12:38 – Johan No.1
Our prime minister puts his foot down 👍
https://x.com/swedishpm/status/1809163293182812290?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
12:44 – Johan No.1
Read the comments below and you will understand how widespread Russian influence is.
13:55 – Johan No.1
Well reasoned, I think. I usually look at where different brigades go, which signals intention.
Then there are some things that reveal – frontline pre-bombardment, reconnaissance battles, and above all the Opsec cover.
Clearing mines is another, and laying mines on the Russians’ access routes to delay the task forces.
Then we have lots of unknowns – what does the West think about an invasion straight into Russia, for example, and when will the promised deliveries arrive? Overall, I have been too positive – thought Western politicians were living humans.
16:25 – MatsExtrude
Thanks! 👍
(I’m on a road trip so there isn’t much time to read but you can’t miss the yellow wall!)
16:39 – Johan No.1
Kadyrov performs a failed dance for Putin and Lukashenko looks terrified 😳
https://x.com/olddog100ua/status/1809199988318036036?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
17:35 – Johan No.1
WARNING ❌❌🛑🛑☢🔴🔴🔴
Do ABSOLUTELY not watch this, do not click – whatever you do, DO NOT click!!
10:59 – Johan No.1
This also fits Ukraine – ”to the countless names we do not know, thank you”.
https://x.com/macgregor63/status/1808830347527721158?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
We listed about a week ago that there was a lot simmering and in addition to that, a whole bunch of peace seekers have come from RU from several channels and above all Putin takes every opportunity to say that he is in favor of a peace proposal – he seems to like Trump’s peace proposal for example.
If you remember our early discussions, Putin will eventually start accusing the West of not wanting peace and those on his payroll in the West will push that narrative – Ukraine is evil and to save the children Putin wants peace.
All proposals are of course still unacceptable but the number of statements from Putin signals something because it is not RU style to start begging. The West has not made any peace proposals and neither has Ukraine – on the contrary, they reject everything but Putin continues his campaign for world peace undeterred.
To me it is quite clear who thinks it is starting to get urgent for at least a ceasefire, a small lonely man with a hanging head and a caviar spoon in his mouth shuffling around in a bunker in Altai 😀
Scholz seems to have been clear that the proposals are not okay provided that he has understood what is going on and is not several steps behind.
That is probably also why Zelensky has made statements that the Russians must be included in the next peace meeting?
Now it is important to keep a close eye on the ball for the West – Ukraine must be allowed to press on everything they consider themselves capable of and not be held back in the hope of lasting peace in our time because this is one of the Russians’ oldest rope tricks, ask Dudayev.
I perceive the situation as such that Putin is quite cornered right now so the groundwork is there to humiliate him further with strong slaps and then one of the three outcomes we discussed earlier will automatically happen.
The only thing that must not happen is a ceasefire but Zelensky has been very clear about that and we must hope that the West does not let itself be fundamentally fooled (again) by Russia.
I think we can conclude that the US strategy in this is to try to get a negotiation according to alternative 1 that we posted about a week ago. However, the EU does not seem to be completely united with this strategy and we hear slightly different messages and of course Zelensky is the man with the most integrity in the whole world.
Have you heard from Macron for a long time or is he fully occupied with his “domestic politics” now?
Yesterday Zelensky announced that there was a lack of equipment for 14 maneuver brigades – it had been promised but not arrived.
Then we saw that Germany delivered a lot the same day so maybe there are 13 brigades left?
https://bsky.app/profile/johanno1.bsky.social/post/3kwjhf2beks2q
What I took away from that, however, was that 150 – 14 are resourced so they have equipment for 136 brigades 😀
We also know that volunteer units and the home guard have been mechanized with new fragmentation protection and then presumably most maneuver brigades have already received theirs.
However, I want to make a point – do you remember when the proposal was passed in the US, Biden promised that they would take from existing stocks in Europe so that it would NOT take long between promise and delivery. I took that as an indication that they planned to resource the next offensive. But according to a rather tired Zelensky, the equipment is simply taking too long and now it is the beginning of July. Biden HAS really dragged his feet here and it is deliberate from his administration because they have plenty in the warehouses in Europe not to mention Sierra and that is a boat trip away.
https://x.com/glasnostgone/status/1808840362951074124?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
The US has acted strangely throughout the war, then you may remember that they took the lead for a coalition against Houthi. This many ships have thus been attacked by Houthi completely without consequences from the US. You can do a bit as you want in the world right now seems to be the message from the US?
Big difference from when someone in North Africa started selling their oil in something other than dollars.
https://x.com/menchosint/status/1807852285743272072?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
But do you know who is short on almost everything – Russia.
Apparently only 3200 tanks left in the depots and they are in terrible condition.
https://x.com/gresselgustav/status/1807711590931742978?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
And their T80s are running out
https://x.com/highmarsed/status/1807713450329534801?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
A thought I have had is that their vehicle service chain does not get better but worse over time and that the wear on the entire vehicle fleet, hard and soft, is absolutely enormous. We usually say that 30% are out of order in the rear but that number is probably higher and certainly the artillery is suffering badly from worn-out barrels now.
The Russians rely heavily on recently mobilized who are in a unit – probably many regiments around a thousand barbarians which is manageable. Some stories are mobilized who after a week or two are at the front and die a few days later – anecdotes but they exist.
They have thus received a few months of Russian training AT BEST and then the attack is carried out by them having to get to point A without dying and there they are to go on defense which they do by trying to hide and then they are hunted down like prey by FPV drones – we see this every day.
If successful, the next regiment is sent forward rinse-and-repeat and in this way they work their way slowly forward under the protection of the FAB bombs.
There is extremely little professionalism involved in this and they still rely on Russian artillery doctrine but have reinforced a decreasing artillery with FAB bombs which have been effective and which the West refuses to do anything about despite Ukraine’s increasing desperation.
For support, the attacking group of any size gets a tank and then the buses are sometimes fragmentation protected and sometimes soft vehicles – you remember the infamous battalion attack with trucks from the 50s. But there is no cooperation between branches – everyone gets a written order which they follow and it is often chaotic and looks strange when you see them on drone videos.
Tanks and hard vehicles still struggle just to move the tanks forward and are basically no threat to the defense at all.
Here a RU T80 is knocked out because they barely manage to drive the tank.
https://x.com/andreibtvt/status/1808090179925651934?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
Then the Russian shooting is not much better, the number of shots per hit must be astronomical.
This is of course a result of reverse Darwinism during 2-5 years of war.
Ukraine, on the other hand, has well-coordinated groups that are fully trained in group combat and are fully resourced with close combat units and snipers. They handle platoon combat very well, as we have seen, and probably also company and battalion level. Everyone is capable of taking their own initiatives, and what really matters is hitting the target – everything else is secondary.
We see in the videos how the combat leadership, through drones, can see when the Russian task force was about to retake lost terrain and that the platoon in the recently captured trench system could immediately prepare a defense in the right direction – it takes quite a lot to get organized right away and repel counterattacks, but they manage it more often than not.
They have proven capable of mastering combined arms warfare and gather the resources needed to accomplish the tasks, composite units that manage to cooperate every day.
Their Uber for artillery has a reaction time of a few minutes from detection to effect on the target.
Meanwhile, the Russians never managed their Uber for artillery; it simply was not possible for them to master it (although we have seen some improvement in some videos).
Ukraine also has all the capabilities; we wrote about 11 battalions with reconnaissance and a SOF that appears to be absolutely enormous, while the Russians have concentrated their Spetsnaz as infantry.
The maneuver brigades are largely mechanized, which seems to be the dominant factor, and if one were to guess, tanks are a battalion resource in many units, but they are there.
Amphibious combat is also trained for, and if I may guess, there is capacity for airborne landings as they have received suspiciously many transport helicopters from the West.
This is really Tannenberg meets 2024, and up at the northern front, the VDV and Spetsnaz have been neutralized, so their best units fare just as poorly.
Now comes wild speculation, and I usually have difficulty with those who explained Lysychansk or Avdiivka with a clever plan because that was obviously not the case – shit happens.
Ukraine is clearly concentrating its forces, which you can see by where the battering rams are headed, but at the same time, they are retreating in some places.
As I mentioned yesterday, I see this as deliberate and not unforeseen, because otherwise, they would have acted differently.
Now for wild speculation – there may also be value in “drawing out” the Russians from their prepared dens (defense lines) and creating unfavorable positions for them where they have advanced, but then it is important not to wait too long until they have made those positions favorable through fieldworks and mines.
I think it is indisputable that Ukraine has now shifted to active defense and reconnaissance battles.
I also think we can see that they are concentrating their forces.
But then the question is what comes next, and apparently, the West is still slow with promised materiel according to Zelensky, but F-16s are on the way and persistent rumors say the US is reconsidering geographical restrictions.
Biden managed to stray quite far from the script in his July 4th speech, but Trump probably breaks all records in his description of how the Americans freed themselves from the British “they took over the airports” 🤣
https://x.com/trump_detester/status/1808838497219805353?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
This one is interesting and goes somewhat against the common image one has received; of the 56 who signed the Declaration of Independence, very few survived without dying or becoming impoverished, almost like Tutankhamun’s curse (but it was the British who took revenge).
https://bsky.app/profile/johanno1.bsky.social/post/3kwjh3qti3w22
Interesting thread from the beginning of the war, worth reading but no news for those who have sacrificed themselves working during the two years in the thread maybe.
https://bsky.app/profile/johanno1.bsky.social/post/3kwhvn7rymh23
Labour with its own majority was a serious miscalculation for Putin, and assuming they have not lied, support for UA will continue.
Then there is an election in France very soon?
And November is not far away, and right now I think the Epst@n documents don’t look so good for Trump, but I don’t quite know what has been declassified and verified and what is fabricated, but I assume it is mixed.
Putin has worked enormously hard – even in the US the flag is starting to look somewhat ugly and na@ist, and it is a country that has idolized its flag. The same has happened in the UK as we have in Sweden; waving the flag at the wrong time can be perceived as being SD.
Russian information control.
https://x.com/JayinKyiv/status/1808910412353560599
By the way, it is basically course A1 with the Russians to break down national identity and make people despise the state and their national heritage.
We joked about the 3rd AC and the pensioner army on crutches, but now they are here for real in 2024, the rumors are true that amputees are being sent back 😲
https://x.com/TOGAjano21/status/1808872585657991271
Here you see which areas the colonial power Russia has drawn its soldiers from; Tuva has had a sad war.
https://x.com/jayinkyiv/status/1808804726886006787?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
This was a war the Soviet Union and then Russia sacrificed everything to prepare for since 1945, and in 2.5 years Putin has managed to squander it all through unprecedented incompetence.
What is the West afraid of in terms of collapse?
I think 1989 was positive, so why not have a 2025 with a similar division so that future threats become half as much?
To me, it looks like the snowball is starting to roll faster anyway. Looking at the losses, it is an upward curve since early autumn sometime, and it is not abating, so Russia is being exposed everywhere right now around the clock. Also, in 2024 the West started delivering material, so it really makes a difference.
Then the strategic bombing campaign continues – a powder factory in Tambov was droned, and some refinery or oil depot yesterday, or both. And Novorossiysk got a visit.
Frontline pre-bombardment is absolutely astronomical with numbers on destroyed artillery that are staggering.
And we are all probably just waiting for a huge blast against today’s protected airports and army bases.
It is almost sensational that Ukraine can conduct air raids with JDAMS deep into Russian territory up at the northern front. That should be ground zero for air defense and fighter jets, one would think, but it is not.
If the West can just listen to Dudayev and not fall for Putin’s rope tricks, this is heading in the right direction with quite big steps now.