11:00 – Johan No.1
Wrote a short reply under yesterday’s gloominess post and also want to take the opportunity to thank for the kind words as well as a bunch of informed comments that were interesting reading 👍
11:14 – Johan No.1
I forgot the Chechen volunteer unit which is among the best Ukraine has, they are also up at the northern front and have been fighting since day one.
11:33 – Johan No.1
Yep, the offensive is completely dependent on F-16s, ammunition, and materiel and it has only JUST started to arrive.
Maybe I should be a bit clearer on that question 😀
Yes, what Ukraine has communicated outwardly is extremely frightening, hundreds of thousands of drones built (and two million per year), autonomous drones, EW-resistant drones, and their own effective EW weapon. My thought is that they can pool capabilities over a broader front section and gain total superiority.
Then they have disrupted the Russians’ Lancet factory with sabotage and a prioritized target for them is drone groups.
12:06 – Johan No.1
If there is anything the USA should deliver all they have of, it is the ATACMS cluster version with long range.
That ammunition has had insanely good results against airports and oil depots as well as staging areas.
A bit annoying that the USA is bipolar and can’t decide whether the geographical limitation applies or not.
07:05 – MatsExtrude
Thanks!👍
10:46 – Johan No.1
The Lions
https://x.com/ukrainiansquad/status/1791544699913638261
I find stuff like this fun, now we have come back to development V1 again 😀
https://x.com/osinttechnical/status/1791465354092335434?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
https://bsky.app/profile/johanno1.bsky.social/post/3ksoqyaj3z22z
I was in meetings this week with the billionaire who owns the project and I am certainly not spoiled by having sat and chatted with eccentric billionaires, so an interesting experience for me.
What we are all beginning to sense is a shift, once it gets moving it will be tough for Putin,
At the southern part of his enormous U-shaped defense, they have dozens of Combat Boat 90s and a marine corps of 8,000 men waiting to advance together with hundreds in SOF units as attack divers. Ukraine can land anywhere between Enerhodar and the land bridge to Crimea, and often rear functions lie down towards the Black Sea. It is set up for endless hit-and-runs now that the Russian fleet has moved to Novorossiysk.
Up at the northern front, the volunteer units are waiting out the Russian army’s pointless and doomed offensive; they are Siberians, ethnic Russians, Belarusians, Georgians, Romanians, Poles, and the international legion. Before Ukraine began reinforcing with elite units from its mechanized and mountain infantry, they were roughly 10,000 strong. This is a battle group with a hard bite.
The mobilization is going reasonably as it should, a few dozen brigades exist in strategic reserve and ammunition is starting to reach units. Zelensky’s winged words were perhaps a bit theatrical and early, but the tide has definitely turned regarding access to weapons and ammunition. We know, for example, that more Bradleys have been sent.
Who would have thought after the loss of Mariupol that Ukraine would liberate Kherson, Kharkiv, and cross the Oskil except all of us in the thread (we missed Kharkov)?
If you get rid of the FAB bombs, the air force, and the AHKP, Ukraine can regain the initiative and this time they reasonably won’t run straight into minefields – they have had a year to learn that costly lesson.
Everyone talks about instructors from the West but which country currently has instructors with the world’s best work experience?
There are many doubters and also energetic ones, but now Putin has almost run out of his gas and will have to sit down and face Ukraine’s offensive when it comes sometime in the future. The pre-battle is in full swing both near the front and deep behind. The amount of knocked-out artillery, radar, air defense, and logistics is sky-high. Recon fights have not started yet and it is still my belief that the F-16 is the critical line – everything depends on when Western materiel arrives and by the end of May 2024 it has STARTED to arrive.
There was a long discussion yesterday about us being too positive and for some unfathomable reason I was mentioned. Yes, since the West can do 10 times more than they do and Russia has gone all-in, the probability of a smashing victory is high. Throughout the war we have had two yardsticks – “Ukraine will not win,” but will Russia win then?
“China has not thrown Russia under the bus,” and at the same time “the West has betrayed Ukraine.” Isn’t the absence of offensive weapons from China a betrayal of Russia just as we have thought the West has done throughout the war?
The double standards are not honest debate.
Then Ukraine will surprise everyone this year with mobile combat precisely because everyone has calibrated their models and thinks static combat is the new black, which it is not.
In 2023 Zalizhny saved the army by not conducting mechanized combat but this year it is precisely that which will be needed to unbalance the Russian bear and they have worked hard to create the conditions for it, and are still working on it.
Ukraine is conducting asymmetric warfare at all levels and where it causes the most damage. Again – the fact that Russia has not mentioned the attacks on the refineries with a single word is among the most important in this whole war.
Do you remember that they also did not mention the invasion of Russia with a single word but have, like busy weasels, prepared an offensive for a whole year to create a buffer zone after the first Belgorod raids – a domestic political nightmare for Putin that forced him to sacrifice 50,000 barbarians in a completely pointless offensive.
Now we have finally come to the breaking point and Zelensky’s presumed future (slightly premature) winged words “No reports of artillery shortages for first time in full-scale war.” History is written because Putin has now played out his cards during the autumn and winter when Ukraine’s artillery tubes fell silent and he accomplished nothing.
Russia has about 2-3 battle groups at the northern front of which at least one has been driven straight into the Ukrainian defense tile with heavy losses as a result.
Rightly, Ukraine has now announced that if they had been allowed to use Western weapons inside Russia, this would have been knocked out already during the buildup, which is somewhat of a classic tradition in occupied areas. Now they could prepare on the Russian side of the border and then step over the border and only then be exposed – a worse joke two years later 🤬
At least Russian troops are tied up at the northern front and at most the raids into Russian territory restart again depending on how weakened the Russian defense is.
Russia has a long border up at the northern front that is indefensible except with large numbers and now they had too few there, many having gone and died already – that SOF Senezh has taken losses is sensational as it is the most protected resource Russia has. They are recruited from the best of Spetsnaz and are a volunteer unit with high status, I don’t remember how many units they have but one has been at the northern oblasts since after the first Belgorod raids and now they were deployed as shooters in this “offensive.”
Lynx made me think about Russia’s fixed battery positions that they are reinforcing more and more.
We know that Ukraine is working with mobility and regrouping and that it requires its man (or woman or hen or non-binary).
The Russians are probably by now completely incapable of this and are betting on fixed reinforced battery positions that cause violent death because then they are just a target waiting to be knocked out when the right ammunition is available. In autumn 2022 the Russian artillery was still moving but during 2024 I think we see more and more videos of stationary battery positions where they try to reinforce instead. This can certainly partly explain the ever higher artillery losses. The other is that it is with simple artillery tubes and fewer and fewer tracked howitzers that can regroup. The backbone is absolutely broken on the Russian artillery but so far they have replaced it with FAB bombs and drones.
For my part, I had a very small problem at first calling Kalla Fakta scoop just before the EU election (not that a report was made against SD!!) and now when MPF went out saying they had made a complaint in the media I got interested and snooped around a bit.
Since the EU election is just around the corner, almost everyone in the political opposition has pounced on the information without hesitation – it would be almost official misconduct not to do so, right, a grateful open goal.
For me, the quality assurance of the material Kalla Fakta used in the report becomes even more important, that they have not slipped on the truth but stuck precisely to – cold facts – as a heavyweight name in investigative media.
There was also a spin that white-power connections and severe xenophobia were found on the accounts, the article is locked. However, in the image in the media’s republication you see a picture of “white boy summer” which is severely xenophobic according to the articles. According to Google, it is a song by Chet Hanks, who is Tom Hanks’ son. I simply do not know this well enough but that is the ONLY thing that comes up. Besides that, there are posts of an “eco-fascist nature” and I don’t even know what that is?
MPF has probably had a serious internal debate as their complaint is also potentially election-influencing.
Now that we have just read the manual for Russian subversive activity, did the Kalla Fakta editorial team on their own initiative run a “rotten herring” just weeks before the EU election?
https://bsky.app/profile/johanno1.bsky.social/post/3kslkhfpmjc2d
China is exciting and many claim that China supports Russia, but we must use the same yardstick as I wrote above. We have criticized the West for missed arms deliveries and criticized them harshly for that betrayal. The same must reasonably apply to China’s support for Russia, and they have not yet sent offensive weapons.
Putin is desperately seeking personnel and equipment, but he is not getting it from China – no tanks, no missiles, no aircraft, no artillery, and no soldiers. He received 1,000 containers from Kim Jong Un that were discarded equipment where half of the missiles crashed and the artillery shells were rusted, probably paid ridiculously high for that 🤣
Then he got better equipment from Iran but paid in five tons of gold and MiG-34 or whatever it was?
Yes, there is a silent diplomacy with China, an active one, but we see the results and can with fairly high certainty guess some of it.
That the West now sends everything but China nothing (openly) and Xi has been on a charm tour in Europe and did not visit Russia on May 9 or during the inauguration speech speaks volumes to me.
Do you hear China loudly protesting the West’s support for Ukraine?
Do you hear China threatening to send tanks?
The entire escalation ladder that the West uses (very poorly) has completely failed to appear from China.
My conclusion is that all else being equal, China will let the West support Ukraine to a victory in this war; they simply cannot afford to get involved in Putin’s spectacular failure of a special operation.
One thing I do not like, however, is the US tariffs right now, at this moment!!!, because if the pressure on China is raised too much RIGHT NOW, it could force their hand to join the war, right?
https://x.com/globeeyenews/status/1790410689569517974?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
The US has its own agenda against China, and the question is whether the EU should join it – does it benefit us as a collective?
I don’t know, but I do know that the US took over Russia’s LNG sales to the EU and is currently profiting big time, and that their arms industry is running at full speed and the oil industry as well, right?
I also know that the US has slow-walked support to Ukraine and got at least Germany on board with that.
Possibly Macron has sensed a new breeze and approached China – some suspicion.
But the US does what is best for them; the EU should be clear about that, and China will not disappear no matter how much we want.
The world has bought BMW and Mercedes for their excellence, and now China is investing far more than the EU in electric cars, and the European manufacturers have completely given up. Then there was something similar with solar cells; suddenly the same quality came from China at half the price. I recently read that China is investing heavily in sodium batteries for the power grid as overnight storage and that it works. Do we even have a discussion about that in Sweden’s electricity crisis?
The EU should absolutely think EU first, but the risk is that it becomes US first instead of all that, and nothing stops the EU from manufacturing the best products, right?
Enough about my white spot China, Russia heavily jammed with EW weapons during the Kharkiv offensive, and do you know what that means?
Yes, that Ukraine can do the same, right!
The drone weapon is not an insurmountable threat.
https://x.com/secretsqrl123/status/1791650953608737096?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
This one I probably never got included, Da Vinci’s turtle tank was knocked out in the end.
https://bsky.app/profile/johanno1.bsky.social/post/3ksk46dpgm22q
The refinery in Tuapse was heavily bombed with 9 drones – a new operational pattern. It had just come back into operation after three months of repairs, and now it is probably permanently knocked out, one would guess?
The attack on Crimea was the largest during this war, something like 90 drones (maybe including the northern oblasts?)
https://x.com/natalkakyiv/status/1791310236369715502?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
And then it was lively in Belgorod and the northern oblasts as usual.
When we have come this far – a new low for Ukraine and much more drone death than before.
Where is the Russian response, the missile rain?
If Ukraine has now received ammunition for the LV screen, 95% will be shot down as usual, and IF this is the new normal – how long can Russia hold out?
All refineries worth the name in the western part of Russia have been heavily bombed, and now they are going after oil depots. As PerraG55 said – soon they will probably heavily bomb gas stations as well.
Russia does not have the capability to respond at all; they had to resort to the old classic sabotage, but that was revealed immediately a few weeks ago.
-We know that Ukraine has manufactured since the turn of the year 10,000 long-range drones and 2,500 extremely long-range drones, so they have them in stock.
-Then ATACMS have arrived and are being newly manufactured.
-GLDSB have arrived and are being newly manufactured.
-Toschak U is shooting them again.
https://x.com/arturrehi/status/1790332153147937233?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
-They have their own homemade missile.
-They have V1 drones
-Storm Shadow is on the way from Italy as well, and they are being newly manufactured.
The only thing really missing is Taurus.
The bombing campaign of the country Russia has only just begun, and Russia is worried.
The old classic “operation turn off the lights” is relentlessly ongoing.
https://x.com/friaukraina/status/1791322270226350440?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
https://x.com/trenttelenko/status/1790450762301968617?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
Those who think that Ukraine is suffering the most right now do not see the whole picture, Ukraine has already had its baptism of fire, and now in 2024 Russia’s Golgotha march has begun, which will end with Putin dangling by his feet at a gas station, the Russian liberation front has already checked whether it should be diesel or gasoline, I said gasoline for the deep marination.
Ukraine has absolutely no reason to negotiate, and China will not be an active party in this war.
Georgia has elections in October.
https://x.com/terjehelland/status/1791199840535445810?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
Russia has made a huge mistake on the northern front that possibly opens up for a Ukrainian counteroffensive
https://x.com/secretsqrl123/status/1790929342224072728?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
Russia has problems with recruitment
https://x.com/arturrehi/status/1790421618583359811?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
A popular person has been arrested, almost a bit of Prigozhin vibes and that he was arrested early.
https://x.com/iendure_4evr/status/1790436655595163731?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
Georgia is starting to look almost like a popular revolution. Lukashenko is completely silent.
A whole series of generals have resigned or been arrested for corruption at the MoD, and according to the blogger, Patrushev is marginalized.
To me, it looks seriously hot in the Russian sauna.
Then Armenia has probably also approached the West?
The US is trying to increase the tempo of deliveries to Ukraine
https://x.com/front_ukrainian/status/1790103401503633756?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
And Spain is preparing a new weapons package
https://x.com/front_ukrainian/status/1790073568828575814?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
The Siberian battalion urges Russians to desert
https://x.com/albafella1/status/1789560177751941202?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
Since it was a long discussion yesterday, I just want to mention that early summer is in the air and the wind has turned – positive – positive. We have already discussed that we are here to cheer on Ukraine to the victory they want to achieve, and as long as they want to continue their liberation struggle against the colonizers, it benefits no one to go all-in on gloominess while we safely sit in our stands and let Ukraine die for our freedom.