2024-03-02

12:01 – Johan No.1

The Lions
https://x.com/ukrainiansquad/status/1763603950656233497?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w

It seems to have stabilized near Avdiivka and if you run a map check you understand why – UA has fallen back to dominant terrain. We’ll see where RU strikes next.
To the north it is anchored in Novokalynove and Ocherytyne and in the south in the Karlivka area.
At most, RU will be able to advance up to this line which is reasonably supported by the larger bodies of water.
If they have started pulling units from northern Luhansk, maybe nothing will happen up there but that would be strange; anchoring the front at the Oskil river, or if it is a stream, is very attractive.
Chasiv Yar over by Bakhmut will not fall, it is dominant terrain after dominant terrain.
It may happen that Klishchiivka becomes untenable and then there will be some movement there as well.

Then one wonders (until it blows up again!) if RU and UA have some kind of balance of terror here because no major missile attacks and no burning oil terminals for several weeks, right?
My thought was that RU would do a Black Sea Fleet and stop the large-scale missile attacks when it hurt too much and Zelensky promised “an eye for an eye” against these.
RU should have 2/3 of the missiles left and UA has no shortage of targets, drones or saboteurs.
Why is it quiet?

If you go by this, the leaked conversation about Taurus is negative for Scholz and then it is absolutely not the FSB but probably the Germans themselves which means there is significant internal opposition to Scholz. I don’t think it is the British who have avenged Scholz’s leak of confidential information as someone has suggested.

My first thought was that RU leaked the information and that it supported Scholz so they thought it was worth burning that eavesdropping opportunity which is somewhat spectacular because Taurus was too important for them but now I lean towards it being leaked to torpedo Scholz.
A clever way to get information out without any messenger needing to be sacrificed 😀
https://x.com/hallonsa/status/1763694078246437048?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w

Now Sumlenny extrapolates way too far but if there is any connection that Scholz as finance minister interfered, it will come out soon. By the way, I think it’s okay to try to throw things that might stick to him since this has gone too far now, somewhat like with Trump. Proportionate response, I think, applies when someone has gone so far over the line and the global world order is at stake.
https://x.com/sumlenny/status/1763542846739505319?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w

However, it seems that the finance ministry chose to try to go after the journalists who tried to investigate Wirecard instead of investigating the allegations.
https://x.com/michaeldweiss/status/1763523196572012923?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w

It is possible that the beard doesn’t match here but Scholz is actually a Russian FSB agent 🤣
https://x.com/sackscholznow/status/1763568622914412932?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
As has been said for a while now – I think Scholz will go down in the cascade effects of this.

Navalny the unmentionable’s funeral…
Some time ago his mother said she had to choose between a funeral with the closest mourners or that he was buried out in the labor camp in Siberia.
We wrote in the thread right after the death that now the fuse was lit and I maintain that because I think the opposition will push this hard.
I don’t know the numbers but it contained all sorts of Putin criticism and note that NO ONE is afraid to appear on camera. They know just like us that the FSB takes notes.

Woman on camera calling Putin a murderer 😲
https://x.com/visegrad24/status/1763547229950767199?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w

Someone running around Red Square in a Putin mask and placards calling Putin a murderer
https://x.com/igorsushko/status/1763709899320774750?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w

Mourners chanting Ukraine
https://x.com/logically_jc/status/1763661111927132202?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w

Banner in a tree saying Putin murdered Navalny
https://x.com/visegrad24/status/1763592066104201538?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w

”bring the soldiers home”
https://x.com/nexta_tv/status/1763590234824978629?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w

”no to the war”
https://x.com/visegrad24/status/1763545600878907847?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
https://x.com/jayinkyiv/status/1763563944617132166?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w

Praising Navalny the unmentionable
https://x.com/mjluxmoore/status/1763524040617021775?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w

”heroim slava”
https://x.com/aleksandrx13/status/1763542283495084271?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w

Putin is a murderer
https://x.com/gerashchenko_en/status/1763541193672085575?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w

Then we have campaigning in Georgia in support of Ukraine
https://x.com/kshoshiashvili/status/1763532481762898253?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w

Sorry for today’s OT but does a certain party have no PR department?
Now the whole party is defending lotteries as their necessary financing, lotteries are not something commendable that one would want to be associated with reasonably and “the other side’s” PR department can probably quite quickly start digging up statistics on gambling addiction, suicides, poor pensioners and other things around their lotteries which they now defend tooth and nail – what are they doing 😐

One is a bit like a recidivist, doesn’t dare to trust that this time everything will turn out better and probably wants to see HIMARS start up again, the depots in Crimea shattered and that it burns in the northern oblasts before I open a big Star beer and sip it with the bolognese chips.
However, the positive signs are many if we overlook the negative in the short term with UA retreats forced by ammunition shortages.

-At Krunky UA has brought in new capability and is expanding – there is some risk that it is done so that RU must allocate units but it is a positive.

-In the USA the good side has started going after the evil side now and it is reasonably a matter of time before the support package is voted through, to that “someone” has leaked (Pentagon themselves maybe?) that they will send materiel with the 4 billion USD that does not require congressional approval if it takes too long. Lots of dirt on the MAGA crazies have reached the newspapers and it should become more and more uncomfortable for them.
Now the thousand-crown question is whether the Pentagon has already prepared the logistics for what they know will be sent or if it will be six months of thinking followed by starting to consider how to send everything and with what. We hope for the former because then they resource this year’s offensive in time.

-F-16 and hopefully Gripen and maybe Rafale are on the way, F-16 should arrive in time for a spring offensive and what “introduction training” on Gripen is I don’t know and Rafale is just like Leclerc not excluded, and we haven’t seen Leclerc yet, right?

-Denmark broke the ice and sent out from the reserve stocks and some others who are not named. To me, it looks like the West can bridge with existing ammunition until production has started. Do you remember those in the thread who consistently said for two years that the West had nothing to send? 8,500 hard vehicles later, it was suddenly “ammunition shortage.” The West has as_much_as_they_want to send if they wanted from reserve stocks and unit stocks. Portugal could not be more protected than these, but if you have lived there, you know that nothing is given away for free from them.

-The strategic communication regarding troops in UA was catastrophic, but Macron managed to save the situation, and now Putin feels there is a risk of Western troops in the country, and he does not like it.
Macron does not give up, and now there will be SOF in Ukraine – I am surprised at how resolute Macron’s actions are; other countries crashed the strategic communication, so France itself has driven the line very hard. Very impressive, I must say.
https://x.com/nexta_tv/status/1763610583377621333?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w

Then we are quite one-sided; we have discussed a lot how hard it hit Ukraine that the spring offensive did not achieve its combat goals, but how do you think the Russians feel after the complete fiasco throughout 2023?
They sacrifice hundreds of thousands and have achieved nothing in the last 13 months, nothing. That is real depression.

Then the Russians have seen all their weapon systems outclassed by the West, all of them – they are hopeless, and guess if it is a priority for them that 500 Taurus missiles that cannot be shot down do not arrive in Ukraine and without geographical restrictions…

We also did not see anything spectacular on the anniversary, but you understand as well as I do that Budanov can send a swarm of drones to the Kremlin any day, film it, and upload it to YouTube.
10,000 medium-range drones and 1,000 long-range drones have been produced since the turn of the year, and 200,000 ordinary lethal drones – there is plenty to spare.

Those of us who listen to Budanov know that Ukraine is in contact with opposition in Russia and that they want a Russia that does not pose a threat, so it should be a sensible opposition. We know that they gladly see Russia broken up and that they want good contacts with the six oblasts bordering the country.

They actively support all six or more liberation fronts, and Ukraine is probably a bit of a superhero for all minorities in Russia, one might think?

I wonder how much support there really is for the war among the upper social classes in Russia. Not too much, I think, and there were quite a few who were not so keen on the special operation to begin with?
Large size oligarchs fear one thing – popular revolution. Then the whole risk list goes out the window, and anything can happen. Navalny’s funeral worries them.

Putin pushed the war hard, so that will be the hill he dies on, but now after the latest rounds of sanctions, oil export bans, the EU resolution that is as hard as granite, and the West starting to wake up and deliver what is needed, it is probably a sharp internal situation?

I am convinced that 2024 will be the year Ukraine wins, but I have also consistently thought more about the leaders in the West than what they have delivered, so we should really say this – if the West supplies what is needed in materiel and ammunition, Ukraine will decide the war in 2024.
Had Ukraine received the weapons in autumn 2022, they could have decided it then, and too much was missing for the 2023 offensive, but the minefields probably did their part as well. The support is absolutely decisive.

The fact is that the weapon-winning support package that never needs to be delivered together with the LV screen over western UA and border protection against Belarus is probably enough to cool Putin down.
That the West shows they can conduct this war for 10 more years with the same intensity if needed would make Putin lie awake at night and increase his omeprazole intake even more.

Our time’s great global conflict has every chance to be stamped out during 2024, China is not at all keen on any escalation, and the West should probably decide this before China’s economy crashes and they have nothing to lose by going to war. However, China is geographically very poorly positioned to do anything, and the West’s combined fleet is light years ahead of China’s counterpart.
The West woke up from its slumber, and the arms industry will go strong for another 30-40 years.

Should the West, against all odds, manage to mess this up when the ball is already on the goal line, we instead have a global conflict. It worried me that Iran attacked Pakistan together with the Taliban – that was outside the pattern, but it seems to have calmed down.

Now I thought I would extrapolate very hard and speculatively but will not do that.
I have felt for a few weeks that the pattern is broken, and there is an incredible amount going on right now both in the West, UA, and Russia. One gets the distinct feeling that something is about to happen, but what it is and when is the tricky part. That it is not good for Putin we can probably assume as a baseline.
During March, it may crystallize what is in motion, but something is. I put my account on cornu as collateral (at the risk that you will have to listen to Johan No.2 going forward).
I have sat with lots of pros and cons; for example, why Budanov’s havoc on the oil industry has stopped and moved on to maybe doing it to give the opposition a chance, but then land directly in that chaos is good for the opposition, so the conclusion is that I have no idea why Budanov stopped attacking the oil industry. If you remember Operation Turn Off the Lights and two refineries burning per week, it suddenly stopped about two weeks ago – why then?
Then it is possibly that they just attacked an oil depot in St. Petersburg after a few quiet weeks, and then the above reasoning no longer applies.
https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1763821344154648870?t=24Z_2zfxXb1XmdboOzyuow&s=19

A couple more examples – suddenly there is a tsunami from the USA with attacks on all the MAGA rebels, and Scholz, who has dragged out an entire war and grinned his way through any abuses, is probably starting to feel there is some risk of resignation when his own intelligence service goes against him – do not let it escape you that the two biggest threats to RU are the USA and Germany and that MAGA and Scholz have slowed down for two whole years without consequences. First, we heard from Navalny’s mother that his funeral would be quiet with only family, and then it became a public funeral where mourners chanted “death to Putin and stop the war,” and no one was arrested – what is happening, and above all, ask the woman who was arrested with a completely white placard without text if she thinks this is equal treatment 😲

Then Macron refuses to let go of the ball about troops in Ukraine and pushes it hard when virtually the whole West has said they will not send troops – very unlike Macron, I was sure he had slept through the meeting and would change his mind as only a Macron can, but he has not thought about that – the line is very deliberate and has a purpose.

Anyway, Orban has now started discussing the importance of a peaceful negotiated solution and a ceasefire to save the children. If we hear more people pushing this line, it is significant because then Putin has blinked.
https://x.com/pm_viktororban/status/1763306370101588265?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w

The bubble list is boiling, which is a – positive – positive. The election is, as said, two weeks away and if we know Ukraine right, they should not let such an opportunity pass them by (that would be negligence) and the murder of Navalny was too close to the election so the momentum should reasonably be able to be maintained over the election?

When the election was called, we wrote in the thread that Putin had made a fatal mistake in his arrogance to believe that an election would go smoothly and we will soon see if we were right 😀

18:49 – MatsExtrude

Thanks!

06:03 – Johan No.1

Then on this one, shooting in Ingushetia between FSB and militants

https://x.com/noelreports/status/1764047262471139379?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w

06:22 – Johan No.1

yes, I saw the five now 👍