It was also true that RU is behind on the curve in that area, someone got hold of a RU staff map and it shows RU positions further north than our maps – very good that Ukraine is inside their decision circle and jumping.

Then Sweden has now decided to give Gripen aircraft to Ukraine, they will first get 16 and then purchase more – Ukraine has already said the magic words “no more FAB”.

I say it again – in the previous post and this one my assumption is that the USA is conceding. If they bring their 11 CAGs into the Baltic Sea the situation is completely different.

The two posts should also be read together.

Now came a piece of information which admittedly is some way off before it is in place but when it arrives Europe will have a 60,000-strong rapid reaction force sent to the Baltics “within hours” where the entire decision chain has been reviewed – when it is in place in a year or two it will be game over for Putin’s plans this time.

This further strengthens my assumption from autumn 2025 that Putin has a window and it is now.

So what does Europe have to counter a drone-saturated battlefield in 2026, and what exactly is a drone-saturated battlefield – has Johan No.1 made up that word?

Ukraine has confirmed that instead of RU losses caused by 12% snipers and 75% artillery, losses are now caused by over 80% from drone weapons alone.

Russia loses somewhere around 30,000 verifiable soldiers per month, 0.8X30k = 24,000 Russians who partly have their own drone weapons and anti-drone defense for close protection but also experience trying to hide from drones (personal skill through practical experience).

When they try to attack mechanized and expose themselves it becomes a veritable drone massacre every time. So much so that RU has completely changed its doctrine and tries to swarm with dispersed shooting instead.

Lithuania recently had a simulated exercise to defend against a full Russian invasion – at first it did not go well but when they added a drone weapon in the form of drone swarms in the exercise they won.

This also applies the other way around, right, and right now it is Russia that has the drone swarms and Europe does not have the drone swarms.

In addition, Russia has increased the use of FAB to 250-300 per day (and wants to increase significantly) which proved absolutely devastating for UA units in defense. The USA assisted by delaying precision aircraft to Ukraine so they cannot practically prevent these today. They can also release these at significantly longer distances than 60 km today, up to 100 km has been suggested but take that with a grain of salt.

The drone weapon as it has developed today and can be used is comparable to the Germans’ blitzkrieg doctrine during WW2 – if you haven’t kept up with the development it is a major negative.

Now the blitzkrieg doctrine was paired with a decentralized decision chain and great room for initiative from lower commands so it is wrong to say it was only a technical advantage – I will return to that next week because Ukraine has stolen some pages from that handbook now with its transition to corps.

Russia learned the hard way that their air defense developed throughout the Cold War against hostile missiles and aircraft cannot handle drone swarms – they are still trying to find countermeasures.

Ukraine today has the world’s best air defense and on a good day can shoot down 90% (100% in exceptional cases) of incoming strategic drone threats.

FPV drones I do not know, have not seen any figures but RU uses 10,000 per day.

UA has acute problems with missiles where RU (previously) managed to launch 100 because Trump delayed deliveries of Patriot missiles to Ukraine even though they now seem to have their own systems that work – Zircon should also be able to be jammed with advanced EW systems (28 in total have been forced to crash) and they have a brand new battlefield laser.

Ukraine has also developed interceptor drones which have proven effective but in MENA they quickly saw that giving them a complete system after some training caused chaos – it is an integrated system where the operators must understand the whole, which a quick introduction was not enough for. We covered that yesterday.

Countermeasures are thus definitely increasing but you must have enough, be able to handle the package and then understand the whole chain.

When the Houthis had their firing spree in the Red Sea they attacked over 300 ships in total including several surface combatants – some countries in Europe were forced to leave because the close protection systems on their surface combatants were inadequate.

In the Iran war they have certainly hit several US ships as the US has moved around its naval resources, and Trump is also trying to get Europe to take over the monitoring of Hormuz which he caused to be closed.

Besides that Israel has had problems with its Iron Dome against drone swarms mixed with missiles where quite a few got through.

The drone weapon is thus fully tested in two wars and is a threat to all traditional capabilities including surface combatants for the simple reason that close protection has not yet kept up with the development – it is underway but we do not have it yet.

Not to mention the sea drones that have decimated the Russian Black Sea Fleet – if I were the commander of the Russian Baltic Fleet I would also try to acquire these capabilities after China surely built the production lines for them in Russia sometime since 2023. Anything else would be malpractice.

EU/Europe

The naval capabilities we have in the Baltic Sea largely lack advanced air defense – our corvettes do not have it.

But we have the multi-purpose cannon and it works well against drones, but it is a cannon that can be saturated – a bit of a mixed bag.

I was looking through the new German frigates and they were a bit the same – I had a post in the works about why but it never materialized. You know how it would have gone – we build advanced surface combatants without adequate air defense at a time when close protection air defense is critical otherwise they are just big floating bathtubs – who pushed that in politics.

I seem to recall Finland had a bit the same but they are trying to solve it with land-based protection, Poland and Denmark I do not know.

No other countries will have surface combatants in the Baltic Sea when they are needed if we are reactive – which we have so far shown a very strong willingness to be. A few sunk ships in the channel outside Denmark if you read yesterday’s post.

Our ground forces cannot fight in a drone-saturated combat environment at all. Since sometime in 2025 Ukraine always sends a couple of drone groups and they paralyze the blue team – it became a whole post about that the other day, Aurora26

Now defense Twitter is absolutely damn angry at Ukraine who gave us IG during Aurora but it is true, 28 of 32 vehicles were knocked out and they got through the perimeter defense of an airbase in 20 minutes where they engaged targets without own losses.

The exercise leadership had to pause three times and eventually remove OPFOR for there to be any exercise at all – they showed they were world-leading in warfare, but they had to remove the enemy to be able to fight.

If there is a conflict zone in the Baltics where our brigades face Russian counterparts it will look like this –

RU now has the drone troops branch set up after the Ukrainian model with years of practical experience – about 100,000 strong today and rapidly increasing with the ambition to reach +160,000. It is called Rubicon and gets everything they point at.

https://kyivindependent.com/russias-expanding-drone-forces-passes-100-000-personnel-copies-ukrainian-example-magyar-says

This branch uses around 10,000 FPV drones daily in Ukraine.

About every other day RU can launch 500 Geran drones and the launch ramps are Toyota pickup-type vehicles.

They have a few thousand missiles in stock and if they want, they can launch 100 in one day; they use them sparingly in Ukraine but Ukraine has targeted a couple of missile depots, more on that below.

In addition, RU drops between 250-300 FAB bombs (on a good day) over fixed defenses in Ukraine which has been such a big problem that Ukraine has completely changed its defensive warfare.

Can the FAB bombs be taken down by Geran drones?

UA now has groups on the front line and then an FPV drone cover that handles the defensive fight – the drone capability we do not yet have.

We still need to defend ourselves with personnel since we lack the drone weapon.

UA artillery, IFV, tank, and all other types of vehicles could initially fight according to our doctrine but with constant movements. Today that is no longer possible – they simply have to be kept beyond 30km-50km (not sure if 50km might be UA range and RU a bit shorter) otherwise they get knocked out. Ukraine has now fully learned this and uses artillery less because of it but their drone weapon has replaced it instead. Just as RU has replaced its artillery with FAB and the drone weapon.

Yes, RU artillery is still used but to an extremely lesser extent than at the start of the war – then RU fired 50,000 – 60,000 shells per day, today 5,000-6,000 shells per day.

The drone weapon has longer range so our IFV and artillery cannot get far enough forward to operate – that’s just how it is.

Against us, however, the Russians’ artillery and IFV can operate according to previous doctrine since we do not yet have any drone weapon.

But we have an air force.

Our air force can also drop missiles or JDAMS beyond the RU air defense umbrella – they will not steal that capability from us.

RU has its own air force so there it will still be traditional warfare – we come out winning from such a fight.

We have about 1700 supersonic planes in Europe’s various air forces and RU has 800 – 1300 so it looks promising.

However, the big weakness of our air force is something completely different – only Sweden uses road bases so all aircraft in Europe stand on large airbases.

Missiles and JDAMS are stored in large central depots.

Yes, in case of war there are more airbases but unless we are proactive, all our capability will be neatly lined up on a couple of large airbases per country when it kicks off.

During 2025 so many drones flew over Europe that it should be accepted that RU has logged all targets already.

In 2025 Germany logged 1000 drone overflights at its bases and other high-value targets – one single country in Europe and what they have disclosed.

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-registers-over-1000-suspicious-drone-flights-in-2025/a-75261162

These targets can be reached with larger efforts with Gerans and missiles which are also present on the shadow fleet’s ships around all of Europe – they can reach any target they want in all of Europe.

In addition, Russia and Iran pay for gang murders and criminal clan services to expand the pool of their own operators and recruited spies – if they want, they can carry out direct sabotage, fly FPV drones close to airbases or wait with MANPADS on planes at takeoff.

The Russian electronic warfare also works and during the war several of our GPS-guided weapons have had problems in Ukraine, SAAB’s GLSDB had problems, right?

GPS jamming from Kaliningrad and St Petersburg is in full swing and increasing by the way.

Recently, aircraft and ships have seen on their systems that they are located somewhere else than where they actually are. Feels like something China has provided and since everything we have is GPS-based, it will be interesting to see what our sharp countermeasure is.

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/russia-can-falsify-gps-signals-deep-into-europe-lithuania-says-2026-05-26

When the USA attacked Iran, their specially equipped F-16 for EW performed excellently, whatever they are called now, and then their SEAD – since the USA no longer seems to want to know about Europe, do we have this capability?

Not enough would probably be the answer but we have it, and RU knows exactly where those airframes are.

A bit off topic but then the USA used that “Cuba embassy sonic weapon” in Venezuela? It paralyzed the soldiers who were supposed to protect Maduro according to rumors – it was probably a Russian weapon originally that the USA immediately started developing themselves?

Ukraine has during the war carried out several spectacular drone operations against RU airbases, the best was probably when they knocked out 30% of the Russians’ strategic bombers in one strike.

Besides that, Magyar, who is the world’s best at this, has explained that he could knock out the entire European air force – if you don’t believe me and are getting angry about defeatism maybe you will be calmer now that you have his confirmation?

“I answered the following, that four of my battle crews standing only 10km away from this base can destroy it fully in 15 minutes, it would look like Pearl Harbor during the second World War,”

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/07/16/politics/ukrainian-military-leaders-drones

RU today has missiles in stock. Ukraine usually targets Russian GRAU from time to time but these are the latest figures a year old, they shoot less – China assists – UA targets GRAU. Could not find a good source for this year but maybe around 2000?

https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/russia-s-weapons-stockpile-revealed-how-many-1750496990.html

China has built up the Russian armaments industry including missile production.

https://www.uawire.org/center-for-strategic-and-international-studies-china-helped-russia-triple-iskander-missile-production-skirting-sanctions

The laws of war apply so if Russia targets goals in Europe we can target goals at them – how many missiles do we have?

Not so many unfortunately because we counted on the USA’s Tomahawks, called “the long range gap”.

Taurus, which is an attractive weapon, I think Germany long delayed – the company wanted early in the war to produce “large volumes much cheaper” but they never got any orders.

Since 2025 there have apparently been orders and the production rate is 50-60 per year.

Storm Shadow is manufactured and according to Google production started seriously in summer 2025 – they should be able to reach 600 per year.

This is how it looks – we have a full war in Ukraine and now the Iran war so we are not very far from the truth.

Europe actually has three conflict zones/threats to handle –

1. The Baltic Sea

2. The Baltics

3. indirect long-range capabilities and hybrid threats.

I want to argue, and will return to this at the end, that the only thing we could now manage is to defend the Baltics, but then we must be prepared for heavy losses and difficult decisions.

Our navies are vulnerable and will quite quickly disappear into the archipelagos.

The strategic drone threat – we cannot even retaliate proportionally.

We are extremely vulnerable to hybrid threats inside Europe.

Here I interject my answers to the two questions even though the post went far beyond them, it almost became a completely different post.

1. NATO Article 5

This must be a consensus of all members including the pro-Russian government in Bulgaria, Donald Trump, Turkey, and pro-Russian Fico in Slovakia – you can forget about Article 5 being activated without delay. It might become a decision but absolutely not within the critical week needed to avoid wading across the Daugava.

The countries whose governments can make decisions on certain capabilities directly are Sweden, France, the UK, and a few others.

Finland, Denmark, Germany, Norway, and Poland all need parliamentary decisions, and many have coalition governments.

Countries without governments or with elections this year – Denmark, probably soon the UK, Sweden, Latvia, Czech Republic.

In Sweden, if it is a government decision, 24 ministers from three parties vote – unclear if it is a simple majority and the Prime Minister presumably has the deciding vote.

Since this whole chain is reactive, I find it incredible that we will manage within a reasonable time – when all decisions are made, the question to consider is, are we prepared to retake terrain in the Baltics from a buried Russian behind the Daugava comfortably under its drone umbrella.

That will not happen, so countries need to start acting preventively now, which is the point I have tried to hammer in since autumn 2025 – if you talk about a DEFENSE it must be in place before the violence breaks out.

2. Europe’s violent response

“We don’t need to retake the Baltics, we knock out the Baltic Sea fleet and invade Kaliningrad instead” is a recurring suggestion for a desirable way forward when I worry about the Baltics.

Kaliningrad will have tactical nuclear weapons “that can self-ignite from boot stomps” and some very scared Chinese colonels there this summer – no one will invade Kaliningrad.

Or we do, and Russia then has territorial claims on us for an enclave they have already written off – since it is the world that judges in such matters and surprisingly many stand on Russia’s side, it is not insignificant.

The Russian Baltic Fleet is a good target, Ukraine will probably get to it after the Russian fleet in the Caspian Sea but we should absolutely knock it out.

Russia has already accounted for this so either it leaves for Murmansk or is sacrificed – and if it is sacrificed they probably want to strike first. Since we are reactive by definition, they have the opportunity to do so.

The Baltic Fleet’s task is to block reinforcements by sea to the Baltics and be a step on the escalation ladder – when that is achieved they probably expect to lose it in exchange for getting the Baltics.

Warning

Warning signs, is a new Zapad 25 underway someone asked on johanno1.se because that could suggest that Russia does as we are used to, a huge exercise to under the cover of it bring forward the units they need for an invasion.

Already in autumn 2025 when I reviewed available information, the Baltic Fleet had for two years (now three years) trained more than the normal curve.

Now it looked like this.

https://united24media.com/latest-news/russia-simulates-strikes-on-nato-ships-in-baltic-drill-using-oniks-and-kh-35-missiles-17148

First – Belarus will not join the war, they are flank protection and project a threat against Poland.

Belarus has had 42 military exercises just in May and Lukashenko talks about war (again). Recently they closed off 19 large forest areas at the borders with Ukraine, the Baltics, and Poland.

They have mobilized and trained reserves in shifts and carried out the preparations required for general mobilization.

In addition, they have started building defenses against Ukraine and it was recently confirmed that they have nuclear weapons in Belarus after the larger exercise recently conducted.

The Belarusian armed forces have been trained by old Wagner since 2023 and in Russian drone warfare, both to operate under it and also as their own drone weapon.

In 2022 we laughed heartily at them, today they are probably a factor with just under 100,000, fully mobilized half a million strong.

They have received new Russian equipment.

I guess Lukashenko has a very tightrope to walk here – when too large a portion of the citizens are fingering a Kalashnikov they take over the country. He needs to have a defense against Ukraine and project a threat against Poland as Putin demanded but absolutely not upset the Ukrainians and especially not lose control of his country.

Russia cut off Starlink and Telegram a few months ago so the ground troops in Ukraine became blind – the proposal was unrest in Russia or mobilization, and we hear more and more about preparations for mobilization. 300,000 has been circulating as the number Russia is to mobilize this autumn.

What is happening on the Russian side of the Baltics

In February 2024 Russia began setting up a “Leningrad military district” which included the Baltics and also Finland?

Up near the Finnish border they are building many depots and bases that are currently empty – a good way to keep Finland locked is to station all training of new units they mobilize this autumn up there.

https://bisi.org.uk/reports/near-the-finnish-border-russia-is-quietly-building-its-military

Russia has also built bases and depots in the Pskov area. In previous posts we have discussed how Russia has strived to hide its activity in Pskov, camouflage nets over the train station, artillery units moving in the area but not appearing in Ukraine, and large depot facilities closer to the border with the Baltic states.

From memory, they set up some new Army Corps and two divisions in this new military district.

In the latest weeks, various ships from the Baltic Fleet have begun positioning themselves in the Baltic Sea, it is generally accepted that this is to protect the shadow fleet and not an indication of full war, but they are increasing all the time.

https://www.balkanweb.com/en/Germany-warns-Russia%27s-naval-presence-is-growing-in-the-Baltic-Sea/#gsc.tab=0

During 2025 Russia conducted extensive intelligence gathering on our defense installations in Europe – air bases, central depots, military bases, radar, infrastructure bottlenecks like bridges, railways, and other things that would complicate the movement of units eastward.

In addition, they rehearsed attacks on our electrical infrastructure, for example opening our hydropower plants wide open for several days through IT attacks.

Their shadow fleet is now publicly known to have special forces onboard and they regularly fly drones from the ships over Europe.

Most recently, GUGI reconned the sea cables outside the UK so they have already spied on all our sea cables and power lines – a total of 13 sabotage incidents against cables in the Baltic Sea were there in 2025, right?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cre13qn9z7do

Russia is absolutely preparing for a war against us, that is indisputable – and they are putting very large resources into it.

What then would be the warning sign before an immediate start of war?

Europe’s entire analytical corps are idiots because they unanimously say “we see no buildup”.

For alternative “little green men,” the only warning will be when they stand a couple of miles into the forests in eastern Baltics.

Level between medium and high – we barely get any warning when units from the northern front leave and Ukraine calls us. They go directly to pre-calculated UFA where the staffs have already been on site. The entire command structure in the new military district is well in place in their buried staffs.

Equipment is already today in newly built depots in the Pskov area, so the only thing they need to bring for medium/high level is the vehicles and then roll through a prepared TOLO. During conscription, it took a few hours for a company.

Artillery, air defense, and probably drone capability should already be partly in place.

Possibly also if they start reinforcing Kaliningrad, the Baltic Fleet leaves via Denmark with its protected ships, or if they manage to trick China into sending higher-ranking officers to some “exercise” in Belarus or Kaliningrad.

A very sure sign we have actually already seen is the North Koreans; the entire staff structure for the 11AC is now in place in Kursk Oblast and is dimensioned for 80,000 troops.

North Korea marched in the parade on May 9, and recently another contingent of short-haired young men who were “civilian technicians” arrived. The source is what it is, but the film is correct.

https://www.azernews.az/region/257228.html

When Ukraine starts calling us that NK presence at the northern front is beginning to strengthen significantly – then it is medium/high level that applies because they will take over the guard duty at the northern front so RU can free up their units.

Probably those who profile themselves on the issue like Breuer will until the last moment claim that they see no “buildup for an offensive against the Baltics” only to then forget it and continue giving poor advice for high pay.

If they move air defense gathered around Moscow westward, that would also be a good signal – the move to Moscow has already been made under the pretense that Ukraine is the threat, which it might be, but they have amassed enormous air defense a few hundred kilometers away.

Little green men on the islands in the Baltic Sea are probably also a given signal?

What should we then do?

I have been reasoning about this since Zapad 25 and the only play we have left now is to immediately bury deployable light units in SE Estonia and NE Latvia.

Belarus will not go to war; they are the anchor on the flank preparing defense against Ukraine and are there to project a threat against Poland to lock up their units there.

The same with Finland – they place exercise units up there to lock them in.

The Lithuanian border with Belarus is to be handled by Germany and Poland; they have far-reaching plans for that and Poland can spare capability.

Unfortunately, what the Baltics have not yet done is to completely mine the border – they argued for two years about the thickness of bunker walls, recently left the Ottawa Treaty, and the tank ditches were by early 2025 only 400 km of drainage ditches that could be jumped over. Considering that Latvia’s government just fell, it is easy to understand that Russian subversive activity has focused on this and that they have been politically too weak.

This is how the Soviets cleared minefields during World War II, by the way.

I brought up how we should proceed in the Aurora26 post the other day, please read it if you missed it.

Decisions about defense must be made immediately and what we have in place today is far too little in the wrong geographical area as the Swedish battalion and the Canada-led brigade stand in western Latvia just north of the Daugava.

If we do not do this, Russia can use its escalation ladder to preempt us and then we must try to agree on whether to retake lost terrain in the Baltics or not – as long as we do not do that, we have a worry in Europe that will topple governments and shake the financial markets.

If at the same time we enter a 2008-type financial crisis and Russia – USA – China coordinate measures against us, retaking ground in the Baltics quickly will become secondary. Russia gets the open wound in our side they are very comfortable with.

The USA slams tariffs and refuses to deliver oil, gas, and other things because we *(insert any insult against Trump)*.

Constant sabotage against our LNG-oil infrastructure, pressure on countries to stop exporting to us, and attacks on our electricity production.

All this has been practiced by Russia during 2025, we know that.

Our new friends – Canada, India, Japan, Australia, and everywhere – are beginning to feel that we will not come to their aid, the Evil Troika can pick them off one by one.

China holds back our imports of critical products or natural resources so we only get 97% finished with what we manufacture.

Somewhere around here we are back to the Cold War – a divided Europe that cannot unite and is afraid.

When Churchill realized just three days after becoming prime minister that France was done for, it was the biggest shock of his life according to his memoirs – Europe’s by far strongest defense force was overrun.

Swedish defense Twitter has just had its Churchill moment and is furious, but we should thank Ukraine for shaking us up before Russia does.

We have only one play left – your guess is as good as mine but Sweden has so far dared to go further than most countries in Europe, with JEF help maybe these decisions can be made now within the coming months before it is too late.

Yes, I have indicated that the Russian window would close sometime this fall when we have built enough interceptor drones to neutralize the Russian drone threat, but the snail’s pace we currently see might make that too optimistic?

Aurora 2026 became a drone massacre on the blue team – we are simply not ready five minutes to midnight.

Then we have Razpuzitza at the end of October sometime, which usually dampens the desire for large troop movements.

What is then a likely scenario from RU?

Today there is a somewhat agitated atmosphere so there is no absolute guarantee that little green men will manage to come under a will to make difficult decisions for Europe’s leaders. It could be exactly the opposite and sufficiently attractive for Europe to go directly into the Baltics since “little green men” are probably manageable.

The assumption is made that the USA will leave a walkover – if they do not and are prepared to fully defend and retake the entire Baltics, the equation changes immediately.

Eastern Baltics north of the Daugava and south of Tartu is extremely poorly defended – no fieldworks and no real units in a very large area.

If something happens, it will probably be this –

-RU locks Suwalki with remotely placed mines and drone weapons. Quite soon after the conflict starts, refugee trains move through Lithuania towards Poland, making movements north even more difficult.

-They infiltrate specialists deep into the Baltics for sabotage aimed at delaying mobilization and movements. In Sweden, we expected spetsnaz in the police and our military uniforms standing by the roads to the mobilization depots, murdering us. Blown-up mobilization depots, booby-trapped mobilization depots, blown-up railway tracks and bridges – all to buy time.

-Landing units with anti-ship missiles and air defense on Saaremaa and islands in the Gulf of Finland.

-The Baltic Sea fleet goes to sea to prevent reinforcements arriving by air or boat; they declare a large NOTAM over the entire area.

-Large demonstrations in major cities in the Baltics and “popular uprising” (you know what I mean).

-Geran and missiles over all targets north of the Daugava + blow up all crossings over the river.

-An initial mobile attacking force simply drives westward along 3-5 attack vectors. It takes less than four hours to reach the Baltic coast by car; they can drive through terrain until sometime in October, so key points are passed. This force already exists in the larger area today; there will be no direct warning at all.

-All targets passed are logged and receive drones, missiles, artillery, and FAB (free-fall bombs) on them.

-Units from the northern front regroup and pass through a TOLO on the way to then immediately take up defensive positions north of the Daugava and attack from Tartu towards Tallinn. I imagine this takes about three days from when they start moving from the northern front since Bryansk – Rezekne is a 9-hour drive.

The gaps on the northern front are covered by North Korea’s 11th Army Corps, which is sized for 80,000 troops and has been reinforced in the past six months.

Since there were never any troop movements, Europe received no warning despite Ukraine constantly warning us.

Bridges and railway tracks are blown up in Poland and Lithuania, complicating movements.

Suwalki is locked; when the Poles and Germans have worked their way through with losses, RU is already in dug-in defense along the Daugava under their drone shield.

Belarus never joined the war and is thus still neutral in the gray zone we have unfortunately accepted.

Poland overruns Kaliningrad as revenge. Or maybe they don’t because of the nuclear threat, as there are tactical nuclear weapons in the enclave that could “self-detonate.” I don’t know how they reason behind closed doors.

Poland has recently expressed that they think Ukraine should stop drone attacks on oil installations.

-Putin says that the area north of the Daugava is now Russian but he solemnly promises never to set foot south of it, PEACE IN OUR TIME.

-Russia mobilizes during the autumn.

-Estonia immediately throws in the towel, and since the mobilized RU units are training at the border with Finland in all newly built bases, the Finns cannot spare anything.

Step by step until it works, RU ends the war in Ukraine – if needed, they leave the whole of Ukraine just so the Ukrainian threat disappears. China and the USA will push hard for peace between UA-Russia quite soon. Politically, it becomes impossible for Zelensky and Budanov to wage a Finnish continuation war; they feel Europe can handle the Baltics as we have betrayed them throughout the war.

Since Belarus has prepared for a defense against Ukraine, there is no way into the Baltics for Ukraine anyway.

I have half-started to wonder if the USA will enter Crimea to “secure the vital peninsula since no one manages to hold it” – it is unreasonable until it is no longer so, but it must happen before Ukraine is standing eating sausages on the peninsula, because then it will be too late.

The USA and China say that we in Europe must handle the Baltics as best we can, but since we took Kaliningrad, it is no longer black and white in the eyes of the world.

Russia moves much capability from Ukraine into the Baltics as soon as a ceasefire occurs.

What do you think we in Europe will do – the Baltic Sea fleet is knocked out and Kaliningrad overrun.

Putin now promises the same kind of retaliation as in Ukraine – if you shoot at us, you will get 500 Geran drones + missiles over you every other day in continental Europe.

Or if you want peace – then you get all the LNG and oil you can buy at the five-year discount I just promised.

Russia must do something; exactly what they do we will see, but for me, Europe gambling on something like this is incomprehensible – fortify all terrain north of the Daugava now.

Anyway, those of you who feel a paid subscription on Substack was too expensive – please share the posts instead.

It takes time to write these posts – I have worked on these two for a long time since it was supposed to be a concluding word.

And if you now feel the post is completely unreasonable – this is how the latest sandbox war game for the Baltics went in winter 2026

Inlägget Operation Baltikum (2 of 2), 29 May 2026 dök först upp på Johan No.1.

Last week, Ukraine sent 600 drones and other devices of various sizes towards Russia in response to their attack, which was a “thank you for the ceasefire on May 9.” Zelensky made a promise of proportional retaliation, also called a comeback.

Around Moscow, RU has built several layers of air defense with exactly EVERYTHING they have in their arsenal + what they are trying to develop, a couple of hundred different systems or more protecting a small geographic area.

Moscow’s refinery was hit several times for the first time in the war.

The total number of drone attacks on refineries since the start of the war is now up to 146 by the way; I have a small list I update every time a refinery burns, an Easter list of joy.

I don’t think Russia can handle another year of this – the strategic drone war combined with their own offensive losing steam and Ukraine’s offensive operations increasing sharply also make the situation on the ground in Ukraine more than worrying for the staff, even though there is probably some delay in understanding. No one wants to deliver bad news up the chain, a natural filter.

The conclusion I want to reach – if Russia intends to do as they always have and try to increase the level of violence when the current level does not give the desired result, this needs to be done this year because by 2027 it may be too late. An escalation also needs to come before the mud season rolls in sometime in October, unless one wants to wait until winter, then Europe gets another half year to prepare.

The other leg of this assumption is that Europe has now, albeit late, probably understood that we should learn from Ukraine after seeing how MENA was devastated by Iran and a platoon of Ukrainian anti-drone operators suddenly was more valuable than a ton of gold, revered by a unanimous MENA. Within a couple of years max, we will have the same level as Ukraine on our digital battlefield, telewarfare, drone weapons and anti-drone weapons – I discussed this a bit the other day and why the old zoo of dinosaurs has slowed things down so far. We have had a great discussion with Swedish defense Twitter now after Aurora 2026.

All else equal, over time Belarus will turn to the EU, a people’s revolution Ukraine is working against by the way – guess where the presidential candidate has just been…

Hungary was just lost to RU and Transnistria is not far away.

Kaliningrad will become demilitarized/autonomous – there is a strong movement in the enclave for that.

And when Ukraine is done with RU’s fleet in the Caspian Sea, they will go after the Baltic Sea fleet.

After the recent posts about Operation Baltics, which apparently will become recurring from my side, there have been some discussions in the thread on johanno1.se and especially two comments have been put forward that I now intend to take a whole post to reason about to better support my argument.

First, the calibration – will Ukraine get there first and win its war or will we fortify the today undefended area in the Baltics enough, probably nothing will happen because that threshold is too high for Russia.

Undefended vast forests can get you far without alarms ringing, and if we don’t show our fangs there is always the risk that RU gets a feeling.

I want to introduce one more level – all terrain north of the Daugava. Need to check the post from 2025 but I recall it was included, it has slipped into black and white to become exactly the whole Baltics or little green men.

Daugava is a very attractive natural barrier.

Suwalki is an artificial barrier that is worthless if Kaliningrad falls, and in Lithuania there is no corresponding natural undefended obstacle.

The Lithuanians have their capital near the Belarus border and such places tend to be defended.

So everyone who thinks “a few miles of forest in eastern Baltics, why bother” must not forget that the drive time Daugavpils – Riga is under three hours.

The risk for a conflict zone in the Baltics SHOULD be over when the mud season rolls in PROVIDED we don’t dawdle with preparations.

A Russian DNA seems to be drawn so that at the slightest sign of weakness they just throw themselves over the victim but that they refrain from strength they feel is not a hot air balloon.

1. If Russia in any form attacks the Baltics, NATO will immediately, at the request of one or several Baltic states, activate Article 5 which in the long run will neutralize the threat to the Baltics. Individual states will also be ready to act outside NATO if needed.

2. If Russia in any form attacks the Baltics, NATO/EU/Europe will immediately go over Kaliningrad and neutralize the Baltic Sea fleet – that battle will be devastating for Russia which in the long run neutralizes the threat to the Baltics.

This will be a very long post, perhaps my longest, which will go off in different directions which you have hopefully started to get used to, but try to get through it – it is well supported partly with information but we also have various events since early 2025 to fall back on, things that were incredible until they no longer were – the probability of various reversals has been adjusted upwards.

We have a rather strange discussion right now where the Supreme Commander and MUST warn that Russia will try to occupy islands in the Baltic Sea soon but the Baltics I am quite alone in promoting.

I don’t understand why.

https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/ob-varnar-ryssland-kan-testa-nato-inom-kort

The Baltics are starting to get a bit worried though

https://www.svd.se/a/d4v96J/putin-kan-testa-natos-artikel-5-redan-under-sommaren

The most important thing, if you want peace you must prepare for war, before the war comes. I added the last part myself because it seems necessary if you are to follow defense Twitter’s screams right now when their exercise just became an exercise in humiliation and degradation as they made the mistake of letting the Ukrainians be OPFOR – they probably won’t do that again.

When the US declared war on Iran by not declaring war at all and just bombing the country to pieces, the discussion immediately split into two camps. I myself believe the Iranian regime should be replaced for more peace in the world and that it is far from over yet. For example, it is rumored that the Iranian army has started fighting with the IRGC in some places and we know that Israel/USA have not directly fought any of the higher army commanders, only the IRGC, the mullah regime and Basij.

But there are worrying details in this that possibly point to a hidden agenda – the US/Israel let militias from surrounding countries in and tricked Iran into fighting oil infrastructure in MENA by first starting to bomb it in Iran. We have gone through this and you all read everything.

The other camp is those who feel the US has completely failed, it won’t work because everything is harder, Iran fights back and similar reasoning. One can at least go so far as to say that the US absolutely has not succeeded to date in neutralizing Iran so that they still pose a major threat in the region. At least Israel is starting to get worried but the laws of war apply to them too and now they chose to join forces with Trump who in three months totally wrecked what looked promising – that the rest of MENA saw Israel as a stabilizing force in the region and wanted cooperation.

There is no point in trying to guess if this was Trump’s plan all along with Putin and Xi because it is far too speculative.

The blue team USA (or red team depending on which country you are in) which according to the collective expertise is supposed to have the world’s strongest military attacked a country of 90 million that has indeed engaged in terror and military buildup but has not been involved in high-intensity warfare since the 1980s, and certainly not against a high-tech opponent before. However, one can assume they tried to learn from the Iraq wars?

My guess was that the US engaged in some military deception during the negotiations so that Iran would not deliver a first strike against their naval forces in the area – the fact is they did not, the Iranians themselves have said that the negotiations would have continued on March 6 but the war intervened. If you add an Iranian first strike all else being equal, it would have been preferable for the bad side, with a high probability that they were faked out.

But as soon as Russia – Europe comes up, the conviction is rock solid that we will first have a decision chain that works like a well-oiled bicycle wheel and then through the right decisions and appropriate use of force relatively quickly decimate the Russian threat so we can restore the Baltics their statutory international right to freedom and eternal happiness.

Russia is if not a high-tech opponent at least a technological opponent but above all they have gained intimate practical work experience over four years, China has also tried to bridge their technological blind spots since 2023 and we have seen improvements.

We saw Russia’s digital battlefield go from being unusable at all to working very well from 2024 onwards – their kill-chain is fully operational with all indirect capabilities even though we have guessed that they will have problems in mobile combat, which we hope to see this summer.

I think it was first during the Kursk offensive where an MRAP from UA rolling on a country road barely survived a salvo from artillery – that was the turning point because before that the salvo came at best a few minutes after the vehicles had passed and preferably 200m to the side.

The question we cannot answer yet – is Europe an equal opponent or alternatively better than Russia?

When countries go to war both sides believe they hold the best hand, then it hits and you get a receipt – if you are a bit lucky it is enough to fine-tune.

The most important thing, is Europe mentally ready to go to war with Russia?

Russia is under heavy pressure in Ukraine but they are fighting against the world’s best defense force today – recently various high-ranking US military officials have praised the Ukrainian miracle, for example their Delta which “is better than what we have in the US”.

Hit to target from detection is now so short that it is almost ridiculous.

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2026/05/13/ukraines-battlefield-integration-surpasses-us-militarys-army-secretary-says

Ukraine has a defense force of perhaps +1.2 million and has, as you know since 2022, the world’s best shooting according to Johan No.1 – we have seen it countless times. They have a strong will to defend their potato fields and a very large untapped goose with Russia. The number of dead, wounded, and psychologically incapacitated is staggering but Russia has met its superior man/woman/other gender identity in its brotherly people in Ukraine.

There are two sides to that coin where the other side is the Russian defense force which now has a well-functioning drone weapon, painful practical work experience, a digital battlefield and in addition has begun building a strategic reserve which they equip with newly manufactured materiel. We can assume that this reserve has been trained by veterans from Ukraine.

This offensive strategic reserve has all the traditional branches of weapons to then be topped off with the drone weapon which we partly do not have ourselves but also get absolutely crushed by when it is tested as OPFOR during exercises since 2025 as we have not yet figured out how to defend ourselves against it.

So what is the Baltics?

According to Russia it belongs to them – the explanatory models are of course completely off the wall but what is interesting is what motives the attacking party has.

Russia is also trying just like us to find the most advantageous geographically dominant terrain they preferably want to stand in when this war is finally over – Johan No.1 wants a demilitarized Kaliningrad, a disintegrating Russia into ten new countries and a free Belarus joining the EU. The Belarusians almost managed to gain their freedom but Europe chose to turn away so Russia could send in the FSB and Rosgvardia for some disciplining – the first missed opportunity for us not to end up at war again.

By the way, exciting that Ukraine has met the real “presidential candidate” in exile.

https://ukranews.com/en/news/1153761-belarusian-opposition-leader-sviatlana-tsikhanouskaya-arrives-in-kyiv

Russia knows they cannot get Poland because Germany is on the wrong side of history today according to them.

It is enough to look at the map to understand that the Baltics are a geographical big win for Russia – if they succeed in reincorporating the Baltics into the Russian empire their influence over the Baltic Sea will suddenly be heavenly, they will have a much more pleasant land border against what they perceive as a united Europe on the rise that is starting to become seriously troublesome.

Kaliningrad is vulnerable and the Baltic states have already cut the land route, now that we are starting to board the shadow fleet the step to a full naval blockade of Kaliningrad is not very big – if Russia loses Kaliningrad all else being equal they lose the little dominance they have in the Baltic Sea and they will have to run the Finnish gauntlet again if there is war – this has historically rarely led to great empire victories, mostly burning sinking ships.

This is their reality regardless of what we think about the issue – now it is not us and our reality that will start this war, if it comes.

According to previous posts, we have two developments running in parallel – Ukraine is slowly starting to win its war and Russia is preparing for an escalation in some form against us. Which one comes first we do not know and Ukraine cannot be expected to take more responsibility than they do today, they are pushing at the pace they can handle. We keep our fingers crossed that they get there first but we must prepare for war – anything else is negligence even for the dinosaurs in the defense forces who have had a salary all these years precisely for a scenario like this.

Threat and escalation steps

Since we by definition have chosen to be reactive we will have to run along the entire Russian escalation ladder.

This is one of the absolutely most important parts of Russian warfare where they constantly try to get below the level that forces the opponent to make a decision, they spread disinformation, their allies in the opposing team slow down all attempts to make decisions and then above all the threats – constantly threatening with overwhelming force if the opponent by any chance would think to meet proportionally.

2022 – 2024 this worked excellently in Ukraine, after having worked even better in 2014. Europe consistently did too little too late which prolonged the war by several years – this is a reality we have to relate to but it is also some indication of how we will act under pressure for Russia who make their analyses based on history.

The Germans’ “we don’t even send standing helmets” was downright tragic.

For Russia, this subversive weapon is still functionally operational and has a probability of working that is probably sufficiently attractive.

Now today in 2026, we at johanno1.se were right that Hormuz would be closed in case of conflict, with the difference that they did not sink any ship in the middle of the channel – it is Pearson’s book that turned out to be correct again, which is what I base my entire analysis on. Many have argued in the past year that Hormuz would never be closed, but now here we are with cut oil supplies. It was a bit messy, for a while it was Trump who was supposed to close the strait – that Pearson had not predicted.

The Iran war, some minor conflicts Thailand – Cambodia, India – Pakistan, the Ukraine war in its fourth year, enormous subversive activities and sabotage against Europe with a new axis Russia – China – USA beginning to form after both Trump and now Putin have visited/are visiting Xi in China.

In the post about Xi-Trump a few weeks ago, we assumed that Taiwan would be up, and it didn’t take many days before Trump couldn’t hold back, so we have almost a receipt that China-USA are reasoning in terms of dividing spheres of interest between themselves now.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyp9mk3mrgo

Trump has his full focus directed against us – they are pulling their spearhead away from Europe along with critical (one might guess) staff functions, besides that Trump and Xi only visit the “wrong” countries in Europe – Russia, Belarus, Hungary, Bosnia, Slovakia.

It’s not just the artillery battalion below that won’t come, probably also the Stryker brigade from Germany besides the brigade that was to go to Poland for rotation but was canceled, then staff functions are to be removed – which ones I don’t know.

If you ask me, there will be more that Trump soon urgently needs elsewhere, and I think Trump’s promise of more troops in Poland is evasive – of course, I could be wrong.

After all the above, it becomes a bit easier for me to build a credible escalation ladder;

1. Blocking the Baltic Sea is an early measure, sink 2 ships from the shadow fleet in the middle of the Denmark channel so no ship enters the Baltic Sea that is not already in the Baltic Sea. Russia immediately accuses us of being guilty and points out that Sweden has previously boarded many ships – this is a bold act of war that Russia will consider for a while before responding proportionally.

They also mention in passing that the ships unfortunately transported *(insert any unstable explosive, today’s nitroglycerin)* so it is absolutely impossible to salvage them – whatever you do, don’t touch them, buying time.

Since Ukraine has bombed Russian port installations for export and especially Sweden now boards shadow fleet ships increasingly, they don’t have much to lose. Suitable Russian ships pass this channel daily.

2. Russian media announces that there are tactical nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad which they cannot guarantee won’t accidentally explode if a Polish boot happens to cross that border – media floods with maps showing fallout and blast radius where they cheat all the way to Berlin.

By the way, Belarus now has nuclear weapons.

China announces exercises in Belarus, a company of SOF with some dozen officers from the general staff lands under full military honors – the purpose is to prevent anyone from conducting acts of war against Belarus as that would draw China into the war.

Putin really tried but the only thing he got over to Kaliningrad was a regular rifle platoon of Chinese with two colonels Xi still intended to dismiss – it is widely reported in Russian media networks that China is in Kaliningrad in a peaceful joint exercise for great world peace.

3. Russia floods the media with its nuclear threats as usual and that it is proportional retaliation if Europe conducts acts of war against the Russian motherland – for example in the Baltics which everyone knows is Russian but absolutely across the borders into today’s Russia – then it will explode immediately. Satan 2 will this time not explode in the silo or crash during flight, promises Putin, they will all hit their targets. Exactly how many Putin is vague about because he knows he soon only has one left unless the engineers work weekends and nothing burns down.

4. Information about how many Geran drones Russia could fly over Europe starts appearing in the media and the range is exaggerated so not even Lisbon is safe. Overflights with +20 drones are carried out a couple of times where after the second time we decide to shoot them down with our top fighters, and manage to bring down seven.

Now Russia has proof that we will sacrifice our ground and airborne missiles during large drone operations, and thanks us for the confirmation. They had guessed that because that was how Ukraine acted in the first years where every troop commander had orders to show maximum strength until they realized it was a good way to run out of ammunition.

Or MENA where the Gulf states fired up to 8 Patriots at one drone or missile in the first days.

https://www.missiledefenseadvocacy.org/air-defense-news/eight-missile-for-one-drone-ukrainian-instructors-shocked-by-us-drone-defense-tactics

(During the first major Geran operation in Europe when air defense plotted the routes and saw that our major cities were the targets, there was as expected a highly trigger-happy defensive fire, and then immediate screaming about ammunition shortage).

Russia explains from time to time that indirect attacks from Europe against Russian targets including the Baltic fleet and their motherland in the Baltics will be met with proportional 500 Geran drones/2 days – they cite Ukraine as evidence in the matter.

5. Along with this, Putin pushes for peace in our time together with Trump and Xi where he dearly and honorably promises to de-escalate all the above as soon as Ukraine is made to take a pause – the children have suffered for too long now. Putin also promises to release LNG and oil at half price, he calls it a peace discount for Europe that will last over five years. Since our LNG stocks have started burning and the leadership from Azerbaijan has been subjected to sabotage, Germany is beginning to air that they will have big problems this winter without LNG, especially since it seems to be an El Nino year giving a brutally cold winter in January-February. Bad timing there, even the weather is against us, the German energy minister feels, is this God’s punishment for our attempt at a better world in 1939 that no one liked, he thinks gloomily.

Trump leaks that it is important for his midterm elections, and China that world trade and peace must prevail.

There are several alternatives here in an increasing scale that are adapted to the situation –

-RU withdraws to the old ATO line and declares a ceasefire as a first attempt. If that doesn’t work, they leave all of Ukraine and proclaim Peace in Our Time where the USA and China immediately start negotiations with Ukraine with binding demands that Ukraine lets the weapons rest.

The purpose of point 5 is to remove Ukraine from the equation by giving the citizens enough so that they choose peace, making it politically locked to try to resume hostilities for Zelensky and Budanov.

6. When Estonia and Latvia (which are without government) start calling their allies about infiltration deep into the Baltics, Putin flatly denies and claims that these are local resistance movements, on the same day there are many demonstrations with Russian citizens around the Baltics who are tired of all the oppression, hatred, and threats.

“We want freedom” it says on the placards and Putin threatens military intervention if a hair is bent on their heads.

All films are clipped so social media is flooded with older protesters who are bloodied and hit in the head – the Balts’ attempt to explain that it was not their riot police delivering the blows is drowned in the Russian film storm.

6. In larger ports in Europe, ships sink or misnavigate and block harbor entrances, shipping companies come up with a flood of excuses.

7. After the most valuable soft resources in the Baltic Fleet have left for Murmansk, and a couple of surface combatants have arrived in the Baltic Sea from the Northern Fleet, the fleet leaves the quay and positions itself around the Baltic Sea

(a classic from the Cold War – a smaller submarine surfaces in the current and announces that if the Swedish government does not surrender, a couple of tactical nuclear charges will self-detonate in two hours).

They remain under radio silence with open missile hatches that reach all European capitals, Putin is clear that they are only there to protect the shadow fleet.

8. On Åland, Fårö, the large islands off Estonia and on Russian islands in the Gulf of Finland, activity is reported which the Russians flatly deny. MUST says it is coastal missiles, LV missiles, MANPADS and drone groups that have landed with naval spetsnaz as close protection delivered by the shadow fleet and fishing boats.

Apparently the Russians had hidden lots of weapons at their Åland consulate, and the entire embassy staff was replaced with operators.

The Swedes had played it safe and reinforced Gotland, and the Danes Bornholm, but the other islands were undefended since Åland is demilitarized and the Balts themselves are responsible for their islands.

After a quick analysis, it is concluded that together with the Russian Baltic Fleet, the Baltic Sea is to be considered impassable for anything other than surface combatants for the time being.

9. Ships from the shadow fleet position themselves around all of Europe in international waters with a surface combatant or submarine from the Northern Fleet as company, Ukraine contacts us confirming that these ships probably have Geran warheads onboard.

10. Putin threatens that “all internet traffic and electricity transmission you have under the water surface around all of Europe we can cut whenever we want.” During 2026 the British shadowed several GUGI ships over their cables, and in the Baltic Sea we have already had 13 cable breaks since 2022 so no sensible analyst believes it is an empty threat.

https://www.tv4.se/artikel/6a0m91n4CNddTrpJP3VP8a/sammanstaellning-kabelbrotten-kopplas-till-fyra-fartyg

12. Putin threatens that “your nuclear power plants, hydroelectric plants and electrical infrastructure really look vulnerable, hope you don’t have any accidents this autumn now that it’s going to be a bitterly cold winter.”

13. In several countries in Europe, the opposition demands new elections and demonstrations against incumbent governments reach storm strength.

Left, right and Islamists all simultaneously take to the streets to shout out their core issues.

The gangs go to war with each other, and the criminal clans want more of everything.

I have surely forgotten something but roughly these are the escalation steps before full conflict where in the twilight phase it increases to direct sabotage and actual acts of war but which are still somewhat in a gray zone.

Post two will come on Friday.

Inlägget Operation Baltikum (1 of 2), 28 May 2026 dök först upp på Johan No.1.

Report from the Ukrainian General Staff:

Glory to Ukraine!

The 1554th day of Russia’s full-scale armed aggression against Ukraine has begun.

A total of 296 combat engagements were recorded during the past day.

According to detailed information, the enemy carried out 76 airstrikes yesterday and dropped 239 guided aerial bombs. In addition, the enemy used 7,089 kamikaze drones and conducted 2,568 shellings against settlements and our troops’ positions, including 36 with rocket artillery systems.

In the last 24 hours, the aviation, missile forces, and artillery of Ukraine’s defense forces have struck seven areas where enemy personnel were concentrated, one cannon, and another important enemy target.

In the Northern Slobozhansky and Kursk directions, the attacker conducted two airstrikes yesterday with six KAB bombs, as well as 87 shellings against our troops’ positions and settlements, including two with rocket artillery. Nine enemy assault attempts were recorded.

In the Southern Slobozhansky direction, the enemy attacked 13 times our units’ positions in the areas around Staritsa, Vovchansk, Vilcha, Graniv, Ternova, Lyman, and Kolodiazne.

In the Kupyansk direction, our defenders stopped five enemy attempts to advance towards the settlements of Kupyansk, Kurylivka, Borova, Kolisnykivka, and Novoplatonivka.

In the Lyman direction, the enemy tried 12 times to break through our defense towards Lyman, Drobysheve, Dibrova, and the area around Yampil.

In the Slovyansk direction, the enemy stormed eight times towards the settlements of Rai-Oleksandrivka and Kryva Luka.

In the Kramatorsk direction, the enemy carried out an offensive action in the area around Tykhonivka.

In the Konstantinivka direction, the enemy conducted 26 attacks near Konstantinivka, Ivanopillia, Pleshtchiyivka, Rusyn Yar, and towards the settlements of Mykolaipillia, Vilne, and Kutcheriv Yar.

In the Pokrovsk direction, our defenders stopped 53 assault attempts from the attacker in the areas around the settlements of Nikanorivka, Kotlyne, Horichove, Novooleksandrivka, Rodynske, Pokrovsk, Hryshyne, and Udatsne, as well as towards the settlements of Shevchenko, Bilytske, Serhiyivka, and Novopavlivka.

In the Oleksandrivka direction, the enemy attacked once, in the area around the settlement of Novohatske.

In the Hulyaipole direction, the occupiers carried out 35 attacks in the areas around the settlements of Dobropillia, Zlahoda, Hulyaipole, Solodke, Pryluky, Zaliznytne, and Staroukrainka, as well as towards Nove Zaporizhzhia, Kvitkove, and Charyvne.

In the Orikhiv direction, our defenders stopped three enemy attempts to advance towards Shcherbaky, Stepnohirsk, and Bilohirya.

In the Prydniprovsk direction, the enemy attacked twice towards Bilohrydyi Island.

In the Volyn and Polissya directions, no signs of the enemy forming offensive groups have been detected.

Ukraine’s defenders continue the systematic destruction of the enemy and effectively resist on all front sections.

In total, the Russian invaders’ losses over the past day amounted to 1,000 personnel. In addition, one tank, three armored fighting vehicles, 39 artillery systems, one rocket artillery system, ten ground-based missile complexes, 1,307 unmanned aerial vehicles, 271 vehicles, and three units of special equipment were destroyed or damaged.

Join the defense forces! Together we will win!

Glory to Ukraine!

SLAVA UKRAINI

Inlägget Russian losses dök först upp på Johan No.1.

Russian losses

• 1010 KWIA
• 1 Tank
• 7 AFVs
• 64 Artillery systems
• 2 MLRS
• 1 Air defense system
• 1790 UAVs
• 10 UGVs
• 374 Vehicles and Fuel tanks
• 3 Special equipment

General Staff report

• 267 combat clashes
• 79 air strikes
• 254 KAB/CAB
• 8,684 kamikaze drones
• 2,848 shells (54 from MLRS)

SLAVA UKRAINI

Inlägget Ukraine used Storm Shadow – Russian losses dök först upp på Johan No.1.

Last Friday I wrote the war’s most positive post about Ukraine’s spring offensive, felt good. More good news is coming and according to earlier – areas that are tough can quickly turn when the strategic offensive reserve regroups, so we don’t try to hide that, just that it’s not critical.

Now it’s Aurora and the Baltics again over two posts that are like a tragic Greek tragedy but further down in the post I present the solution to everything so we win the war – the defense forces can steal my battle plan as long as I get royalties in euros.

Here you have a Ukrainian “storm brigade” doing the heavy lifting, well described around the entire support function behind the spearhead where the drone weapon is critical – the drone and anti-drone weapons we don’t have (yet). This is where we must reach to be able to conduct mobile combat against an enemy who themselves have it today in 2026. Until we have it, Putin also understands that he holds an advantage which, just like throughout the whole war, always has an expiration date which he assumes his opponents are frantically striving towards. Throughout the war both RU and Ukraine have tried to take advantage when they manage to build themselves an attractive edge before it turns – so it’s not made up at all.

At the beginning of the war, Ukraine ran some Polish cavalry attacks (you get the analogy), courage and duty above all. They stopped that quickly, today they are street-smart survivors who take the fight another day if they meet resistance – no method is too cowardly to kill a Russian bastard with.

Small twenty-year-old computer nerds blow away professional soldiers who have a black belt in cohabitation and can shoot a hummingbird at two kilometers with two hip shots. The Ukrainian snipers are unemployed and eating sausage in the rear.

The Russians absolutely hate the Magyars’ drone units who have introduced a point system a bit like the Swedish police with their tickets but for real where a dead Russian gives one point, not writing up a traffic violation as seven different crimes. – business management in war where a dead Russian becomes a tick and not lots of crimes.

The Swedish defense is significantly better than many defense forces around Europe so Aurora26 gave us an indication of how much Europe has learned, Finland is a bit further ahead and has probably quietly tried a bit more hands-on to learn from Ukraine but they keep half quiet.

For several years I have advocated that we should partly support voluntary recruitment, advertising campaigns, leave of absence, pay that we cover and also pension but we did zero – but also learn from those who have learned themselves. In Sweden, they didn’t like returning volunteers who fought in Azov and the other volunteer units, instead of learning from them they distanced themselves because they could be Nazis – better safe than sorry. Many of the returnees are disappointed but rarely are you king in your own country.

Has anyone of you heard of Yohio?

A Swede who has hit like the Beatles but in Japan roughly, completely unknown in Sweden – at least he has that in common with the returnees even if they dress a bit differently.

Aurora 2026 gave us a lot of wounded pride and humiliated elan to a point where the only answer to attempts at reasoning and criticism becomes “go to hell amateur bastard”. I got tired pretty quickly of trying to discuss with them because “you don’t know me” and “a couple of YouTube videos are not real you id1ot”. Then they themselves in the next breath criticize the frigates for example – no clear straight line there at all as far as I could find.

Their tail of other defense employees immediately pats backs and starts suggesting that criticism is doing Putin’s bidding – the whole old scratched record, “at least you’re entertaining” they probably don’t say when the drone swarms come but now it’s apparently a praised final retort.

These are the ones who have a paid workplace (and tweet like crazy during work hours) to in times of war defend us and our friends but they have consistently refused to embrace changed warfare from the Ukraine war.

I belong to those who have been glued to the computer since that fatal morning in February 2022 and seen the war develop up to today, all of Ukraine’s mistakes, how they have improved the constant whack-a-mole where they try to get the bars balanced. We first sat on Cornucopia and today johanno1.se where interested parties debate everything – we reason about what is to come and what doesn’t work where we have often guessed right.

Ukraine has been extremely adaptive and constantly tests new things, they paid for their mistakes in blood and they own their own successes – they have generously for several years offered that they want to teach us what works.

Why we haven’t embedded our own specialists in rotation since sometime in 2023 is beyond my understanding, Finland has been a bit better at that but it’s low hundreds.

But now the final payment day for the invoice came and the knee-jerk reaction to a large exercise in humiliation was that everyone else is wrong – now we must show strength and stick together because anything else is doing Putin’s bidding. Learning fast as hell suddenly became secondary and one should probably not underestimate what backward-looking wounded pride can result in.

It took Ukraine several years to root out this nuisance from their defense forces where power struggles and old truths cost lives. They got through it in the end and today competent personnel who run the world’s best defense force forward at all levels are in place.

NATO doctrine is obsolete in 2026 if you don’t have your own drone weapon and knowledge to operate in a drone-saturated battlefield 2026 together with telewarfare and anti-drone weapons – it’s not harder than that if you face an opponent who masters the drone weapon.

There are many examples in history but 1939 and 1940 are two in relatively recent times that should give chills.

I never understood Alexander’s Macedonians, they had long spears, a small shield and no short sword as equipment in their “phalanx” even if they had flank protection where the soldiers had swords – it should have been easy to punch a hole with archers or throwing spears and then when the formation was broken it stands there defenseless but apparently that didn’t happen because he made it all the way to India after the Persians threw in the towel.

Here is a NATO film on training exercises against drones – we who have sat for four years and seen the drone weapon emerge, when does it look like this?

https://www.nato.int/en/multimedia/multimedia/videos/2026/04/28/nato-troops-take-part-in-counter-drone-training-in-latvia

You have three FPV drones buzzing around you in circles precisely so you don’t get that second you need when the drone hovers in the air. When you’re completely spun around they put the combat part into you – they are hunters and just as you try to land a hit they work for their kill.

The most likely scenario is that panicked shooting starts firing in all directions and eventually does the job for the drones. Better not to conduct a realistic live-fire exercise because then there might be too many accidental shots.

This is what it looks like right now with the FPV drones, they hunt in groups.

(I don’t think the video is fake AI but you can never be sure, however it looks roughly like that so if so it can be considered representative).

We should not head in the direction of China at all and all the videos I find are propaganda videos but already in 2023 they had “Drone Swarm -2” vehicles that look like a small MLRS and fire 48 loitering drones in a salvo and they surely share that technology with the Russians. The drones are moving fast in that direction, saturating targets with large numbers of drones so you cannot manage to combat them all.

So there will not be a drone standing completely still that one second you need to have time to shoot.

Or the commercials for Aurora 26, all I see are large targets moving clumsily, no drone cages, no camouflage and so on.

They got really angry when I commented that our CV90 with GRK can only shoot straight under the Russian drone umbrella because they have too short a range – coffins. Not in the film which is more a comprehensive approach with lots of unprotected training moments, no lookout, no drone cages and so on.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/7aVTcfC-IMs?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

Since we mastered mechanized combat and war pre-2022, the only thing we need to practice is combat in 2026 and integrate it into existing doctrine but apparently we are not doing that. We have a drone center that experiments a bit comfortably so far but nothing is widespread in the units, by the way they were the only ones who smiled broadly after the exercise where they were the B-force.

Yes, over the past year we have started inviting Ukrainian drone groups to demonstrate and then be OPFOR but when they crush us we restart the exercise and remove the drone element because otherwise it won’t be much of an exercise.

This is how badly it went – straight from UA mouth and we trust them more than a humiliated defense force that has taken a defensive position on social media instead of in the Baltics.

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/76224

The Supreme Commander and the Minister of Defense say the right things but the entire organization must take it seriously for anything to happen – we should already today have demonstrated drone and anti-drone capability integrated into our maneuver units at Aurora 26 because after all, we are the ones trying to show strength against Russia, right?

Now the Russian bastards are sitting and studying YouTube deeply and come to the same conclusion – oh, they haven’t managed to learn yet.

We also seem to prioritize Gotland in case of war besides the commitment in Finnish Lapland which is needed – for my part, Aurora26 should have taken place in the eastern Baltics and then everyone should have stayed until late autumn when the mud season begins.

We can handle Gotland with the submarines, corvettes hidden in the archipelago, coastal rangers with anti-ship missiles, coastal missile batteries, the Home Guard and maybe one more battalion max. You can’t cross the Baltic Sea with a drone weapon without having vulnerable platforms in the Baltic Sea – that’s where our traditional capabilities still come fully into their own.

Everything that crosses the territorial waters boundary at sea or in the air is shot down, run a Fälldin – here we have enough traditional capability and Russia can never deploy its comprehensive drone umbrella that far, old-style is good enough for that island.

Even easier with Bornholm, Åland is presumably handled by Finland with the Nyland Brigade one would assume? Even if the consulate probably now only consists of operators for something, they should at least have the big weapons cache in the basement.

This is how the developments have gone –

2014 – we do absolutely nothing and by then Russia already had their Orlan drones integrated into artillery which were probably fully developed in 2010?

2022 – 2024 – the volunteers who went to Ukraine are not appreciated in the Armed Forces when they return, knowledge is not absorbed because Azov are Nazis, that is known – maybe they are not even suitable for our defense so HR is probably somewhat diabolical with them.

2022 – 2025 – we train Ukraine until they stop training with us because we can’t teach them anything, we are not interested in Zelensky’s constant proposals that Ukraine should train us. We also do not seem to take in the spring offensive 2023 at all which was our doing.

Second half of 2025 – today – we now have UA drone groups at exercises that crush us, the Armed Forces don’t like that and have now gone on the defensive.

Different countries have set up some drone center and train with their special forces to understand what this new thing is – nothing is widespread in our armed forces and certainly not the entire branch which consists of many different parts working together.

Meanwhile, the arms industry lobbies for upgrades and they want to sell their ridiculously expensive established platforms. Going bankrupt from a small startup drone company in the basement is their biggest fear so most likely they have for a couple of years fought this as much as they could.

Rheinmetall’s CEO spoke condescendingly about UA drone weapons as recently as this year, “housewives playing with Lego” – so that is the highest level in what is our flagship in the European arms industry, it can’t get much worse than that, can it?

https://www.reuters.com/world/ukraine-hits-back-against-rheinmetall-ceos-housewives-drones-comments-2026-03-30

Now we are going to buy frigates which is absolutely needed but before we allocate budget for them we must have – digital battlefield, electronic warfare, drone weapons, anti-drone weapons.

Now in 2026 the Moderates of all parties have proposed a drone defense – yes, they include interceptor drones as one of the options but it’s a bit too late and it also implies that we have nothing today when Russia can send off 500 Geran drones every other day.

Yes, we have started the journey towards warfare 2026 but are completely outpaced in production by China, and in capability by Russia.

If now, against all odds, the worst possible happens this year, what should we do – market Johan No.1 defeatism in his old age because he has finally found the Russian money tap?

We know from Ukraine that mechanized combat today UA can only use when they have drone superiority through anti-drone weapons, EW and their own drone units on site. Then calm can settle and one fights traditionally.

Otherwise it’s dispersed shooting over a large area in dugouts under own drone umbrella that applies, all vehicles are at 30km-50km distance because Russian FAB absolutely rains down 250-300 together with 9000 FPV drones PER DAY.

Since we don’t have our own drone weapons, unfortunately we cannot be as dispersed as Ukraine but we can do what works, follow along because here comes a defense plan that WORKS.

Bornholm or Gotland are not threatened but the eastern Baltics are.

Belarus will not participate in the war; they are a guarantee that UA or Poland won’t get any ideas, so the status quo is important there – but Putin is preparing them for DEFENSE in case things go badly. In the case of Belarus, if you want peace, you prepare for war, Putin has probably thought.

Ukraine is preparing as always for the worst and does not rule out an offensive from Belarus against Lviv, but they say what Lukashenko surely knows – a quick suicide, Senhor.

https://kyivindependent.com/zelensky-warns-consequences-belarus

From the Belarus border up to roughly Tartu, the Baltics have no defense; the Estonians defend the area around Tallinn and eastward, the Latvians south of the Daugava.

Unfortunately, the Baltics have been arguing for four years about the thickness of bunker walls and, to my knowledge, have only built 400 km of ditches that look like drainage ditches you can jump over – maybe it’s a bit better now, but the border should already be re-mined Surovikin-style and all fieldwork completed.

Clement Molin shares the same opinion; he is sitting with his satellite photos looking for fieldworks, he has it under control.

I believe we can assume there is very little fieldwork in the said area, unfortunately.

South of the Belarus border, we enter the area the Germans and Poles intended to defend, and I find it hard to believe Poland will sit on its hands again – their defense forces are formidable. But that is the area south of the Daugava, so a small part of Latvia and then Lithuania. Try to cross the Daugava in the middle of a drone cloud, by the way.

The Canadian-led brigade that just grouped in the field in eastern Ukraine is probably also there?

How do we win the war IF it comes?

We immediately send everything we can to the Baltics together with Denmark, Finland, Norway, France, UK, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, and Italy – I think these are the ones who could consider participating, much or little.

At the border or 1-2 km in, we draw suitable map lines along dominant terrain, wetlands, waterways, forest edges with fields in front, or just forest.

The units get a healthy working summer together with every construction company in the countries in question and build defenses according to the UA model but a bit upgraded Johan No.1 style –

For a platoon, you have 4-5 camouflaged earth “bunkers” with logs for roofs – then you cover the trenches and communication trenches with fabric or dense camouflage netting.

All openings must have a heavy fabric; then FPV drones cannot fly in but explode at the opening.

2-3 alternative firing positions, and the platoon is never more than one group per trench and constantly moves between the different rear spaces and different firing positions – this makes it impossible for RU to see where personnel are and also reduces losses from FAB hits.

The mining will be close-protection mining since I assume we do not yet have enough mines for deep minefields along the entire border – completely incomprehensible since it has proven to be the only thing that really worked well throughout the war and RU is bad at mine clearance.

Unfortunately, we still need full staffing since we do not have our own drone umbrella to fall back on; we are today in the situation Ukraine was in 2024 and into 2025 where FAB decimated them badly. Russia is so keen on FAB that they are trying to increase their use significantly and have already today managed to drop them from longer distances than before +60 km.

We build a second line a few kilometers further back; the Baltics’ mobilizable reserve will build and man it with infantry after their 24-hour mobilization.

We prepare for ambushes at a myriad of locations along all attack routes westward for an active delaying battle if pushed out of the fortified line. I tried that as a scrap force from armored infantry in the military service a few times when you got a platoon of those left over. Ambush and then straight away to hidden soft vehicles and circle back to the next point; you could keep that up for days, and if well prepared, the attacking force gets stuck in the mines long enough for you to slip away. For the attacking force, it becomes just a thick wall of mines and sizzling belly shots that never end – very frustrating and time-consuming.

When the international mosaic then retreats through the Baltics’ second line, those not assigned to ambushes retreat to strongpoints further in that must be defended, bridges, cities, major road junctions, and there they go into fixed defense – hopefully, the second line holds long enough for them to get organized.

Somewhere there, Europe should have gotten organized, and now there stands a bunch of tired Russians 30-40 km inside the Baltics banging their heads against the wall. Since they have been offensive all along, they have not dug in yet, which gives us our opportunity for a counteroffensive so we can get the war mobile – that’s what they did in Ukraine, so a reasonable guess.

It worked in 1939 and in Ukraine, so it works today for us as well.

No indirect capabilities or depots within 30-50 km but more long-range platforms in depth like HIMARS and a couple of drone groups we begged from Ukraine.

Our reconnaissance, SOF, and rangers must have dense mobile patrol activity in front of the first defense line, hopefully catching infiltration attempts by RU special forces.

Regular infantry will always be vulnerable to infiltrating SOF; they are simply not hunters and warriors.

The mechanized and indirect capabilities we have in the rear must constantly regroup, and you use barns, depots, grocery store magazines, and so on according to the Swedish model we trained on in the military service in the 90s – it works well.

It works well in depth but does not go under the Russian FPV umbrella because there are too many drones, so you simply cannot regroup.

We have to go back to basics – dug-in infantry in defense with Javelins and MANPADS.

Sufficient for defense but not for offense, so we place them preventively where there is the greatest risk that RU will try to grab a piece of ground in our vicinity to mess with us.

If we do this, we have bought the time we need to get organized and introduced a significantly high threshold for RU – it might even act as a deterrent with some luck.

If we only place infantry in the east and have all vehicles beyond 50 km, not even the Russians can claim that we are preparing to invade them – then we drive back and forth between the logistics and the front with golf carts, which are not an offensive resource either.

If we do not do this now and try to teach the Russian bastards a lesson with traditional warfare when they stand 40 km inside the Baltics while we are reactive, we will get a very costly experience. In the worst case, it leads to us giving up on the Baltics when each country’s Chief of Defense announces that to retake the area, losses will be measured in tens of thousands, “just give the word and we will go, the first attempt was annihilated in a cloud of drones but shame on those who give up” – a difficult decision for any career politician to make.

Doing the right thing now will be today’s slogan – the Canadian-led brigade showed the way, it’s time for everyone to follow them and dig in in eastern Baltics because defense must be in the right place to be able to defend, the frog-eaters learned that, Lex Maginot Line.

What is really the difference – a Canadian brigade moves to the terrain they will fight in if war breaks out vs. us sending more?

We will never have a higher risk than this for the Baltics, in a few years the border will be mined 10 km deep with bunker systems, we have acquired a drone weapon, our own capabilities to fight at depth (enough of them) and an anti-drone weapon.

If we can deter RU from trying – good.

My view of RU is that the only thing that deters them is realistic promises of violence, we have not yet projected that in a credible way – Aurora26 projected the opposite but it seems the defense forces have not understood that yet.

I continue my persistent campaign for paid subscription or alternatively that you share in your channels so it spreads, the posts take time to put together now that one has to try to anchor them in reality and be realistic.

Not everyone is enthusiastically positive but either you try to keep up and counter or you do as we did last time it happened, a warm summer in 1940.

Inlägget Aurora26 – very hurt pride, 25 May 2026 dök först upp på Johan No.1.

Russian losses

High Russian losses mainly in personnel, artillery, soft vehicles and special equipment.

• 1110 KWIA
• 1 Tank
• 4 AFVs
• 61 Artillery systems
• 1 MLRS
• 2 Air defense systems
• 1843 UAVs
• 7 UGVs
• 292 Vehicles & fuel tanks
• 4 Special equipment

Russian activities

High number of clashes, many KAB and suicide drones

• 248 combat clashes *)
• 82 air strikes
• 255 KAB/CAB
• 9,203 kamikaze drones
• 2,886 shells (48 from MLRS)

*) Probably also includes Ukrainian attacks

Update 08:48:
Unfortunately, the numbers of dead and injured are rising. According to Kyiv Post, there are now 2 dead and 56 injured, and the figures are likely to continue to be adjusted throughout the day.

Inlägget Extensive Russian terror attacks during the night – Continued high Russian losses dök först upp på Johan No.1.

Ukraine has liberated 590 square kilometers so far this year and this will force Russia to negotiations according to Zelenskyy. Read more here.

Russian losses

The latest report shows that Russian losses in Ukraine continue to remain at a stable level but around a thousand dead and wounded soldiers, ten armored vehicles and a large number of artillery and vehicles for logistics among others. Four air defense systems and five special equipments are also nice to see.

• 950 KWIA
• 5 Tanks
• 5 AFVs
• 68 Artillery systems
• 1 MLRS
• 4 Air defense systems
• 1819 UAVs
• 4 UGVs
• 210 Vehicles & fuel tanks
• 5 Special equipments

Ukrainian Army General Staff reports

Unfortunately far too many suicide drones and KAB. Quite a high number of battles, we hope that 205 will come with a report showing that the unidentified attacks are in the majority.

• 216 combat clashes
• 83 aviation strikes
• 264 KAB/CAB
• 9,753 kamikaze drones
• 3,195 shells (34 from MLRS)

SLAVA UKRAINI

If you appreciate seeing Ukraine beat Russia, make sure to donate to speed up the process, here are some suggestions on how you can support Ukraine!
(If you happen to have some spare change left over, it is also fine to donate to keep this site alive).

Inlägget Russian oil terminal on fire after Ukrainian drone attacks – Russian losses etc. dök först upp på Johan No.1.

What do you think of it, could it catch on and become a movie quote so one can get royalties?

For a couple of months, we have been posting about Stepnohirsk and the history being made there right now.

It’s probably simpler than we think – when the division of corps was finalized, the corps commanders got fairly free rein and above all Sirsky could no longer micromanage at the platoon level.

That’s why there are offensives everywhere at the same time.

It also seems they are using their strategic offensive reserve, GUR, Rangers, and other wild capabilities to untie knots where needed; at Stepnohirsk it was GUR units clearing the city.

How does he know it has started, and why is Johan No.1 writing in English on this special day when he is in the Caribbean, shouldn’t it be Spanish or Creole?

We had a long discussion on johanno1.se which has been up before – in UA reporting, unlocalized battles were increasing so much that in total they surpassed the Russian ones at some point.

Some didn’t quite dare to believe it was a UA offensive, so I had to ask Sirsky to clarify to reach a conclusion.

https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/4125167-ukrainian-offensive-actions-surpass-russian-attacks-for-first-time-syrskyi-says.html

At the same time as 205 could post a ratio of attacks favoring UA over 1, Sirsky confirmed that their attacks were more than the Russians’ – case closed and on to the next question.

Is this a Ukrainian spring offensive or not, media writes nothing about major offensives or Ukrainian offensives – is Johan No.1 wildly fantasizing as usual?

If we have the same yardstick as we had with the Russians, this is what the number of Russian attacks looked like when the media talked about a Russian offensive.

Since UA attacks have been up to 133, the answer is – yep, the Ukrainian spring offensive has started.

You no longer hear or read anything because UA has kept completely silent. They are running a full clam right now; they were this secret recently in some operation on the southern front. They have learned the hard way to keep quiet since we in Europe and the USA leaked everything we got to Putin.

https://kyivindependent.com/inside-a-mission-to-liberate-russian-occupied-territory-in-ukraines-south

It is thus time to declare that this year’s offensive operations from the blue team have started and that the start was somewhere between May 8 – May 12, there was a ceasefire in the middle which Trump forced them into so Putin could have a quiet May 9 celebration as is proper. Historians will use the dates again this year just like in 2023.

But it’s better than 2023 when I saw a tweet from Defmon about Custer’s last stand after a whole night on cheap whisky and quickly declared the Ukrainian offensive start to be May 3-4. I’ve had to defend myself since then against a sea of lies even though the offensive did start around then, so saved by the bell.

This year it is supported by solid data and Defmon has stopped posting, statistics don’t lie and can’t be misunderstood if one happened to find a forgotten bottle of whisky.

By the way, I have started a year without alcohol which is going well so far, the step before that was to only buy a few beers because if I had more I drank more but now we are upping the stakes to just mineral water and it has worked surprisingly well as long as I have a snus to suck on.

Stepnohirsk and the Ukrainian miracle that RU probably hasn’t understood yet was last (again) in the post about the Azov push?

RU has thus deployed two entire VDV divisions in the area and is losing the town of Stepnohirsk. But it doesn’t end there, they are pressing directly south.

Here you have a slightly better analysis than mine

Now you naturally read the previous post but RU VDV are the ones who are supposed to be task forces during RU defensive warfare but have already taken hits during RU offensive operations.

This is what it looks like according to Mohlin, Orihiv is the anchor eastward that holds.

And Project Owl over RU units, the whole gang at the top has thus retreated from Prymorske 10 km south and now lost Stepnohirsk. That was after they fought their way towards Prymorske – high probability that none of the regiments are in good shape including reconnaissance and Spetsnaz.

I have been wondering for quite a while why.

Why choose the same place where you bled out in 2023 because it was the best fortified area on all fronts.

RU has not fortified well when they are on their own offensive but I think I have figured out the logic behind this seemingly illogical action.

In defensive warfare, VDV hides deep and is a task force that makes life miserable for everyone, now UA got a bit lucky that they went first so they simply chose to attack where VDV was to decimate them – it’s probably that simple.

RU has different levels of units and VDV has long stood as task forces or been deployed where success is wanted, there are also a couple of TR and MRR that are okay besides Spetsnaz, reconnaissance, and special units like FSB, GRU, or some prioritized Rosgvardia.

But to get at two VDV divisions with some reconnaissance and Spetsnaz is big game.

To finally take Pokrovsk, they used up the 76th GAAD, 7,000 strong, and now these two VDV divisions are seriously on the decline.

Behind the southern front, there is not much more to take and UA has fire control over all access routes so further reserves cannot be brought in unless Putin manages to get a new ceasefire.

You can be sure that Krasnov will try already this summer.

2022 – 2023 we had constant discussions about RU losses and whether what was stated was KWIA.

It turned out to be true after a couple of years even though I was of the opinion that it was only killed in action – which is partly true because quite a lot does not get into this verifiable figure.

Winter 2023, for example, 30% of the patients in hospitals there were for frostbite injuries and how big losses drone warfare at depth causes cannot be determined. When Ukraine blows up a large GRAU arsenal, it’s reasonably hundreds dead – the war’s most dangerous job, Russian depot worker.

Glad we didn’t have to leave offensive statistics open for discussion – 205 has very nicely captured this with data and we could see the breaking point even though UA officials keep quiet.

Is it all GUR and an excitable corps commander?

No, Ukraine today has complete information superiority – they see every Russian and Russian commanders have delayed information transfer so they are always second to the ball.

Summer 1940 in France, the chief of defense sat in his castle waiting for couriers so his staff heard about setbacks on the BBC before they had arrived by bicycle to the staff – he was fired for that, you couldn’t operate like that when the new black was Blitzkrieg.

His replacement was some ancient general who was in Syria and was flown home in a hurry. He had to take over immediately and since he was not updated on the situation, he stopped his predecessor’s order for a violent counteroffensive that had just started because he needed time to familiarize himself with the situation.

When the ancient general after a few days gave the order for his own massive counteroffensive, exactly the same battle plan as his predecessor’s which he had stopped by the way, the war was already over as the Germans were in Paris.

The French had more soldiers, more and better tanks, more and better aircraft, a Maginot Line, a British expeditionary force, the Belgian defense forces but above all their elan – the French were generally regarded as a formidable opponent.

They were simply outmaneuvered except for Charles de Gaulle and his armored division who fought where it was most needed.

Information is king and Ukraine comfortably has it in their back pocket.

Their digital battlefield, apparently called Delta but formerly “Uber for artillery,” is so good that various senior officers from the USA have in turn blissfully exclaimed that it is better than their own – having a kill-chain you can hit when needed makes you a winner. Now Russia has it too thanks to China solving the Gordian knot for them but it is not as good and Ukraine suppresses their indirect capabilities and information platforms in a constant whack-a-mole.

They fight with traditional mechanized forces because they have their own anti-drone umbrella, EW, and their own drone weapon; it is a highly mobile fight once they get going.

They can use artillery, JDAMS, ground attack, army aviation, and the drone weapon.

Drones today exist in all forms including autonomous AI drones which they have begun to launch from carriers (“motherships”) to get longer range on them.

So why is Stepnohirsk this war’s Little Big Horn?

Russian special forces are heavily decimated and there is not much left in depth behind the southern front and the Dnieper front apart from some BARS units which are probably more like regiments but now battalion strength since they have been merged.

“The Road of Death” – Ukraine now has total fire control over incoming roads from the east beyond Berdyansk/Mariupol.

Even vehicles just inside the Russian side near Taganrog have been seen burning by the roadside.

Yes, Putin used the May 9 ceasefire to bring forward supplies and reinforcements (damn Trump) but overall it makes no difference.

The area has been heavily pre-bombarded so that radar, air defense, and the Black Sea Fleet are as rare as a kingfisher in winter nowadays.

Ukraine can use its own air force from the Dnieper front and a bit eastward.

Their drone weapon has full fire control and sees everything +100km deep, some can maneuver as far as 150km.

Since Russian special forces are now depleted, there will sooner or later be a breach somewhere, you all read the post about the Azov thrust closely followed by Operation Rostov, right?

Then Putin has only one measure left – to try to rush in reinforcements, Crimea is cut off since the bridge is impassable and the ferries sunk so his units must band from Mariupol which gives him a Kuwait highway 2.0, there is no other end to that dance.

Ukraine can cross the Dnieper north of Khakovka since the river is like a small pleasant summer brook now and in addition, brush has grown in the area so they can move under cover – as soon as they are over, the CAA chief for the Dnieper must try to get units there, again up and banding on the highway with much death.

Hopefully the army commanders do as they are told by Gerasimov until it no longer works.

Then when the area falls, the swarm will head east instead with the same violent drone street race.

The spring offensive 2023 failed because the USA, Europe, and UA parliamentarians leaked the battle plans to Putin, not necessarily in that order.

The USA also stopped reasonable battle plans, demanded they attack a 10km deep minefield, must use units trained in Europe because we were the best and also fight according to NATO doctrine despite lacking air superiority.

Then in the autumn some elected officials in Europe could not hold back, “now that they have learned it hurts maybe they will agree to a ceasefire” – this was a hidden agenda among some who thought Ukraine should give up because Putin had said he wanted a ceasefire but Ukraine refused. Everyone wanted peace except the stubborn Ukrainians.

It took Ukraine three years to lick their wounds and prepare, and it was also a knife-edge fight with Trump trying to politically topple Zelensky throughout 2025.

The Kursk offensive also made the West completely mad so the pressure was probably hard on Zelensky to stop invading Russia.

The upside now in 2026 is that Ukraine –

– Mostly got angry and wanted to retaliate.

– Doesn’t tell anyone what they are planning.

– Doesn’t take orders from anyone when bribes like EU membership and other fun things are dangled in front of them.

We still tell Ukraine not to attack export terminals and oil – just so you know we have learned exactly nothing up to now summer 2026. Everyone should read Johan No.1, it should be mandatory must-read with a written test every week.

UA is also gathering forces up at the northern front under the pretext that Belarus will go to war with them – I don’t believe for a second that Belarus will do that, they are building defenses against Ukraine to be a (neutral) anchor in upcoming Russian moves against the Baltics.

Probably UA has more than one plan now and they gladly strike the flanks, maybe they have gotten enough of the Belarus defense forces on the good side?

We’ll see but in the south the pieces are now in position for checkmate at least and Russian milbloggers are beginning to understand that. There are two sides to that coin of course and some opposition has started to get some support but the milbloggers who want to win are starting to get anxiety and it shows.

Russian exercise leadership probably still has some time before the light goes on for them but the only solution they have to all problems is to increase the level of violence if the current level does not give the desired result. There could be a lot of Russian deaths down south when they try to “throw the Ukrainians back over the Dnieper” and “hold Crimea at all costs.” Maybe CAA commanders will make their own decisions in the end but with a bit of luck they will keep giving Ukraine very easy targets on dusty highways for too long.

And so it has begun – it is hard to describe the feeling.

We saw it in 2022 at Kherson with VDV and the West cheated it away for Ukraine because Zalizhny was not allowed to attack down along the left bank of the Dnieper but instead had to run straight into the defense on the right side after Putin pulled back his VDV.

When HIMARS and American intelligence gathering started hitting knocked-out corps staffs right at their major briefings, even though they kept moving, there was no more HIMARS ammunition and the US stopped providing intelligence from the center in Germany or Poland, forgot what it was called.

All long-range weapons came with geographical restrictions – absolutely nothing over into Russia and the US would approve every target and leaked like a sieve to Putin.

For a long time, the Russians had 12-15 large bases right on the Russian side of the border with Ukraine where vehicles and supplies were neatly lined up – Ukraine was not allowed to attack them.

45 Iskander platforms stood in a row on the Russian side along with airbases for terror bombings against Ukrainian civilians – protected and absolutely no, Ukraine was absolutely not allowed to attack them.

This was at the time when long-range weapons came from the West but when Ukraine in the winter of 2023 attacked into Kursk and tried to follow the rules – only Russian and Belarusian volunteers then the West quickly changed the rules – that was not allowed either.

Moscow was taken down only because the Ukrainian communications officer happened to see it on American radar images in the communications center, realized what it was and quickly said “I’m going out for a cigarette.” An eager WhatsApp chat later, Moscow’s fate was sealed but he had to leave and the US became more cautious after that.

The spring offensive 2023 was shamelessly acted by us and the Kursk offensive would have gone better but the pressure was probably hard on Zelensky to restrain himself when the US and Europe realized that Putin had left the entire northern border undefended.

Wagner’s revolution 2023 also failed – it was as if the entire West, as soon as things went a bit too well for Ukraine, rushed in and ruined it to preserve world peace and make everything better.

This year we will see what was already described in 2022 – 2023 because the author severely underestimated the West’s willingness to betray to preserve peace in our time. Since Ukraine is doing the right thing and no longer needs us for critical weapons, there will be many occasions to take a sip of fine whisky and put in the victory snus this year.

Will the Azov thrust end?

Who knows, has Russia managed to open a conflict front in the Baltics probably not but that offensive will expose the entire southern area since Russia has zero in Rostov, Taganrog and Krasnodar, we know that.

The LPR and DPR units are extremely tired of this now, they already have a deal with Budanov that if they switch sides when the question arises, the punishment will be mitigated.

Will Putin survive politically if he carelessly loses Crimea – who knows, and above all what will come instead?

Yes, Russia can probably draw a new defensive line west-south of Donetsk, fortify Taganrog and send units down to Krasnodar but the same applies there – they have to move on roads or by train and the tracks are few. It will be bloody for Ukraine, they expect that.

The units also have to be taken from somewhere so other fronts will become weaker and so on in a puzzle that eventually cannot be solved when too many pieces are missing.

Russia is now losing 3.5 times more soldiers than Ukraine which they do not have the numbers for at all, not even “quantity is a quality in itself” which Russia thought in 2022-2023 would finally decide in Putin’s favor.

https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/ukraine-s-commander-in-chief-reveals-casualty-1779213677.html

Yes, there are 400,000 in Russian letter agencies, special forces, Rosgvardia and private armies but they will not be sacrificed on the Ukrainian altar as they are the airbags for the rulers and needed for internal balance and power struggle.

If UA kicks away the southern front and runs over Crimea it will quickly become unsustainable and if you go by their movements up at the northern front this is just part of this year’s wish list Budanov is fiddling with.

-Positive-Positive is not a fair word, teary-eyed with a snus and happy, roughly like when you got your first Star Wars figures at twelve years old is probably more how this feels.

This does not make Europe kings at all and the next post will be post-Aurora and then what we can do to get ahead of a Russian escalation in the Baltics if UA does not manage to topple Russia first – which we hope they will do but if you want peace you prepare for war, and for the new war, right.

As said, a paid subscription feels too expensive, please share the posts – a lot of work goes into these so it’s nice if they spread.

Inlägget And so it has begun, May 22, 2026 dök först upp på Johan No.1.

Russian losses

• 910 KWIA
• 5 AFVs
• 54 Artillery systems
• 2 MLRS
• 1 Air defense system
• 1715 UAVs
• 4 UGVs
• 202 Vehicles and Fuel tanks
• 1 Special equipment

SLAVA UKRAINI

Inlägget Ukraine has attacked a refinery in Syzran – Russian losses dök först upp på Johan No.1.

While we are on the subject of refineries, the “Moscow Oil Refinery” has now completely stopped its production since the attack on May 17. The damage is said not to be very serious, but the halt is due to fears of further attacks.

During the night, Russia again attacked several regions in Ukraine, and at least 11 were injured. Several residences, including a high-rise building and commercial premises, were hit. Read more here.

Russian losses

Today’s report (covering yesterday’s) Russian losses are somewhat lower than in recent days regarding KIA, just under a thousand… not much armor but a high number of artillery pieces and soft vehicles, and then we also have losses of both MLRS, air defense, and special equipment.

• 920 KIA
• 3 Tanks
• 2 AFVs
• 60 Artillery systems
• 3 MLRS
• 2 Air defense systems
• 1,873 UAVs
• 6 UGVs
• 268 Vehicles and Fuel tanks
• 4 Special equipment

Russian activities

• 250 combat clashes
• 100 air strikes
• 289 KANB/CAB
• 9,168 kamikaze drones
• 3,195 shells (60 from MLRS)

SLAVA UKRAINI

Inlägget Ukraine has once again attacked a refinery and a chemical plant – Russian losses dök först upp på Johan No.1.