Ukraine daily update January 17, 2025

Lions

Don’t stop praying for Ukrainian soldiers who still fighting on the front lines 🙏

Glory to Heroes! 🇺🇦
pic.twitter.com/Chqk6U2IzY

— UKRAINIAN SQUAD🇺🇦 (@ukrainiansquad) January 1, 2025

The Frontlines –

Unfortunately, Velyka Novosilka is now on the verge of falling, looks a bit hairy if you look at Deepstate below…

However, I would argue that UA has bought the time they needed to hold out, the 155th brigade is in the area now along with a lot of elite forces.

If I were to guess, I think UA can now avoid the eastern anchor of the southern front from falling and starting to unravel.

However, Toretsk and Chasiv Yar are practically lost now, but there are major towns in the vicinity like Kostiantynivka.

And Kursk is absolutely not retaken, Putin has failed miserably there despite the addition of North Koreans.

So, the southern front is not collapsing, and RU will continue to suffer huge losses for potato fields in eastern Ukraine, and just like Kursk only had value if the West attributed value to it in negotiations, the same goes for Putin.

What value do the potato fields have now, do you think?

Now that Ukraine is on the rise and RU is declining

When will Russia realize the futility of this war?

Borrowing this from Gregg and rephrasing it – in the future, we will hear this: “I don’t want to brag, but I’m from Ukraine.”

In terms of fighting, Ukraine is among the greats in history, and nothing is sugar-coated, rather the opposite.

Yes, Biden just finished with a bang of a speech that was almost as fun as the release party in Skarpnäck where he explained that the USA has done everything and that Ukraine will manage decently.

The Norwegian resistance fighters after WW2 had a lifelong hero status, like cutting in line at the pub and never paying for a beer (🤩), but that was within the country.

I know I’m a bit naive to think that the EU will embrace Ukraine and roll out the red carpet.

I rather think it will be like Finland post-WW2, where you have to grit your teeth and push through, dealing with the post-war situation with those who survived and the bottle.

I believe that in the post-war period, I will try to promote fair historical writing, but when faced with professional historians who have it as their job, one is doomed – you get ground down with endless circular reasoning and fragmented details and shouts of “evidence,” “source,” “not credible,” and in the end, you have to give up.

For example, in the Skalman thread, we proved that U137 could not have navigated wrongly and tried to get newspapers interested, but no one bit. And now an SVT program aired where none of that evidence was included.

This is technical evidence and probability, and we went through the entire timeline until the grounding – for instance, the Russian side claimed as a defense that they mistook a lighthouse for a lantern on a boat, so we looked into the lighthouse, the distance to the lighthouse, the color of the light on the lighthouse, intensity, and compared it with a lantern on any boat, and it simply was not possible to make a mistake at that distance. We had several seafarers in the thread participating.

It’s like saying you mistook a Volvo for a scooter at a 10m distance in daylight – simply not possible. The problem historians have to deal with is probability, and they hate it and do everything to get around it with anecdotal evidence that they string together to make it seem credible and get written into the history books.

When history is to be written, anything can happen 😀

I am so pleased with the comment function on the website that everything is light blue and there’s calming elevator music playing right now. Keep pitching johanno1.se.

Yes, “someone” is there tearing apart everything I write, but it’s fun to see well-known names dropping by, Nelson Mandela made a quick appearance and answered questions, for example, and others have DM’d me asking for a chance – Buzz Aldrin, for instance.

It leads to a lot of fun interaction, and that means a lot.

There won’t be daily posts as I have a new employer now and will be away for work next week.

All posts are also posted on Bluesky or Substack if you want notifications when they are published, you can see Bluesky and get an email notification if you register on Substack.

Otherwise, the rule is to continue in the existing thread until a new post comes, I think, I’ll check with Dengamle.

Now, there’s a bit of speculation here, but the following has already been raised by UA themselves –

It has been previously suggested that Sirsky would be pro-Russian, slowly undermining the Ukrainian army. Since he did not leak Kursk 2024 to Putin, I believed he was not, as few knew about that battle plan. Perhaps that’s why he didn’t leak it…

But it’s hard to ignore that he is performing significantly worse than Zalizhny and that our offensive in 2023 was sabotaged from within (by the USA) and not Zalizhny’s fault at all.

Zalizhny was on the verge of breaking the Russian bastards already in 2022 and managed to gather an offensive reserve of over 10 brigades for the 2023 offensive despite intense defensive warfare and shortages of everything.

Sirsky is apparently meddling down to the group level (battalion level!) and he completely shattered the 155th brigade as soon as it arrived.

I remember when Zalizhny was ousted, Sirsky fired a large part of the command staff and appointed his own confidants.

It hasn’t gone better, and I don’t think the army holds the same reverence for him as for Zalihzny.

It’s hard to escape the fact that Ukraine also needs to get organized now in 2025, it’s not all self-propelled howitzers from the West or ammunition.

As a globally recognized chief and leader of huge project groups with at least five employees, I have finally understood a few things –

-trust is good, control is better.

-let employees do their jobs (which are well-defined).

-the higher up you are, the more you must delegate because you can’t keep up with the flow of information.

-strong subordinates are a pain in the neck, but they pull their weight, sycophants just do that – worship you.

Sirsky must let brigade commanders keep their brigades, and they must have a superior officer who feels responsible and listens when they convey important information upwards.

It’s not Sirsky, it’s a division or corps commander who has that job.

This division commander must have tangible divisional resources, a couple of infantry battalions, armored vehicles, tanks, artillery, and perhaps a drone unit that he can move around the front section the corps holds.

It’s all about prioritization, but if they at least have a chance to prioritize sensibly, that would be good.

THEN Ukraine has a front section that can be defended most effectively, and then Sirsky has to puzzle so that the corps overlap and then he has his two strategic offensive corps in reserve and plans for his offensives.

If there is a surplus on any front section, he can pull out an entire brigade and assign it to another corps, but battalions are a lousy idea. Then you just make the corps’ stretch to defend larger, so there is no surplus.

For defense, you don’t need a lot of heavy vehicles today, you need a task force with heavy vehicles and then some for transportation to and from.

Embedded infantry with drone and anti-tank capability, and mines, are like cockroaches you never get rid of.

Now the big question is whether there will be any need for offense at all, the Russian house of cards has started to fall and is just that – a house of cards.

But otherwise, Ukraine needs to kick out the Russians headfirst, and they do it best if they engage in mobile combat because that immediately paralyzes the Russians, we’ve seen the whole war.

You need to strike along the northern front, spark a popular revolution in Belarus, initiate a wave of sabotage in Russia, strategic drone warfare continues, battle at the Dnieper River, and then probe along the fronts for weak segments where strategic reserves can be deployed for breakthrough attempts.

And after a couple of months, the cracks will widen.

Ukraine has drone superiority, and they have electronic warfare that paralyzes the Russian side on an entire front if they combine it – like up in Kursk.

They still have mechanized capability and new vehicles are being added.

They also have artillery.

Plus, they have the numbers.

And when they conduct offensives, they do it at a numerical disadvantage and inflict losses on RU at a ratio of 1:3 or something.

In defense, it’s 1:5 – 1:10.

If you put together the puzzle with the above information, you’ll realize where this is heading by 2025 and that it’s Biden and Scholz who ensured that Russia didn’t lose earlier.

If you leak all battle plans to Putin and let his VDV slip out of a rather precarious situation on the wrong side of the Dnieper, it’s difficult for Ukraine to succeed.

Kursk 2024 is a success precisely because Zelensky never informed the USA about it, there you go!!

Do you dare to guess why Russia is cutting all the power cables they can to the Baltics right now?

Mot bakgrund av den kraftiga ökningen av incidenter mot viktig undervattensinfrastruktur vidtar nu regeringen ytterligare åtgärder genom uppdrag till Försvarsmakten och Kustbevakningen för att skydda våra förbindelser i Östersjön. Det är särskilt viktigt då de baltiska staterna…

— Ebba Busch (@BuschEbba) January 12, 2025

Zelensky confirms that Russia is wounded.

Zelensky: Long-range strikes have delivered results – Russian weapons depots, equipment, and command centers were destroyed.

"Just as we hit their power plants after their strikes on our energy, they’ve lost a lot of money, logistics, etc. Without long-range strikes, I don't… pic.twitter.com/G9FxPQcr9r

— NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 (@NOELreports) January 16, 2025

China is on thin ice, and according to earlier expectations, the USA is just waiting for the opportunity to tighten the screws on them.

China is experiencing a complete financial crash. China’s 10Yr govt bonds yield 1.65%, their ‘policy overnight rate’ sits at 1.5%, their real estate collapse continues (Vanke 2025 bonds collapsing this week), and overnight rate just spiked to 16%. Complete disaster for xi. #China pic.twitter.com/MAqTc85tO0

— 🇺🇸 Kyle Bass 🇹🇼 (@Jkylebass) January 16, 2025

Finland confirms that they are not at peace, do you perhaps think that Ulf’s statement was coordinated with the rest of the Nordic countries?

The opposition is currently making a fool of themselves on that issue.

TUNG SIGNAL!
Finska Försvarsmaktens underrättelsechef, brigadgeneral Pekka Turunen, säger i ett uttalande åt finska MTV3 att "Finland är inte i krig… men har heller ej fred."
Han om någon borde veta vad han talar om. Dylikt tillstånd har landet ej haft sedan 2:a världskriget… pic.twitter.com/rNv9V2WeES

— Tommi Sorvari (@SorvariT) January 16, 2025

Why didn’t Finland buy the Gripen?

They went and bought the F35 while we buy as much of their Patria armored vehicles as we can, and I think the Nordic countries could have united around the Gripen, but I also understand that it’s attractive to go along with the US.

The Gripen is such a good aircraft that it should attract more customers within NATO.

If I understand this correctly, has the UK almost given Ukraine the opportunity to join the JEF?

Who has been enthusiastic about the JEF since 2022 when they realized that NATO was blocked?