Snow lions
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Our Semoyan suggests that Russia should agree to frozen fronts 😲
The walls of the Russian pressure cooker are bulging more and more outward, and it’s hissing…
It’s been a while since I brought up the bubble list, but my belief is that some point on it will be what decides the war, but it never came up for discussion so I can’t predict the outcome on that.
Zelensky has now understood the value of sending newly enlisted soldiers to existing brigades instead of setting up new brigades all the time.
This will make a difference, I’m quite sure. The 72nd brigade in Vuhledar had received 30 soldiers when they needed many hundreds, for example.
There seems to be an overreliance on training from NATO countries in my opinion – the best training in the world is surely with existing units that have been in combat for a few years, and it’s that knowledge that needs to be transferred.
Then specific training from NATO may be needed for new equipment, but for personal combat, soldiers in Ukraine should be among the best in the world at present.
I believed until the summer of 2024 that this was how it was done, rotating out brigades or battalions from brigades and resetting them.
I remember describing it, receiving criticism for it, then Zelensky confirmed it, and I believed him for a while – kind of. It wasn’t until the summer of 2024 that I realized how the priorities had been set.
Yes, resources are limited, but investing all efforts twice in setting up new brigades just because they are trained in the West wasn’t right. We’ll find out how history has unfolded here in the future – wouldn’t surprise me if the West pushed for it in our overconfidence in ourselves.
I guess the West made an offer to fully resource a brigade if UA provides the personnel, and UA prioritized it because they hadn’t received equipment otherwise?
In 2023, they drove straight into minefields, and in 2024, the 155th mechanized had desertions, suffered losses, were divided up, and didn’t excel at all.
Compare that with the fire brigades – Azov, 3rd, NG brigades, volunteer units, and a lot of mechanized, airborne, and more that have been fighting for three years and are performing excellently despite terrible conditions with low numbers, lack of ammunition, communication issues, and poor equipment.
Yes – UA also needs a command structure, and they need to get rid of the command that takes and sends battalions around as they please. If nothing else, it’s difficult to follow on the unit maps (attempt at dark humor).
Brigades should fight cohesively and report up to a division commander/corps commander who has independent battalions available with additional capabilities.
THEN you have a front section that works where the corps commander has a small pool of reserves to shuttle around when the brigades’ own task forces can’t handle it, and a corps artillery to pinpoint some gloomy Russians in their holes or LV screen to protect offensive operations.
Orders to the brigades, and the brigades request additional capabilities that they receive to accomplish the task.
Sending battalions around in a mosaic just creates chaos, and we’ve seen a lot of that – and in the end, people care more about their own unit than the battalion with guys from a completely different area in Ukraine that they’ve never met, leading to rivalry and no one wanting to go first.
I recall that the USA/NATO hovered over the command for quite a while, and what we’re seeing now is the consequences of that. Ukraine’s officer corps hasn’t been allowed to develop, and one day NATO commanders decided that they should be able to solve the task on their own.
If Ukraine can just organize into corps, then the command can stop its micro-management of individual battalions.
A first step seems to have been taken where senior officers are now drawn from brigade commanders who have solved the tasks throughout the war – they have the right work experience on their CVs, and the references were simply okay.
South of Pokrovsk, RU has reached a forest belt that runs along the railway down to Udachne and should offer good defensive terrain.
All other sides must go straight for Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad – my guess is that it will stop there, but they will continue straight west of Udachne.
You already know about Velyka Novosilka if you’ve read these posts before, that it’s the eastern anchor in the southern front, and if it falls, the Russian bastards could start rolling up the southern front – not saying they WILL do it.
The town is holding out almost in full, which is interesting because it shows that UA has started to learn to fight almost to the fullest and then get out – it surely requires a lot.
However, it’s starting to look a bit too threatening right now…
RU has an offensive at the Southern front where they have prepared about 70 brigades, but there are some battles at Velyka Novosilka, maybe 10. These units haven’t participated much in the offensive since UA’s spring offensive died out, so they should have been reinforced.
But then we don’t know how RU has prioritized, and historically, the Southern front has had the lowest priority.
If RU doesn’t launch an offensive at the Southern front, it’s significant – maybe they’ve moved to other sections, haven’t managed to allocate resources, or something else?
The offensive attempts near the Dnieper don’t really count, they’re too small-scale.
But it’s at the Southern front and Dnieper where RU has had problems with protesting units, so morale is probably not very high – could it be difficult to motivate them to run across the fields and die perhaps?
The blocking battalions now seem to have been moved to the Kursk area to monitor that the North Koreans don’t retreat or surrender.
The next interesting place is the small area east of the city of Kupiansk and east of Oskil that RU never manages to take.
Yes, they have passed Oskil north of Kupiansk, but the area east of there shouldn’t be very difficult to overrun since they can now attack from three directions.
Probably a bit low-priority combined with Ukraine not wanting to lose the foothold east of Oskil for future offensives.
Now that everyone is starting to get scared again, it’s appropriate to remind that it’s RU who has been on the offensive for a very long time, almost since UA’s spring offensive ended in the fall of 2023, and in May 2024, the losses started to increase significantly – and they have continued.
Everything is now declining except for fallen soldiers, which is a clear sign that RU is starting to run short on supplies but is keeping up the pressure with just infantry.
RU takes about 5 times the losses of UA, and for example, they have over 50,000 missing that they have requested.
The Russian offensive attempts have an end date, and after that, RU has no supplies left, and no one wants to join the war anymore – it’s well known that it’s a one-way ticket to death, and even disability is considered fit enough to run across the fields.
Yes, China can provide material support, but then they face sanctions from the West that they cannot handle. The USA is just waiting for the opportunity to push back against China here – you can be sure of that.
The USA doesn’t like that China openly challenges the USA economically and they intend to pull a Japan on them.
Then North Korea can always send more soldiers, but now they have probably suffered 60-70% losses for the first group, and Rocket Man probably didn’t expect that at all – they were supposed to come back with combat experience, not as dead or prisoners of war.
That’s actually how it looks, and it’s no secret that Putin is hoping for some relief from Trump, but my guess is that Trump is not really interested in Putin anymore, but we’ll see.
Then Putin loses his best ally – Scholz.
He has lost his most useful idiot in the whole war – Biden.
The Norwegians are starting to stand up and look eastward.
Poland has taken sides 100%, and Putin is unable to destabilize the country despite trying intensively.
The EU has chosen Ukraine.
And the EU is ready to let Russia crash straight into the wall if Russia wants, which is what they always do.
There are about twenty UA brigades that are not on the active front – they are probably a mix of worn-out maneuver brigades that need to recover and offensive reserves, but the West needs to send more material, and UA needs to sort out its recruitment.
UA should definitely recruit widely in the EU, and the EU should offer good salaries paid by the country the citizen belongs to, as well as veteran pensions after a year.
Motivated volunteers go a long way.
But they also need material.
It’s really disappointing that UA has a large number of brigades without equipment, here RU has actually done better than the West, which is quite embarrassing.
Yes, now the material is coming, but it’s direct purchases that have been manufactured, which is sad to me – they should have sent from the warehouses and newly manufactured for themselves from 2022 onwards.
War is business – I understand that.
But there must also be basic survival instincts, and above all in the West, we claim to uphold quite a few ideals that we have turned a blind eye to in Ukraine.
Step two from this is that we will be forcibly mobilized into a pit in the future, and our leaders should want to avoid that.
Acting now is also the best business, and I am irritated that too many have chosen to think short-term or want to squeeze more out of Ukraine than one could have guessed would be the breaking point for the country.
Everyone should work with a risk list, and by 2024, they have REALLY just gambled on Ukraine being able to hold out.
Zelensky could have been murdered, generals could have revolted, opposition could have started moving, the front could have collapsed, or the military could simply have lost morale.
High-risk thinking that for me was not risk management at all but just irresponsible and opportunistic where the consequence would have been forcing the country’s own citizens into war.
That actually says a lot about our elected officials, and their reluctance to expose themselves a bit, preferring to send us to the front lines if necessary.
There is no shortage of elected officials who have gone all-in, but they still stand quite alone today in 2025.
In the Nordic countries, things are starting to move slightly, but Spain, Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands, UK, and all the small countries in the Balkans are still keeping a low profile, along with Italy and Greece.
But I understand that this is how it works, and that it is Putin who has spent 15 years completely controlling his country, and our leaders in the West have opposition, citizens, their own careers, and families to think about first and foremost.
Finland and Israel are probably among the few countries that have behaved well in the last 30 years and have been able to adapt the fastest to a new situation.
Everything is not always as it seems. The Palestinian Authority, which is the official government in Gaza, has come down hard on Hamas in a letter.
Now all the Palestinian demonstrations should immediately start demonstrating against Hamas, but you won’t see that.
Another thing that has happened is that Lebanon has a new Christian government that promises peace with Israel and the eradication of Hezbollah.
You don’t hear much about that either. The fact that the government is Christian is not strange because they alternate between Muslim and Christian, but joining forces with Israel against Hezbollah is new, and good.
You don’t hear much about that either.
Because Russia doesn’t like this, their groups in the West will not be cheering about this at all.
One starts to wonder if suddenly all Russian ships in various stages of distress have a bit of Ukraine’s fingerprints 😃
The storm was one thing, but now within the span of a month, 5-7 ships that previously were fine are floating around with engine problems, sinking, drifting, leaking oil, and so on.
Yes, the Russian norm is more than zero, but now it’s a lot.
Then I believe that Ukraine has a hand in RU not being able to evacuate Syria – remember that Ukraine was the first there with representatives and then sent a lot of grain.
Ukraine doesn’t want all this material in Donbass. Nicely done 👍👍
Then this is a good link with RU’s battle plan for Ukraine during the Prague Spring and Afghanistan, so UA already knew what RU had in mind when the first VDV soldier stumbled ashore at Hostomel.
Let’s start with the stumbling VDV.
A woman from Donetsk who was continuously raped by 15 men and who testifies to constant torture – this is the Russian peace. So they treat the areas they feel are pro-Russian and want to join them. Imagine how they would behave towards Finland or Sweden.
Sexual sadistic murderers, and this is exactly how Wagner operates in Africa, and no one cares.
And above all – this is exactly how RU has always behaved, consistently and without interruption. There has never been a better war than this where they have fought “fairer”.
Russia is the threat from the East that we in Europe welcomed in when the Soviet Union fell, and now we are left with the price that Ukraine’s children have had to pay.
The EU has major problems, especially economically, and it is now, in 2025, that the EU can start making the right decisions.
The entire EU seems to have done a Sweden and regulated everything to pieces and raised welfare to unreasonable levels.
All I read now is a 34-hour workweek while the EU is falling far behind the USA and Asia.
Another undersea cable has signs of tampering – guess if this was Russia’s eleventh weapon this winter, stopping the transfer from Scandinavia southward.
Good for us in the electricity class, admittedly, so maybe one should keep quiet about this 😐
Biden writes his story as he sees it – I told you so 😀
Russia is burning (for real).
Their air defense is depleted and can no longer protect the country from the carpet bombings of UA’s strategic bombing campaign, which are increasing.
It’s now so much that it barely makes the news, but HUGE values are going up in smoke here every week, and it stings tremendously for oligarchs and siloviks.
I maintain my positive outlook for 2025, and part of that is the increasing strategic drone warfare.
If Ukraine can just hold the frontlines, RU is now taking significant hits every week, and it’s clear that the West has either discarded geographical limitations or simply no longer cares about them, and both are okay.
Ukraine now has a technological advantage at the frontlines – there you go 😁 (we wrote about this the other day, and now Wartranslated has read our text and come up with their own).
https://x.com/wartranslated/status/1878392363480928714?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
Agriculture in Russia is facing real problems now
https://x.com/pstyle0ne1/status/1878777301493506087?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
And now Russian banks are being plundered of their last assets to finance the war – feels short-term and good about this 👍
And the train accidents continue, the partisans are having fun every day nowadays
I stake my reputation on us now moving towards the final stage of this war, and that is RU throwing in the towel if Ukraine can just hold out on the frontlines.
There are too many red arrows pointing straight down for RU to be able to handle this for long.
And those who were negotiating – Biden and Scholz, they are gone.
The message to the West is –
-actively support Ukraine now, it will pay off for generations.
-do NOT let Russia in the warmth on loose promises in a year.
-build a bulwark against the east funded by the EU, and if Belarus’ 10 million citizens get democracy, that’s good. And a demilitarized Kaliningrad is also good.
If the EU can just stick to this embarrassingly short list, we will have 100 years of peace in the EU. The Cost-Reward is very attractive.
It’s a clear trend that when I write “please share,” many people do, otherwise not so much.
So please share if you liked the post 😀
Glömt inte att donera, Ukrainas sak är vår! Stöd Ukraina!
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Awesome post – world-class
Thank you and nice that it’s being read
Who are you?
Grandma writes better!
So, here one struggles and does not receive a passing grade 🤬
Ah, considering how old TheOld is, his grandmother must be even older. I guess she’s a master witch in handling the written word with all that experience, so you probably shouldn’t take it too hard.
Witchmaster is probably the keyword here 😐
😂
I can confirm that embedding Twitter is a bit hit or miss. It might also depend on whether the visitor is logged into Twitter or not. It seems to work sometimes and sometimes not. Perhaps it’s best to just include it as links or paste in screenshots.