you think you have time you save resources.
If Ukraine switches to “active defense,” they consider themselves to have time and save resources – provided it is not just a quick fix right now because they have run out of measures.
If Putin sits safely after a landslide victory in the election, they can start reinforcing Ukraine with more coercive measures than before, in my opinion, so June – July will get harder.
However, Russia was supposed to mobilize “425,000 volunteers” in April 2023, which did not happen, and then they were supposed to mobilize hundreds of thousands in autumn 2023 – that didn’t happen either.
Someone in the thread usually writes that Russia cannot mobilize because the only thing the Siloviki are really worried about is popular revolution, and a million men under arms is a bigger threat to them than Ukraine.
We were supposed to watch for mobilization or Ukraine starting to retreat, and now Ukraine is only retreating because of the West’s dithering, but I don’t think we will ever see Russian mobilization because it simply can’t happen.
What is needed now is for the West to actually open the coffers and start seriously taking equipment down from the top shelf – they are still hoping for what we have hoped for these past two years.
One becomes a bit suspicious that the West is trying to arm Ukraine with new contracts purely for profit and then let the war continue because it is good for the arms industry – high risk, as said.
UNRWA general manager or whatever he is called has denied in a long text that UNRWA even knew about Hamas’s server hall under their headquarters – a lousy lie and also easy to see through, so a dumb lie. This organization might as well be shut down.
https://x.com/unlazzarini/status/1756377920254218556?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
See this guy who posted how life in Gaza was before October 7 – they had it good in some places. To throw all that away for the chance to murder infants in an oven at 200 degrees is almost the height of idiocy.
https://x.com/visegrad24/status/1756597980914692244?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
Gaza was absolutely showered with aid – they had 34 hospitals! An endless money tap that has now run dry for the chance to murder civilians in…er.
I’ll stick my neck out a bit – Israel has decided to solve the problem once and for all, and the UN, UNRWA, Doctors Without Borders, and the Red Cross have all been exposed as either facilitating or directly working for Hamas. The funds the West has sent have either been directly stolen by Hamas’s leadership or used to build Hamas’s offensive capabilities, or gone to all these aid organizations’ enormous salaries.
After this, I am positively optimistic that Israel will give the Palestinians self-rule and that the West will do right so trickle-down economy works and it doesn’t become a new criminal clan taking over. In 10 years they will be prosperous and rebuilt.
Regarding civil defense discussed yesterday, I think a fireplace in every house is not a bad baseline, the electrical infrastructure is sensitive, extremely easy to knock out, and cold winters are apparently a favorite for that.
Then you should have a water purification kit and in my opinion “dry food” that lasts forever. My wife has stocked a ten-year supply of spaghetti in the house in Sweden 😀 If you don’t have a water purification kit, you’ll have to boil the water. If you remember when skiing or hiking in the mountains to the cabins, there were always some crackers, instant mashed potatoes, crispbread, and spaghetti left behind.
Then I have to point out that the doomsday prophecy that we will stand there completely without food never happens; I have lived in devastated countries and there is always food. However, you must be able to pay, and a usable currency is not so bad, some gold coins hidden in the house or something else that is usable? It will probably be a barter economy to some extent in case of crisis, so you can have things you think you can trade for food, whatever that may be.
I am quite much for self-reliance to defend what is yours even though I don’t think it will be the walking dead, but getting a hunting license is probably suitable?
We live in a house, and if you live in an apartment, you can have a vacation home, big or small, where you have this.
I myself would never manage an ambitious stockpile of water, canned goods, and fuel that must be rotated and would just stand there the day everything collapses with unusable diesel, undrinkable water, and canned goods that smell like surströmming 😀
Russia never disappoints, I read about the uprising in Warsaw in 1944 when the Russian army was approaching and the liberation fighters cleaned house with the Germans in the central parts and expected the Russians to join.
Stalin ordered a halt to the offensive behind the river and waited until the Germans had crushed the uprising before they advanced again.
When the French resistance movement took to the streets in Paris, the Allies hurried to the rescue as soon as they could and liberated Paris.
When the peace was signed, Russia occupied Poland until 1989 and the West helped to rebuild France, gave them a pat on the shoulder and went home.
Russia is like a violent parasite and has always acted like this, we can be absolutely sure that the country has ambitious plans to destabilize and conquer the West. Medvedev has informed us that the Slavic empire shall stretch from Vladivostok to Lisbon so not even the lively Portuguese are spared.
When you hear the Germans’ rhetoric about “master race,” “untermensch,” and “lebensraum,” it sounds exactly like what you hear on Russian TV during prime time nowadays. We have seen a fascist dictatorship born and flourish in all its glory and the prelude to a world war. Right now, it is hanging in the balance and the West is more than sluggish here. But… the West can meet the onslaught with a peace economy while Russia has already shifted to a war economy, so it is indisputable that it will end with a Russian defeat, the only question is how long the West will allow this to continue.
Our time’s global conflict is decided on the ground in Ukraine and it is the Ukrainian infantry, the world’s best infantry, that carries the entire future of the West on its shoulders and we should be grateful for that every day.