10:43 – Johan No.1
Yesterday there were somewhat conflicting reports – someone wrote that UA is supposed to try to hold the 9th district in western Avdiivka while Deepstatemap showed a huge area east of Avdiivka that became contested in just one day, which suggested that UA had withdrawn or been pushed back reasonably, and yesterday’s assessment in the post held up.
Now UA has probably confirmed that they are leaving the built-up area in Avdiivka, I think, and Deepstate suggests that this will be the case because there is too much movement per day now; UA’s combat command has the same reality that we see to relate to, right?
It is possible that we will see a delaying battle aimed at taking as many Russian lives as possible, and the industrial area north of the built-up area in Avdiivka is suitable for this purpose – 3rd Azov is there but it is then only a delaying battle where they give up a potato field for Russian lives IF they decide to do so.
Good, now everything is set in motion and if I have understood this correctly no units are encircled in Avdiivka, which is fantastic.
If the Russians run out of gas before they have taken everything, that would of course be great but it feels like a prioritized area right now and they have brought forward too many reserves and got their breakthrough too early. If they have taken 30% losses, they have 70% left, right, and the probability that the whole area falls under Russian control is high.
It is not clear to me whether the next defensive line goes through Lastochktyne or the string of communities west of it. RU is starting to come surprisingly close to Lastochktyne over open fields so high chance it is west of that.
By the way, good grade (A+) to Sirsky and his new combat command, this could have gone infinitely worse than this. However, it is always good to point out that the reason Avdiivka is now lost is a direct consequence of the West stopping sending ammunition. In October and November everything was shot away already during the advance to Ufa because there are 2-3 advance routes that were under observation 24-7.
The ammunition shortage is a scourge, you remember the information that RU drove up about 30 tanks from the Dnieper front to the southern front when it was most critical and that all were knocked out when they were tracked on the highway, the last twelve were discovered scattered in a forest area and knocked out one by one.
Now we hear reports of large troop concentrations behind the southern front and UA can only stand and watch just like up in Avdiivka 😐
You have seen the rounds that France and Greece blocked purchases of ammunition outside the EU to prioritize the EU, then there has certainly been serious positioning within the EU as well, everyone wants the contracts.
Not unreasonable that countries have slowed down sending existing materiel so that it will become lucrative contracts instead – I consider that likely.
This is enormously cynical and these countries have blood on their callous hands 🤬
Navalny – PerraG55 knows this best but to me it looks like Putin lit a fuse just before a presidential election and that it was extremely untactical. This will be able to be spun enormously by the opposition, not least Navalny’s messages from the grave.
https://x.com/visegrad24/status/1758619986585608257?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
I personally have no opinion about Navalny but have learned that in Russia one does not act entirely on one’s own but is part of a grouping – and I do not know who has really stood behind Navalny.
There is not much we know, when Prigozhin went down we heard about purges in the army and know some names but what happened to the coup makers in the shadows, who pulled the strings and are they alive?
To clarify – if it was not Putin who took Navalny out, then he has neglected to protect Navalny when he was under Putin’s “protection” in prison and he will become a target for this regardless.
Personally, one does not wish Navalny’s fate on (almost) anyone, after all he was not Prigozhin or Girkin but tried to form opposition to Putin without being a merchant of death and had a wife and children.
Then it is not entirely out of the blue to say that the lack of consequences from the West took Navalny’s life, I think.
There are demonstrations all over right now, even in Hungary 😀
https://x.com/jayinkyiv/status/1758542812058984556?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
And in Serbia
https://x.com/v141ng/status/1758522527045861859?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
Navalny’s passing is a very good litmus test to see how different people and organizations are calibrated. Göran Greider got it completely right, for example.
So did Ulf Kristersson.
https://x.com/swedishpm/status/1758473732962627789?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
The UN went completely wrong, of course, they regret the accident…
https://x.com/unhumanrights/status/1758508445945245792?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
Amnesty was very interesting, at first they regretted the accident, then there was probably a crisis meeting when the leadership saw the tweet and they managed to say something sensible, someone got a severe scolding.
https://x.com/amnesty/status/1758519506362667246?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
At the risk of starting domestic politics, I really don’t like Magdalena Andersson this past week, not because she crashes herself and will resign (no opinion on that) but because two obvious influence operations from S – operation save Jamal and operation smear Henrik – immediately backfired on them. To me that shows that Sweden is somewhat properly calibrated so when a political party crosses the line of decency it has consequences.
https://x.com/susannasilfver/status/1758607369368477889?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
There was recently also a campaign to smear ICA which also did not go well, Aftonbladet and the lawyer’s own firm made more profit per employee than ICA and then there was something about subsidies to agriculture where it finally emerged that the media gets more subsidies than agriculture – it was very quick to torpedo these attempts as well and to reveal that those who drove them were serious hypocrites. It’s been quite a while since our prime minister lived in a townhouse in Vällingby and stuff like this is always worth checking up on which some seem to have understood. Previously there was a politician in Gothenburg (party omitted) who voted that children should be bused between schools in vulnerable areas and “good” areas in Gothenburg but then when her own children were to be bused to the city’s most violence-prone school she rebelled strongly and suddenly became an opponent. One can only respect people who live as they preach.
There is no shortage when the right wing has tried a bit of a reset and gotten caught for it too and that guarantees that our elected representatives stay within a certain limit and if they cross it there is first a “time out” and then health reasons to hand over to someone who is a brilliant comet of intelligence and now one should probably try to understand Damberg here.
It is no longer 2008 when Sten Nordin during two terms could stand on TV and really regret that he sold out (*any state-owned enterprise sold for a few kronor*) way too cheaply because next time some will be on the lookout. I myself lost hope in everyone when S after 2014 put forward a motion to re-tax everything sold too cheaply five years back and it was voted down but that is another story.
Compare that with the utopia Russia where Putin has just poison-murdered one threat to his re-election and barred the other from running in the presidential election on a technicality, and arrests everyone who either demonstrates for Navalny or, God forbid… dares to lay flowers on the Unknown Soldier’s grave in groups.
We have a functioning democracy in Sweden even though the tone from certain groups is more than a bit high right now.
Anyway, Putin will become aware of what a huge mistake it was to have Navalny murdered, whoever it was that killed him, because there is always something that lights the fuse to the powder keg, and if I may guess, I think it is lit now. Ukraine is not exactly known for missing an opportunity, right?
https://x.com/igorsushko/status/1758603206526148774?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
https://x.com/igorsushko/status/1758557237428281841?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
It is a new situation for Russia where Ukraine has defended itself against Russia for a full two years and humiliated them time after time – many in Russia see this.
Then Ukraine has a swarm of saboteurs throughout Russia undermining the state, and they are on good terms with all the “liberation fronts” and freedom-thirsty indigenous peoples.
Considering that it is open season on the oil industry, I assume that Budanov’s fireworks for the anniversary, the election, and May 9 will not be stopped, and he has an arsenal that should make anyone terrified. Zelensky looked more than a little worried when he gave Budanov his medal, and Budanov has previously promised that every war criminal in Russia will get their trial with the accompanying bullet in the neck.
Now that we see videos of 20-year-olds being mobilized, I still don’t understand why not all of Europe is running recruitment drives for volunteers to Ukraine?
So far, it has been quite difficult to sneak in, and you really have to want it, but if large training camps were set up in Poland and the wheat was sifted from the chaff, the personnel shortage could probably be remedied quite quickly, and everyone would be motivated volunteers.
I’m wondering a bit about how the Russians have managed to produce units that have fought as competently as they have in Avdiivka. The losses are absolutely astronomical, that cannot be denied at all, but RU seems to have fought marginally better than before.
The offensive reserve eventually went down to zero if you remember, but I have an idea that the Russians have done something like with Wagner in Belarus where 2,000 are now training the Belarusian army.
Russian soldiers with extensive combat experience may have been pulled back to become instructors, and then you could have a training program tailored for this war based on experience?
The 104th AAD was formed around a VDV regiment, for example, which was pulled out because they had taken too many losses, and then presumably the survivors become instructors?
Then they naturally have a murderous advantage in indirect capabilities and they exploited the weather and tunnels, which was actually quite clever – they showed some basic ability to think outside the box at last, which of course is unfortunate.
I am of the opinion that RU has now brought forward virtually all of its offensive reserve because there are new units down at the southern front as well.
If we go by Avdiivka, an enormous number of barbarians will fall in the coming months, and if Ukraine can just get the damn equipment and ammunition, RU will not be able to counter this, it is impossible.
All units in the field struggle in freezing temperatures and heavy rain – terrible combat value.
Let’s break down the NYT’s latest report of 60,000 Russian dead and that the rest on the death list are wounded – some still want to push this in the thread and someone might get the idea to cite NYT as a witness to the truth, so better to preempt that.
NYT thus believes in a loss ratio of 1:5 for RU – what support do they have for that?
I have a hard time getting the thread to accept 1:2 dead vs wounded 😀
I recall that we had 60,000 confirmed soldier burials in Russia and 215,000 missing who were being searched for by their families – LW posted about that but maybe I remember wrong?
If it is those 60,000 that NYT relies on, then they are more than a bit incompetent here?
At least I have seen videos with entire fields of dead not being taken care of and left to compost.
To me, this is planted information intended to try to drive down Russian losses, and NYT is the messenger, consciously or unconsciously.
NYT is not a reliable source for me.
https://x.com/nexta_tv/status/1758405848794087634?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
Ukrainian riflemen largely fight without drugs and alcohol, we have seen videos over two years supporting that. RU regularly gives their “meat wall units” drugs so they will attack – just here there is an enormous difference in capability. A bit like a healthy person running 3km against a heavy heroin addict.
https://x.com/albafella1/status/1758635155667988787?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
When Navalny was poisoned the first time, Trump did not want to discuss it 😀
https://x.com/bidenhq/status/1758571722016469250?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
We end with this – near the border with Ukraine, RU has shot down 33 drones and an oil depot, if one may guess the fuel for the war, has burned down.
Surely this qualifies as a drone swarm as we have discussed in the thread before?
https://x.com/noelreports/status/1758751982637011245?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
We all understand that it is not just Budanov but he has become the collective name for the destruction of the oil industry and operation “turn off the lights”.
There are other units (organizations?) in UA that are also involved and then they have good help from the internal liberation fronts in Russia.
The sabotage against the railway network continues unabated, they keep knocking out signal boxes and water pipes keep bursting and the cold spreads.
There are fires in war-critical industry every week and the oil industry is in flames.
I would argue that the one who does not have time on their side is Putin, but unfortunately the West just gave him Avdiivka about a month before the election, which is the height of incompetence because the West has just given Putin the boost he could not muster himself because Ukraine crashed the party for him.
How the West can live with themselves is a bit of a mystery here but that does not change that Putin is heading towards his luxury hate moment because in Ukraine all inhibitions seem to have been released now, which is fun.
It is lucky that Ukraine stands between Russia and us, one must admit now when we ourselves are our own buddy who betrays 😀
I think the odds for Putin’s demise at the betting firms will go down sharply going forward, so now is probably the best time to bet a few thousand that Putin dies in 2024.
10:44 – Johan No.1
I managed to find the forbidden word – a beginner’s mistake, again 😭
11:34 – Johan No.1
Proof and proof, we have countless videos of anonymous drones in substations, then it goes pitch black, then the district heating stops, then the pipes freeze and finally there are floods when trying to get everything running again.
Then this is naturally combined with faults due to lack of maintenance, major faults that could have been avoided with better maintenance. Saw in some video where the district heating pipe was lying on the ground surface 😲
Then all technicians have been mobilized for the war so no one is available to repair the damages and finally they probably have poor equipment for repairs.
But yes, those drones in the substations causing the cascade effects are very likely to come from Ukraine or the liberation fronts.
12:47 – MatsExtrude
👍
10:12 – Johan No.1
Denmark first out to send combat-ready equipment to Ukraine 👍👍
https://x.com/noelreports/status/1759133748556099622?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
10:30 – Johan No.1
The thread has managed to persuade Denmark, now we take over the world 💥
(a study in megalomania).
11:18 – MatsExtrude
👍
10:25 – Johan No.1
Yesterday there were some conflicting reports – someone wrote that UA is supposed to try to hold the 9th district in western Avdiivka while Deepstatemap showed a huge area east of Avdiivka that became contested in just one day, suggesting that UA had retreated or been pushed back reasonably, and yesterday’s assessment in the post held up.
Now UA has probably confirmed that they are leaving the built-up area in Avdiivka, I think, and Deepstate suggests that this will be the case because there is too much movement per day now; UA’s combat command has the same reality to deal with as we see, right?
It is possible that we will see a delaying battle aimed at taking as many Russian lives as possible, and the industrial area north of the built-up area in Avdiivka is suitable for this purpose – 3rd Azov is there but it is then only a delaying battle where you give up a potato field for Russian lives IF that is decided.
Good, now everything is set in motion and if I have understood this correctly, no units are encircled in Avdiivka which is fantastic.
If the Russians run out of gas before they have taken everything, that would of course be great, but it feels like a prioritized area right now and they have brought forward too many reserves and got their breakthrough too early. If they have taken 30% losses, they have 70% left, right, and the probability that the whole area falls under Russian control is high.
It is not clear to me if the next defensive line goes through Lastochktyne or the string of communities west of it. RU is starting to come surprisingly close to Lastochktyne over open fields, so there is a high chance it is west of that.
By the way, a good grade (A+) to Sirsky and his new combat command, this could have gone infinitely worse than this. However, it is always good to point out that the reason Avdiivka is now lost is a direct consequence of the West stopping sending ammunition. In October and November, everything was shot away already during the advance to Ufa because there are 2-3 advance routes that were under observation 24-7.
The ammunition shortage is a scourge, you remember the report that RU moved about 30 tanks from the Dnepr front to the southern front when it was most critical and that all were knocked out when they were tracked on the highway, the last twelve were discovered scattered in a forest area and were knocked out one by one.
Now we hear reports of large troop concentrations behind the southern front and UA can only stand and watch just like up in Avdiivka 😐
You have seen the rounds that France and Greece blocked purchases of ammunition outside the EU to prioritize the EU, then there has certainly been serious positioning within the EU as well, everyone wants the contracts.
Not unreasonable that countries have slowed down sending existing material so that lucrative contracts will come out of it instead – I consider that likely.
This is enormously cynical and these countries have blood on their callous hands 🤬
Navalny – PerraG55 knows this best but to me it looks like Putin lit a fuse just before a presidential election and that it was extremely untactical. This will be spun enormously by the opposition, not least Navalny’s messages from the grave.
https://x.com/visegrad24/status/1758619986585608257?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
I personally have no opinion about Navalny but have learned that in Russia one does not act entirely on one’s own but is part of a group – and I don’t know who really stood behind Navalny.
There is not much we know, when Prigozhin went down we heard about purges in the army and know some names but what happened to the coup makers in the shadows, who pulled the strings and are they alive?
To clarify – if it was not Putin who took Navalny out, then he neglected to protect Navalny when he was under Putin’s “protection” in prison and he will become a target for this regardless.
Personally, one does not wish Navalny’s fate on (almost) anyone, after all he was not Prigozhin or Girkin but tried to form opposition against Putin without being a traveling salesman of death and had a wife and children.
Then it is not completely unfounded to say that the lack of consequences from the West took Navalny’s life, I think.
There are demonstrations all over right now, even in Hungary 😀
https://x.com/jayinkyiv/status/1758542812058984556?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
And in Serbia
https://x.com/v141ng/status/1758522527045861859?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
Navalny’s passing is a very good litmus test to see how different people and organizations are calibrated. Göran Greider got it completely right, for example.
So did Ulf Kristersson.
https://x.com/swedishpm/status/1758473732962627789?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
The UN of course went completely wrong, they regret the accident…
https://x.com/unhumanrights/status/1758508445945245792?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
Amnesty was very interesting, at first they regretted the accident, then there was probably a crisis meeting when the leadership saw the tweet and they managed to say something sensible, someone got a serious scolding.
https://x.com/amnesty/status/1758519506362667246?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
At the risk of starting domestic politics, I strongly dislike Magdalena Andersson this past week not because she is crashing herself and will resign (no opinion on that) but because two obvious influence operations from S – operation save Jamal and operation smear Henrik – directly backfired on them. That shows me that Sweden is reasonably well calibrated so when a political party crosses the line of decency it has consequences.
https://x.com/susannasilfver/status/1758607369368477889?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
There was also recently a campaign to smear ICA which also did not go well, Aftonbladet and the lawyer’s own firm made more profit per employee than ICA and then there was something about subsidies to agriculture where it finally came out that the media gets more subsidies than agriculture – it was very quick to torpedo these attempts as well and to expose that those who ran them were serious hypocrites. It has been quite a while since our prime minister lived in a townhouse in Vällingby and stuff like this is always worth checking up on which some seem to have understood. Previously there was a politician in Gothenburg (party omitted) who voted for bussing children between schools in vulnerable areas and “good” areas in Gothenburg but then when her own children were to be bussed to the city’s most violent school she rebelled strongly and suddenly became an opponent. You can only respect people who live as they preach.
There is no shortage when the right wing has tried a bit of a reset and got caught for it as well and that guarantees that our elected representatives stay within a certain limit and if they cross it there is first a “time out” and then health reasons to hand over to someone who is a brilliant comet of intelligence and now one should probably try to understand Damberg here.
It is no longer 2008 when Sten Nordin during two terms could stand on TV and really regret that he sold out (*any state-owned enterprise sold for a few kronor*) way too cheaply because next time some will be on the lookout. I myself lost hope in everyone when S after 2014 put forward a motion to tax everything that was sold too cheaply five years back and it was voted down but that is another story.
Compare that with the utopia Russia where Putin has just poison-murdered one threat to his re-election and denied the other to run in the presidential election on a technicality and arrests everyone who either demonstrates for Navalny or, God forbid, dares to lay flowers on the Unknown Soldier’s grave in a group.
We have a functioning democracy in Sweden even if the tone from certain groups is more than a bit high right now.
Anyway, Putin will become aware of what a huge mistake it was to have Navalny murdered, whoever it was that killed him, because there is always something that lights the fuse to the powder keg, and if I were to guess, I think it is lit now. Ukraine is not exactly known for missing an opportunity, right?
https://x.com/igorsushko/status/1758603206526148774?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
https://x.com/igorsushko/status/1758557237428281841?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
It is a new situation for Russia where Ukraine has defended itself against Russia for two whole years and humiliated them time after time – many in Russia see this.
Then Ukraine has a swarm of saboteurs throughout Russia undermining the state, and they are on good terms with all the “liberation fronts” and freedom-thirsty indigenous peoples.
Considering that it is open season on the oil industry, I assume that Budanov’s fireworks for the anniversary, the election, and May 9th will not be stopped, and he has an arsenal that should make anyone terrified. Zelensky looked more than a little worried when he gave Budanov his medal, and Budanov has previously promised that every war criminal in Russia will get their standing trial with the accompanying bullet in the neck.
Now that we see videos of 20-year-olds being mobilized, I still don’t understand why all of Europe isn’t running recruitment drives for volunteers to Ukraine?
So far, it has been quite difficult to sneak in, and you really have to want it, but if large training camps were set up in Poland and the wheat was separated from the chaff, the personnel shortage could probably be remedied quite quickly, and everyone would be motivated volunteers.
I’m wondering a bit how the Russians have managed to produce units that have fought as competently as they have in Avdiivka. The losses are absolutely astronomical, that cannot be denied at all, but RU seems to have fought marginally better than before.
The offensive reserve eventually went down to zero if you remember, but I have an idea that the Russians have done something like with Wagner in Belarus where 2,000 now train the Belarusian army.
Russian soldiers with extensive combat experience may have been pulled back and become instructors, and then they could have had a training program tailored for this war based on experience?
The 104th AAD was formed around a VDV regiment, for example, which was pulled out because they had taken too many losses, and then presumably the survivors become instructors?
Then, of course, they have a murderous advantage in indirect capabilities and they exploited the weather and tunnels, which was actually quite clever – they showed some basic ability to think outside the box at last, which of course is unfortunate.
I am of the opinion that RU has now brought forward virtually all of its offensive reserve because there are new units down at the southern front as well.
If we go by Avdiivka, huge numbers of barbarians will fall in the coming months, and if Ukraine can just get the damn materiel and ammunition, RU will not be able to counter this, it is impossible.
All units in the field struggle in freezing temperatures and heavy rain – terrible combat value.
Let’s break down the NYT’s latest report of 60,000 dead Russians and that the rest on the death list are wounded – some still want to push this in the thread and someone might get the idea to cite NYT as a witness of truth, so better to preempt that.
NYT thus believes in a loss ratio of 1:5 for RU – what support do they have for that?
I have a hard time getting the thread to accept 1:2 dead vs wounded 😀
I seem to recall that we had 60,000 confirmed burials of soldiers in Russia and 215,000 missing who were sought by their families – LW posted about that but maybe I remember wrong?
If it is those 60,000 that NYT relies on, then they are more than a bit incompetent here?
At least I have seen videos with entire fields of dead not being taken care of and left to compost.
To me, this is planted information intended to try to drive down Russian losses, and NYT is the messenger, knowingly or unknowingly.
NYT is not a reliable source to me.
https://x.com/nexta_tv/status/1758405848794087634?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
Ukrainian riflemen largely fight without drugs and alcohol, we have seen videos over two years that support this. RU regularly gives its “meat wall units” drugs so that they will attack – just here there is a huge difference in capability. A bit like a healthy person running 3km against a heavy heroin addict.
https://x.com/albafella1/status/1758635155667988787?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
When Navalny was poisoned the first time, Trump didn’t want to discuss it 😀
https://x.com/bidenhq/status/1758571722016469250?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
We end with this – near the border with Ukraine, RU has shot down 33 drones and an oil depot, if one may guess the fuel for the war, has burned down.
Surely this qualifies as a drone swarm as we have discussed in the thread before?
https://x.com/noelreports/status/1758751982637011245?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
We all understand that it is not just Budanov, but he has become the collective name for the eradication of the oil industry and operation “turn off the lights”.
There are other units (organizations?) in UA also involved and they have good help from the internal liberation fronts in Russia.
The sabotage against the rail network continues unabated, they continue to take out signal boxes and water pipes continue to burst and the cold spreads.
There is a fire in war-important industry every week and the oil industry is in flames.
I want to say that the one who does not have time on their side is Putin, but unfortunately the West just gave him Avdiivka about a month before the election, which is the height of incompetence because the West has just given Putin the boost he could not muster himself because Ukraine crashed the party for him.
How the West can live with themselves is a bit of a mystery here, but that does not change that Putin is heading towards his luxury hate moment because in Ukraine all inhibitions seem to have been released now, which is fun.
It is lucky that Ukraine stands between Russia and us, one must admit now when we ourselves are our own buddy who betrays 😀
I think the odds for Putin’s demise at the betting firms will drop sharply going forward, so now is probably the best time to bet a few thousand that Putin dies in 2024.