Ukraine daily update January 20, 2025

The Lions

https://twitter.com/ukrainiansquad/status/1880398738998579341?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w

I’ve seen highlights from Trump and it doesn’t feel like he will surprise significantly, but his scam with Trump-coin actually surprised me even though it shouldn’t have.

Here, I think it looks like they are buying to hold for a purpose, and it’s not to make money, but I don’t know anything about economics.

Regarding Ukraine, I didn’t see any threats during the speech, even if he alone would stop the third world war that is already upon us and similar nonsense.

We must continue to follow him and see what he does in action because that’s how we judge the other Western leaders, Scholz hid behind large aid packages for a long time, for example.

Maks even believed the other day that UA had reached Trump – I’m actually not that optimistic.

The Swedish undermanned battalion that landed in Riga has put fear into the Russians (550 is not low at all if everything is elite, 600 full battalion companies and command?)

Now, the purpose is not to diminish Sweden’s effort at all because this is absolutely excellent (and the fact that Sweden has PROMISED to fight with Finland in case of war 🤩)

And above all, Sweden takes responsibility for a whole battalion in the brigade, it seems, and not much else is in place – Sweden is leading the way.

But I want to point out how little the West is sending to the eastern front at the moment – there should be a whole brigade in Lithuania that, even after three years of war, is not in place.

A brigade is also quite small in this context, and all units on our side lack practical work experience in the type of warfare being fought now. Russia has completed the entire internship, even if they may have slept through some of the courses.

The Baltic states have only now started constructing the defense line against Belarus and Russia, for example, three years later.

We are simply betting that RU, together with Belarus and some screeching North Koreans, DO NOT want to test NATO.

Then maybe you can hide Chinese as North Koreans eventually if you want, now that they have opened up and the consequences completely failed to materialize.

The Baltic states have armies of 5000-6000 per country or something that have not been trained in drone warfare or seen any combat at all.

Belarus has a defense force trained by former Wagner for two years, 11,000 Wagner or something were/were left in Belarus, and RU is setting up two army corps focusing on the Baltic states and Finland.

Also consider that the test will be – RU conquers an area similar to the UA Kursk offensive in Estonia or Latvia and defends behind rivers and mines itself again.

Will the rest of NATO then risk their soldiers’ lives to retake this piece of land in eastern Baltics, or will they let it be?

There are a few different versions of this, but the purpose is to test NATO, and above all, the consequences will not exceed RU being forced to retreat with losses and then everything returns to normal.

Or do you think the EU will invade Russia as revenge or launch thousands of tomahawks in Moscow?

I thought the highest risk for this scenario was after November 5, but apparently the West didn’t think so because nothing has actually been done, neither by RU because they have not tested NATO.

The upside for Putin is a possible NATO collapse, and the downside is that two army corps are wiped out. The bonus is that he gets his stab-in-the-back legend a bit more credible when NATO actually burns down his units with napalm.

It may not happen, but it’s something the West must plan for, and they haven’t done so after three years of war, which to me borders on criminally low self-preservation.

Even our government would have to have a parliamentary vote to send Swedish soldiers to reclaim territory in Estonia, and more than one party, probably three, would strongly argue against it and have a strong position for it – “why should our daughters and sons die for some fields in eastern Estonia, let Russia keep it and there will be peace in our time.” It’s difficult to argue against that with “we must save NATO.”

Finland has taken this very seriously and is even training partisans now and has probably got all reservists to be able to run the entire obstacle course without interruption – they want peace and are preparing for war.

Testing NATO is part of Putin’s escalation ladder, and we are not far from it, but as with everything else, Ukraine manages the impossible every day, and it’s not entirely unlikely that their Kursk offensive has delayed this as RU must send all units to Kursk.

At Kursk, Belarusian SOF have fought, the two army corps for the Baltics are partly there, and there were reports of (remaining) Wagner. All units intended to test NATO.

Throughout the war, we (I, I, I) have repeatedly discussed war economy vs. peace economy.

When WW2 ended, the USA had a fleet of over 60,000 ships, and Russia had run out of soldiers in the age range of young men. WW2 was an enormously resource-intensive war, and the West shifted to a war economy.

But Germany had the advantage as they had already started in the 1930s to prepare for their great extermination war.

During the interwar period, they circumvented all regulations and cultivated a huge officer corps that received thorough training starting with their militant version of the scouts.

Russia already signaled its intentions in 2008, but the world slept, and they have in their own special way shifted to a war economy for quite some time, but it only resulted in luxury yachts and Londongrad instead.

In this war, the West has so far managed to balance this with a peace economy, but they have cynically let Ukraine pay the price, but the world is not fair.

Yes, it is thanks to Ukraine holding out that the West is now starting to do the right thing, not the other way around.

Even though the USA is now going to start writing history, apparently it is only thanks to the USA that Ukraine has some decent drones, those Ukrainian technical bunglers. Blood pressure dangerously high.

Russia shifted to a war economy a long time ago, and at the start of the war in 2022, everything went to hell, and they have had to be reactive.

It was directly embarrassing when the IMF and the World Bank came out and praised the Russian GDP in 2022-2023 – apparently, you don’t get much growth by building things that are blown to pieces, everyone understands except the economists.

We have also repeatedly raised this, but a mistake I made was the time factor, I thought Russia would pack up earlier because I had a Western yardstick, but Putin has built a system of absolute obedience, as we saw in 2023 when the vodka run was thwarted.

Few countries in the West would have been able to cope with such setbacks, and that is something you actually have to give Russia credit for.

But…

Russia is slowly reaching its end now, Ukraine is completely droning away their oil industry, the state treasury is in decline, USD coming into the country is sharply decreasing.

The USA is not your friend, they waited until their new LNG project was completed to impose sanctions against RU

But more and more is coming out, the IT industry is in free fall, credit lines to agriculture are being cut, banks have been forced to lend 250 billion USD to the war industry in loans that will all be written off as everything produced is rusty scrap heaps in Ukraine. And now, finally, there is talk of trimming all bank accounts so that anything over a certain amount is forfeited and goes to the state treasury.

The Bottom is Nådd is starting to feel like 🤣

A calendar year for individuals, employees, and countries actually works like this – sometime in the fall, you aim for Christmas and then effectively block all difficult decisions with “we’ll take care of it in January instead.” And then you have a beautiful family Christmas with a Christmas buffet and very happy children who get exactly what they wanted and a peaceful Christmas atmosphere (has anyone ever had that?).

Russia works in the same way, now it’s January and everyone is back at work, figuring out how to handle the upcoming train crash in 2025.

Russia has shifted to a war economy and therefore has a deadline for how long they can wage war.

Putin coldly calculated that the West would force Ukraine to negotiate itself to frozen fronts before Russia crashed because Russia could handle such a situation.

They can’t handle high-intensity war indefinitely.

2024 was probably right on the edge of what Putin wanted, and the fact that Finland and everyone else kept quiet until after the US election and then completely changed course says a lot.

Now the country, which is not just Putin but a patchwork of different factions that would like total control and continue to plunder the country, suddenly faces the rather unpleasant reality that a peripheral war in Ukraine is well on its way to crashing the country.

Sitting Siloviks and Oligarchs are afraid of one thing – a popular revolution.

Then everything goes up in smoke, and all their security barriers are worth nothing, a bit like the stairs to the haunted house at Gröna Lund – impossible to master, and they could dangle at a gas station at any moment.

Power struggles are controllable to a certain extent, but if it becomes a total “free for all,” then it’s also uncharted territory.

The Ukraine war is starting to become too sensitive for Russia now.

And the war economy has a deadline when everything crashes, and the risk of a popular revolution or an unmanaged change of power escalates, which is not in the interest of any ruler.

Siloviks and oligarchs have probably been quite satisfied with being able to plunder the country of Russia, having unrestricted access to luxury in the West, and being able to channel their blood money through the Western banking system without any questions. Swedbank was completely infiltrated, with senior executives controlled by the FSB in an old-fashioned honey trap.

Now Saturday dinners with the oligarch’s wife are absolutely frosty – no more weekend shopping trips to London, and any suggestions of a week in Shanghai are met with a murderous look under the brow and extra aggressively cutting into the beef fillet.

The only thing that is not fun here is that the West could have escalated further without going into a war economy, and tens of thousands of children would not have needed to be tortured and murdered.

Because if there is something we will discover after this war, it is the number of murdered Ukrainians and how they were killed. Russia is in various stages of ethnic cleansing through rape, torture, and murder in many areas of Ukraine. Sexual sadists given a blank check to do as they please without consequences – something to study in the future.

No one can predict the day when Russia will crash, but the pressure is undeniably high, there are competitors vying to lead the criminal clan, and historically, Russia experiences a period of chaos after wars that have gone terribly wrong.

The Vodka Run 2023 was a serious attempt at a palace coup, and considering that the West leaked Ukraine’s spring offensive to Putin, we might consider that the West chose to support Putin in that power struggle?

Because the invasion of Russia, the vodka run, and the spring offensive all happened in the first half of 2023, while Budanov confirmed that UA was in contact with sensible opinion in Russia along with all the liberation fronts.

But going against Biden and Sullivan has its price – so expensive that it even cost leaked battle plans.

The African Corps has been caught on film marching in Mali – new equipment and seems to be properly prioritized.

https://twitter.com/ralee85/status/1880688422031122785?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w

You have heard that the OIL EXPORT is down by 10% and feel that it is too little. Then I must remind you that all exports of refined products have been stopped, so it is zero (0%), and oil exports have been protected after directives from Biden and Sullivan throughout the war. It is only in recent months that UA has started to target the infrastructure for exports. The oil depots are not necessarily linked to exports but probably contain refined products for the war.

It is therefore significant that exports have decreased by 10% because refined products are already at 0%, and fuel supplies for the war and civilian use are likely under severe pressure right now.

As you can see, the johanno1.se website is still under construction. Unfortunately, this is not my full-time job, and no money is earned, so I also have to prioritize work to provide food for the children.

A thought for those who want a notification and get upset when they check and no new post is up – if you register on Substack, you will receive an email notification when a new post is published because I post there simultaneously.

Otherwise, there is some activity on Bluesky before the post – the day before, I start posting links, which has become a bit of a routine, so there is some kind of advance notice of a new post.

There are already some comments on the site, MXT is also active there now, and the wandering genius myself, along with some talented individuals in various fields, have found their way there. Jari apparently managed to bypass firewalls and other obstacles built solely for him and is now in the comment section contributing 😀

Right now, I’m a bit overwhelmed by three platforms, writing, and hungry children. In a few months, I’ll probably have managed to streamline things enough so that they buy and cook their own food.

There are also some thoughts of expanding with stories from those who are not just sitting hacking into FOA or GUR servers and actually know what they are talking about and not just mistranslating documents.

A sad news is that Dengamle wants to take a permanent time-out from social media, as he spent a lot of time on Bluesky and was available to talk to for those who hadn’t found another place and thought everyone was there – a loss for everyone, not least the systembolaget.

I think Glimt was interesting because far too many people are stuck in their bubbles or trapped in their job descriptions or how things have always been.

However, it is important that those analyzing the material from Glimt do not have blinders on and have some room for movement, otherwise it will end up like with the waste sorting where the collectors threw all three bins into the same space and mixed it up – nothing. And then they wasted a lot of contributed time. Budanov signed up there, by the way, and Biden has asked me to contribute with analyses.

I want to conclude with this – Sweden is taking a VERY clear stance in this conflict, out with our semi-neutrality and we stand up for our friends who will take the hit before us this time.

Yes, everything can change in the election in two years, but until then, RU is probably so angry with us that all bridges are burned, which is desirable.

Because in this conflict, you have to choose a side – either we stand with our friends or we will have to be ashamed again like after WW2 and call our fines voluntary reconstruction support.

Some fights cannot be avoided even though UA offers the entire West to avoid the fight if we just send equipment, which I think would be incredibly attractive.

The opposition constantly tries to discredit the sitting government, but they need to be a bit careful with that, even if they have their points from time to time with other things. When it comes to the prelude to our current global conflict, the opposition also needs to act like adults and not try to smear and score cheap points because THAT only benefits one person, and that is Putin.

Then they are welcome to continue to highlight things that are not done right because that’s what the opposition should do 😀

As usual, if you like the post, feel free to share it, and if you have anything to add, the comment section on johanno1.se is always good, provided you haven’t been convicted of any fraud against the postal code lottery in the 90s, then you’re probably on the blocklists.