12:27 – Johan No.1
I find this interesting, Mattias Wåg wrote that Bolin followed the account and shared it but the information was clipped.
In what you write, it does not say anywhere that Bolin FOLLOWS the account, which I would argue would be aggravating.
What I have seen is that Bolin brings up a fake video as an example of influence operations – was that correct?
Otherwise, it ends up with us shooting the messenger (Lauren) and then giving Bolin two kneecaps as well.
12:50 – MatsExtrude
Nice, positive, review of the situation! 👍
Now we got the explanation for why “Vehicles and fuel tanks” have decreased recently, the vehicles have thus been replaced by honest footwork. 🤣
Could it be China that has stopped delivering golf carts and motorcycles?
13:31 – Johan No.1
Yes, soft vehicles now fall within the category of fallen barbarians 👍😀
14:00 – Johan No.1
The 93rd Mechanized has now appeared in Prokovsk.
https://militaryland.net/ukraine/armed-forces/93rd-mechanized-brigade/
No 2000 there, and you can guess why it is at a standstill 😀
14:03 – Johan No.1
The 47th Mechanized is also identifiable and is a huge brigade.
14:32 – Johan No.1
This is actually highly interesting – suddenly SVT does a complete turnaround on a dime and uncritically conveys the message Putin wants to get out, that he now supports Kamala Harris.
A bit like Made in China which was removed from everything made in China when they realized it was a liability.
Putin understands that constantly praising Trump is a liability, so now he gives that liability to Kamala Harris.
And SVT conveys and reinforces that message 👍
19:11 – MatsExtrude
They have CV-90s too!
12:12 – Johan No.1
The lions
https://x.com/ukrainiansquad/status/1830693128371872007?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
The lionesses in combat units
https://x.com/ukrainiansquad/status/1831349810156245389?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
And if the lionesses are not enough, try winning a war against these apex predators
https://bsky.app/profile/johanno1.bsky.social/post/3l3fdkoqnyx2k
And the Russians generally don’t like the apex predators, they are scared to death to say the least.
https://bsky.app/profile/johanno1.bsky.social/post/3l335wcswmm22
We will clarify the following in a couple of posts ahead –
-the situation at the fronts which I made an attempt at yesterday and will continue with for a while.
-Western support and that the Biden fans can take, we are not here to win the US election as some seem to think but to engage in honest debate and support Ukraine.
-Russia and there will be some guessing but we can draw quite a few conclusions as I have discovered.
Now Ukraine has for almost a month conducted violent offensive operations inside Russia and if you scan IntelSlava and the other swamp sites just like I do, you find nothing about large UA losses. If they had been there, Slava would have posted them on an endless loop and some in the thread would have posted it. There are therefore good reasons to assume that Ukraine is not exhausting itself here as some try to claim.
The Kursk offensive was neat – they advanced along major roads and took dominant terrain where they have now presumably gone on the defensive. Why Gerasimov pulled back Akhmat and 2nd Spetznaz the week before is unclear and an interesting subject for speculation but it was done.
At least four (4) RU brigades are today engaged or at risk of engagement in the area “behind” Sejm, in Korenevo and a bit northeast of there.
Then to the east, UA has taken terrain up to dominant terrain sections and is probably going on the defensive right now. To the north and west they are probably still trying to advance.
Then there are tangible reserves to continue taking terrain in Bryansk if desired and link up with the Kursk area and have captured a considerable amount of territory in the country of Russia.
We can thus conclude that this year’s offensive where they bypassed NATO commanders and used their own planning has gone well under the circumstances for almost a month despite the gloomy prophets’ guarantees that humiliating negotiations and defeat were imminent.
The same cannot be said about the Russians’ embarrassing attempts to play war – they go and die in very large numbers despite media and debaters trying their best to scare people with claims that they are winning the war.
The monthly report is about two days late and there we can quickly see that there are record gains this month as well, barbarians second highest ever, special highest and soft vehicles second highest.
MLRS has also skyrocketed but far from peak records and then of course artillery is second highest.
In times of shortage, IFV and tanks remain low.
You see just like me the very professional delaying battle at Pokrovsk and if one calms down a bit and looks soberly at this operation (which the media would need to do) RU has not yet penetrated Pokrovsk. Wild guess is that the battle in the town will be the last battle for a number of RU army corps if it comes there.
Now that the thread was completely right about MechWar 2024 and that the big brushstrokes would be painted, it might also be time to look ahead – what UA can and cannot do.
Certain signals right now that the US is no longer delivering (distinguish between promised and arrived) but I will address that in another post. The UK has sent a letter asking to use Storm Shadow where they are waiting for a response (extremely embarrassing but that is the official line to send letters in 2024 and then wait) and Scholz is holding the line firmly with his Taurus – not a Taurus in Ukraine as long as he gets to decide.
But now in 2024 Ukraine has bridged this with domestic production – yes it would have been nice with more but they have enough to manage right now.
For example, in the absence of ATACMS and many of Biden’s directives, they have built their own tungsten rain which they have dropped over airports with FAB bomb droppers.
https://x.com/colbybadhwar/status/1826664742515036255?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
https://x.com/visegrad24/status/1826671743576277473?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
UA has really hit hard against the airports used by FAB bomb droppers and the number of downed aircraft we had to guess but the number of dropped FAB bombs has gone down significantly – that was one of the sub-goals that needed to be achieved.
Air superiority is not needed as is well known because the drone weapon takes care of that today but one needs to deny Russian air access to the fronts. More air superiority and more F-16s would have been needed but they are held back by “you know who”.
Funny in this context that Denmark is honest about that they could, and wanted to, deliver F-16s at the start of the war in 2022 – the US is not your friend just like the bank even though there are many explanatory models as to why they would be.
https://x.com/nexta_tv/status/1829883953341169675
However, UA has asked for more cash for its domestic arms industry so it seems that bank transfers are not so fast right now either and they have redundancy in their own production which is a bit sad. A few months ago the redundancy was 20 billion USD/year.
https://x.com/front_ukrainian/status/1830679006187868436?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
We can speculate whether Ukraine is being punished for Kursk or not but the important thing is not that but that they do not care, and I think we see that so far.
I am not fully in the loop regarding deliveries but I read pro-Ukrainian accounts that are worried which is sad because now the West should send everything to win, not hold back again.
Firstly, the window for this year’s offensive operations started August 6, 2024, historians will agree on that regardless of attempts at sabotage from “someone” who also does not accept Operation Badanka despite irrefutable evidence and mocks May 4, 2023 as the start of the offensive despite the world’s historians agreeing that I was completely right 😐
It is very clear that Ukraine is holding back a considerable offensive capacity that they can deploy on any front. These are elite units with soldiers who have fought for over two years and well equipped with if not Western weapons then modified Soviet materiel with new weapon stations and protection – tough bites indeed.
If I am to put on Sirsky’s hat for a second (not that I will ever get to try it on…) he has now had time to analyze the outcome of Kursk and RU troop movements. He knows that Kursk will not reasonably be retaken before Christmas.
RU seems to have just under 20 brigades on the way to the Kursk area for the retake and that will be too few. The brigades were on the move August 25-26 so it should not be many weeks before they lose big again up in Kursk in an attempt to make Putin happy.
Further UA incursions across the border at the northern front are highly likely, but the question is what psychological effect it will have on Putin, and then the question is whether they become a priority or not – after all, one must choose where to throw in the bulk of the strategic reserve.
If you look for poorly defended front sections, you will find, just like me, a lot of such down at the southern front, but for that you need boats, so a bit of luck that Ukraine, as if by chance, now has hundreds of vessels suitable for amphibious combat.
There are also openings in northern Luhansk and then RU has absolutely overstretched itself in Prokovsk.
The command has this year’s plan in an ICA bag under Sirsky’s desk and we all have to sit and guess except maybe Dengamle, but we can all draw some conclusions from the information available.
Now the cat is out of the bag since Dengamle himself confirmed it, and we will probably have reason to return to this operation which is geopolitically important and a real multi-stage rocket, but first he must undergo training which right now is the silverfish and he has a couple of courses left before the operation can start. The fact is that entire brigades are currently standing around eating sausages and doing nothing waiting for him to finish swimming school. Yes, Budanov is starting to get a bit irritated.
Has RU shown readiness to capitulate after Kursk – No, not at all I think, but RU is also keeping a lid on things. If there have been sharp probes to the west, nothing has leaked out at least.
So there is reason for the next step in planning and that is further UA offensive operations.
They need, just like up in Kursk, to get full payoff on their combined arms warfare so that it does not drain them of resources. Then maybe one should not run straight into minefields in some crazy-defended area that NATO commanders forced them into in 2023.
The Czech shells seem to be arriving and UA has enough to keep going.
They have received armored vehicles, someone in the thread wrote about that since January, and also that they and half of Europe are running modification programs continuously – e.g. BTR-60 from Bulgaria which has received new weapon stations.
They will continue with the strategic bombing campaign because it HURTS – RU still does not mention it with a single word!
And they have expanded to oil depots for the big fuel shortage that someone wrote about last winter and the electricity infrastructure during operation “turn off the lights” which someone else has also written about earlier.
Yes, the USA and certain countries in the west can stop sending materiel now but UA can handle this, even if there is a Russian rocket rain.
The slow strangulation from the USA was not good for the country and now everyone is gathered under the banners again – there is zero reason to go back to that, the die is cast, sink or swim.
In parallel, UA will push for negotiations and when the time is ripe, RU will be forced to the 1991 borders automatically.
You also see, just like me, that Ukraine now, besides the refineries, actively strikes fuel depots and power supply. If the USA has tried to stop that, Ukraine does not seem to care much, I think it is clear, but we have not heard anything from the USA so nothing really says they are trying to slow it down.
UA has in rounds now most recently shot down +80% of incoming Russian terror rockets or in that range while at the same time they have had very large payoff on their own strategic bombing. I said early 2024 that RU has lost the strategic Russian bombing war and I stand by that.
Yes, if UA retaliates proportionally every time, RU will quite soon stop these terror bombings but so far they do not get that – a Grom 2 in the Kremlin is at the top of Budanov’s list.
2025 – I believe that Ukraine has the advantage in combined arms warfare and broad use of various new capabilities at the unit level and that it will hold.
RU has the FAB bombs but the airfields have been visited several times and the amount of aircraft is decreasing rapidly for RU. And the amount of FAB bombs used has gone down significantly.
UA seems to have a lot of new drone weapons in the pipeline which there will presumably be even more of in 2025. You have all seen “Smaug” (Yes, Dengamle came up with that name) but there are many more models even if Smaug is a particularly effective little critter that is used in large numbers right now. Now some are probably starting to call them “Dracarys”, we will see which name sticks.
https://x.com/noelreports/status/1829909797023453372?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
Russia has received ENORMOUS support from Iran, NK and China –
According to this link 6 million shells from NK, I don’t know if that is true. The USA knows about this and it makes the west’s 155mm shells a drop in the ocean by comparison. It should be 13,000 freight cars, I think I read somewhere.
https://x.com/jurgen_nauditt/status/1829474838420815964?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
China is also innovative in drone weapons and is the threat in 2025 – if they send new capabilities to RU it can quickly become balanced.
I now understand why the Kursk operation could be as successful as it was. RU got no indications from the USA that Ukraine was allowed to attack into the northern oblasts so they rolled over and kept sleeping. Yes, the Russians knew in June what Ukraine was planning and then MoD Lloyd Austin called Zelensky and said stop and everyone thought the problem was solved but Ukraine broke free from the shackles and accelerated. The big question is of course what the west will do going forward and that the IMF has taken the first step to normalize with Russia is disturbing.
https://x.com/mylovanov/status/1831045634134306891?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
The fact that the west still does not send CASH to Ukraine so they can work away the redundancy in the domestic arms industry is directly frightening but I get the impression that Ukraine has the situation under control right now with manufacturing, personnel resources, technical development within the country and can push this forward.
Kursk became a vitamin injection that was needed in the country – after all, half a million soldiers must accept possibly dying for the country and one must make sure they see the light at the end of the tunnel which they do right now.
Ukraine IT brigades have also increased the pace significantly and have started to take out combined heat and power plants and electricity production through hacker attacks – very good.
https://x.com/spoogemanghost/status/1830029859726500124?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
So according to the big campaign plan that at least Erik14 read, Bakhmut was a decoy and this year it is Avdiivka (Pokrovsk), then there was a decoy at the northern front and I also think Belarus could get messy but I don’t remember if it was in the original plan. After that, it is the southern front that goes up in a cloud of fleeing Russians and that is potentially war-deciding.
If the war is not decided with the Azov thrust you can calculate yourself the number of UA brigades freed up at the southern front and that can go northeast up into the soft parts of darkest Donbass behind all existing defense lines.
With Kursk and the 2024 mech offensive, this is in motion and the plan has not changed.
Regarding Belarus, I noted that the volunteer units with Belarusians have been moved to the Dnieper front, which perhaps signals that there is no intention to liberate Belarus in the near future, which is a bit unfortunate.
A significant bargaining chip would be to destabilize Belarus and as many republics as possible in the Russian Federation so that it becomes internally chaotic and Russia turns inward and is forced to end the war in Ukraine.
We must not forget Transnistria in this context either, but there were somewhat mixed messages – the Moldovan government has both signaled willingness and unwillingness to address the problem.
Ending with the heavily pressured Russian logistics who have turned into runners delivering diesel in 10-liter jerrycans – like small hunted firebombs flying over the fields. Quite far from Red Storm there 🤣🤣
https://x.com/trenttelenko/status/1829609306175783043?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w