Ukraine daily update July 21, 2025

We have been running johanno1.se since last winter and I think it’s important to highlight that not a single account has been banned and the tone is good even when discussing difficult topics such as Trump wanting Coca-Cola to reintroduce sugar in soda cans.

Now that the debate climate is extremely toxic and everything is mudslinging, we are quite satisfied because one of the cornerstones was that we wouldn’t try to make everyone think exactly like us and kick out everyone else, but rather have a lively discussion.

We have nominated ourselves for the Nobel Prize 👍

Since I have access to Substack login and I can see what’s happening on Bluesky, there are always some people leaving when difficult topics are discussed; they follow when they like a post and then leave when they don’t like one.

At johanno1.se, people are allowed and encouraged to have different opinions and then (ideally) discuss them based on facts.

I previously dealt with the submarine issue and quickly realized that if everyone thinks alike, there will be no discussion but just a stagnant back-patting party.

That’s why Nelson Mandela and Macron’s wife read johanno1.se every day – we are changing the world, not necessarily for the better, but we are changing it.

Back to Ukraine after Friday’s lesson in leadership, in which I am a world leader (also).

Ukraine is not your typical war where you can give up and then return to a normal life after a little adventure.

Many brigades have been reduced to one-tenth of their personnel strength, and the only way out, since 80% of the wounded returned to duty, has been death, severe disability, or capture.

And if you end up in Russian captivity, you are raped daily, castrated, tortured, psychologically broken down, and starved, likely leaving you destroyed as a human being afterwards.

There’s a before-and-after photo of a female police officer where it’s painfully obvious that she was raped daily for two years and that she is broken, the same goes for the men, but they don’t want to talk about the rapes as they experience an even worse stigma.

And this is on top of enduring a high-intensity war that many adventurous Europeans left – old special forces or marine veterans with “multiple tours in Iraq” under their belts said that here it’s fate that decides and your lifespan is like that of a Swedish infantry soldier under attack – very short.

But the Ukrainian engineer and librarian stayed in the trenches when the ex-marines left.

The country underwent Russian subversive activities, and the defense forces were virtually non-existent in 2014 because it was part of Russia’s takeover of Ukraine to dismantle the ability to defend itself.

It started back in the 90s when they convinced the West to remove nuclear weapons, to some extent.

I will come back to the Russian subversive activities because even in the West, we are under immense pressure from them.

For example, in a situation where we should be broadening our efforts to train the population in personal skills to kill Russians, we are instead making sports shooting, weapon ownership, and hunting more difficult.

I always feel that if we could crack down on gangs and criminal clans as hard as we do on our hunters and sports shooters, the murder rate would drop to zero. Unfortunately, that’s not the case, and the reason is quite simple – laws are only for those who follow them.

But that’s a topic for another day.

In 2014, some brigades had only one company to send to the ATO (anti-terrorist operation) in eastern Ukraine.

Russia waged the war with its BTGs (battalion groups) from VDV, supported by local dissatisfied residents and probably half of Spetsnaz, FSB/GRU/SVR, and their elite SOF (I guess).

I had no understanding of the situation in Ukraine at that time and got stuck in the pro-Russian narrative that was made available early on, and Ukraine initially had to send those they could apprehend to the war – often those with a bit more propensity for violence, like ultras, which created a distorted image of the war that everyone was Nazis because there were quite a few examples of that.

For example, Donetsk airport was defended by an armored brigade – “cyborgs” who had to be taken out with thermobaric bombs after a very successful defense battle.

It’s easy to think of the Finnish spirit at Summa and Taipale, where they stayed behind piles of cartridge cases with a field covered in Russians in front of them.

Inside Ukraine, the Russians destabilized everything they could – do you remember when pro-Ukrainians attacked the building in Odessa and killed everyone?

Russian psyops had prepared a lot of graphics and texts that went far beyond what actually happened, but it was still a major low point.

The question is whether Russia, just like in the West, also had influence over that part of the playing field and could pull some strings – I don’t know, but it’s highly likely.

Anyway, it was easy to be horrified by the violence, and the support for Ukraine was lukewarm at best after all those acts of violence and large Nazi marches, then everything was forgotten except for Ukraine, which had an open civil war to deal with and significant political instability.

The Russians had collaborators and infiltrators everywhere within the police and military, and there was extreme violence for a few years between the two sides, which would have been non-existent if Russia hadn’t fueled it.

All because the citizens of Ukraine chose to join the EU instead of sticking with the criminal clan of Russia, which happened to have a country.

This is how Russia operates even now – they try to take over everywhere, Romania and Moldova, for example, by winning them over politically.

In every country, there are enough willing individuals to facilitate such a takeover, including in the Baltics if Russia is allowed to persist over time.

Other countries can be politically locked down completely so that they become passive, but that’s also a topic for another day.

In February 2022, Ukraine was essentially against the West – Scholz’s infamous words of “can’t Ukraine just give up so everything can return to normal” were not very mature and dignified for a chancellor.

Scholz embodied everything we don’t want to see in a politician, everything, besides being German.

Or Biden’s presumed deal with Russia, which we have no evidence for but can suspect – Zelensky has at least insinuated it.

Macron’s and the German spy chief’s assurances that Russia would not attack.

And after the war started, the West’s procrastination with everything, where even helmets were said to lead to a nuclear war, the USA slowing down Europe’s willingness to send equipment by waving contracts, and we obeyed while little five-year-old girls were raped, tortured, and murdered in front of their mothers who were then released, and the soldiers stood and laughed at them.

Probably only surpassed by ISIS, who forced mothers to eat their infants, or Hamas, who threw babies into ovens and forced the mothers to watch, the latter probably even filmed, unfortunately.

USA leaked all of Ukraine’s war plans to Putin throughout the war.

And so on.

Zelensky was a small comedian who unexpectedly became president, but the country wanted peace after almost 10 years of civil war and to approach the EU – he became an attractive candidate.

Russia attacked Ukraine and the rumor is that the FSB stole most of the 5 billion USD that were unmarked as bribes, but at least on the southern front it worked as intended and Russian forces rolled over the bridges at Kherson and Khakovka already on the first day.

Platoons with mines could have stopped that, so traitors within the Ukrainian administration, the armed forces, and the GUR slowed down at all levels – they have been prosecuted later during the war.

Kiev was under attack, Zelensky was to be killed, the USA offered to fly him out “I need ammunition not a lift” – history written.

Veterans stormed the barracks and defended Kiev, and many were the Special Operations Forces, Airborne Troops, and Spetsnaz who disappeared that first week.

Airborne landing OVER Kiev, 1500 infiltrated Special Operations Forces, Spetsnaz, and so on – this was a seriously intended coup and the army was in the east.

The presidential palace was attacked, if I remember correctly?

I think China inadvertently saved Ukraine by delaying the start of the war until after the Olympics were over, and the attacking forces had to stick to the roads as they couldn’t drive over frozen terrain due to the rasputitsa starting.

The platoons and companies defending key terrain suffered 90% losses, and at Hostomel they gathered the Malays, the supply troops, the military police, newly recruited soldiers, and the soldiers on site, and with the help of incoming units, they repelled an airborne landing from the Airborne Troops that had been planned down to the smallest detail.

Russia voluntarily left over 50% of the conquered territory, partly, but then after a series of Ukrainian lightning offensives.

When things were going too well, the West rose up and stopped Ukraine, we have already been through all those occasions, but the funny thing is that our intuition has almost always proven to be correct.

Zelensky has had every reason to exit already – he had a period where he was most celebrated and could have retired as a wealthy expat down in Italy or France and lived well on his biography and self-promotion.

But he has chosen to be a begging car salesman that European leaders have become increasingly tired of, and Trump and JD Vance treated him exceptionally poorly.

But so did Biden, and European leaders – after the NATO meeting in 2023, they couldn’t hold back and called Zelensky ungrateful. The audacity 😡

He swallows all humiliation and smiles back – Zelensky has taken an infinite amount of crap for over +3 years besides being responsible for a lot of mistakes that have led others to resign.

Why then?

He doesn’t need money or fame, his family risks being killed every day, and he has done his part, which probably everyone can agree on.

Perhaps for Ukraine, for freedom, for national rule of law, for right and wrong?

What usually makes people like Mandela and Gandhi the ones we read about in history books.

Zelensky is not like Arafat, a product created by Russia, or like Mao, a person who later went seriously wrong.

Or like Mandela who negotiated away the economy if they got freedom.

Zelensky has been willing to stand up for what is right, but it has been Europe and the USA who have done all of the above, and Zelensky has flatly refused throughout an entire war and made himself uncomfortable with everyone.

He has not taken the opportunity to do what he could to make things better for himself, really.

He also doesn’t have a dark past like Churchill, he is as close to a warrior of light as you can get, and there aren’t overly many of them in history.

Those we read about as the great ones often have an alternative history we haven’t heard of that is considerably less flattering, and then they happen to end up right, and history is slightly embellished in their favor.

Not Zelensky – he has made mistakes, yes, not mobilizing at the start of the war is something he will have to live with for the rest of his life, and not believing the initial reports of abuses either.

But just like all those who have truly been great in history, he will lose the election or resign at the end of the war, be accused of a lot, and then some opportunist will take most of the credit instead.

Zelensky has grit, he is ready to die, he doesn’t work to become as rich as possible, he’s not there for likes and pats on the back, he has his wife and children with him on this, and he does it for the country of Ukraine and for right and wrong.

Moreover, he is street smart and survives in a country like Ukraine, notoriously difficult to navigate.

Tell me how many politicians in Sweden are doing the best for the country of Sweden – I would venture to say none.

This is actually the greatest privilege a person can receive, and he has understood the higher purpose that almost everyone never comes to realize because they get stuck wanting to rake in as many pesos as possible, be liked, famous, or in some other way build up the pile of status and property.

An everyday hero, plain and simple.

But Zelensky is not alone – he has been lucky because the GUR and SBU decided at the start of the war to stand behind him, even though we mostly hear about the GUR.

Budanov has become the poster boy for the entire intelligence community, perhaps mostly because he is young and doesn’t look like a violent rugby player who is two seconds away from knocking you out like the other chiefs.

He has also dared to persist all along – at the start of the war, he warned to deaf ears and dares to be uncomfortable.

I think he took office in 2020, so just like for Zelensky, he was the right man in the right place and grew with the task without exploiting the situation for personal gain.

The number of assassination attempts on him has been many, he is still mad at me for that thing with his wife being poisoned, but it’s not easy to know that someone with a Russian accent in Germany would pass on things I said in confidence 😐

The number of attempts to get him fired has been even more, and they have tried to pin Kursk on him, which failed.

38 years old.

And then Zalizhny, something as rare as a Ukrainian teddy bear who happened to become the Chief of Staff and was a military genius.

The Spring Offensive of 2023 was attributed to him, and Zelensky saw him as a political rival so he had to resign.

I would argue that the last one responsible for it was Zalizhny.

UA parliamentarians demanded to visit the troops and posted pictures of new equipment on Facebook and wrote where they were located so Russia got that information in a way they couldn’t be caught for.

On top of that, the USA leaked the battle plans to Russia.

In 2022, Ukraine was not allowed to attack along the left bank of the Dnieper when the area was undefended, but in 2023, instead of attacking into Russia, they were to attack towards Tokmak and the Surovikin Line, which was probably the best fortified area on all fronts.

The Surovikin Line could be the best fortified area in the world since World War II, or perhaps the second best after Korea.

A mile deep minefield, no own air force, and RU had ahkp and attack aircraft as well as air superiority.

NATO also believed so much in themselves that they demanded newly established brigades trained by NATO to go first.

But as expected, it’s still good that Zalizhny became ambassador to the UK 👍

I refuse to believe that the West did this with a hidden agenda, I think it was arrogance, misunderstanding, naivety, and an overconfidence in ourselves that were behind it.

A bit like the eternal criticism I get for calling Ukraine the world’s best infantry even when all European countries gave up within weeks last time, so I have historical support in that 😀

Ukraine has set up its own storm brigades and offensive units in both the National Guard and the army – we already saw in 2023 how they reduced platoons in defense around Bakhmut to 4-5 in their own losses.

And clearing a defensive system or retaking a defensive position is one of the most difficult things to do.

But they were not allowed to go first – the attack had to be carried out with mechanized units straight into the minefields according to NATO doctrine.

Ukraine quickly changed its tactics, but the damage was already done.

And the Russian border up there in the north was completely undefended, but they were not allowed to attack at all…

The Ukrainian soldier – Zelensky, Zalizhny, and Budanov are nothing at all without the Ukrainian soldier.

It’s the infantry sitting in the defenses and seeing the mechanized battalion advancing towards them that makes the difference between a free or occupied Ukraine.

One of the most impressive videos of the war so far pic.twitter.com/aD9DTEUzKr

— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) May 14, 2022

A bit more from memory lane.

Yesterday was a taught day. RAF launched an attack. We spent 4 hours under artillery shells.
I filmed only the beginning. First 50 minutes we were under attack of 152 mm. Then «Grad».
I dug myself and when I finished 80 rockets landed in 30 meters. I won the lottery 80 times. pic.twitter.com/M7IwxOiC1v

— Kriegsforscher (@OSINTua) June 5, 2022

https://twitter.com/antiputler_news/status/1571606346595811332?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w

Snad jsou chlapi v pořádku pic.twitter.com/YtjuIVSD0G

— Jan Marek (@Honza_marek_) November 4, 2022

Especially this one is quite interesting, completely untouched.

Our hero under heavy fire one on one with an APC 😳

Books should be written about these people, and they are just silently defending our country #Ukraine !!!! pic.twitter.com/rnXeoqn0J3

— Slava 🇺🇦 (@Heroiam_Slava) March 1, 2023

The war has gone through several phases now, we are +3 years into the war, and the Ukrainian infantry doesn’t have much positive to hope for in terms of ending the war.

Hardly anyone has been granted leave to go home, and the way out is either disabled or as a prisoner of war, and then disabled in captivity?

Mentally coping with this requires a lot, whether you are a man, woman, or identify with another gender.

Above all, it requires accepting that you may end the war as fallen, disabled, or a prisoner of war, and that fate is worth the sacrifice.

We have had wars that ended quickly – every single country in Europe surrendered immediately last time we were put to the test, for example.

Few countries have infantry like the Ukrainian, Finnish, or Vietnamese, but post-war Vietnam became a worse dictatorship than the one they fought against by far.

So I never understood that the Vietnamese boat refugees were actually South Vietnamese fleeing from the dictatorship in the north – to me, it was portrayed as a consequence of US involvement in the war when they were trying to prevent it.

Several million dead later, the country is okay but still a dictatorship today in 2025.

It is much more likely that Ukraine follows Finland and becomes a prosperous country post-war, but we must get there, and not having an end in sight is demoralizing.

Yes, the Ukrainian infantry is not a person who has been forged in the same furnace, but as a group, they excel far beyond what the mobilized forces of other European countries with a month’s training are expected to do, I believe all of Europe understands that.

And Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces and those we don’t hear about are now at an extremely high level – you want them on your side in the future, Europe.

Yes, Ukraine is tightening up, the number of films from the fronts has decreased significantly, and they are retreating, but enduring this for three years is sensational.

They have been short of everything throughout the whole war – it’s quite strange that they haven’t had winter clothes when they can be bought all over Europe for pesetas, but they are sitting there, freezing, and still content.

They have had too little of everything all the time and have solved the task with what they had available.

Despite all this, they have fought highly competently and inflicted heavy losses on RU at a ratio of 1:3 – 1:5, and an incredible damage to the RU equipment park that is almost irreparable.

There have also been rumors among the infantry about the betrayal of the commanders and politicians, but they do not turn their weapons inward or desert, and not many prisoners of war have been taken. Those political betrayals are never initiated by UA but come from the West, among other things.

Here you have an old-school warrior

Ukraine is full of old-school warriors who will have a very hard time adapting to civilian life eventually, but it is these people who have stood between peace and war in the whole of Europe.

They must be hailed as heroes, every single one of them.

I always try to relate to myself and my family and what I would choose – I talked to Bison and when the war broke out, he just told his wife “I’m leaving”, with crying children and wife, and now three years later he is quite disillusioned.

When is the responsibility towards the family more important than the war if the war is never allowed to end – when should one choose the family and start working again, in his case on an oil rig with a good salary.

There are different levels of soldier skills, and just because you accept that you may not survive doesn’t mean you become a great soldier – that requires personal skills.

Yes, to some extent, we have a situation where the Russians are incompetent idiots, but that is a highly simplified picture and takes away a lot of the glory of the UA infantry.

We saw countless films where Russian soldiers shot towards Ukraine and UA soldiers were in some impossible position with their legs in the water just to get a hit – that’s the difference.

I would argue that it is the Ukrainian infantry that is the factor instead, and if this war machine had been set up against another country (except Finland), it might not have gone so badly.

Open fields, air superiority, artillery dominance, massive advantage in equipment, and a 1:3 advantage in personnel are often a recipe for a resounding victory. 60,000 artillery shells per day, and most volunteers have left, and yet they were the most motivated in Europe.

But if you have to kill every single darn infantryman with a knife and no one gives up, it comes to a stop.

Now everyone understands that the USA and Europe will take all credit for this war, and what little remains will go to the leadership and commanders, but without the infantry, there is no war – it’s as simple as that.

Macron is cocky, but his military equipment was knocked out within weeks even though they had more aircraft and better tanks in 1940.

The Poles had more tanks in absolute numbers in 1939, and Norway required a huge amphibious operation that the British tried to disrupt.

The Dutch sat behind rivers in large forts and maybe the Danes had a hard time defending themselves and are acquitted.

In all wars, it was the marksmen who gave up and a leadership that immediately sought asylum – weak.

That’s how it is.

This defense force simply cannot be wasted because they are the bulwark of the future against the beyond-mural scourge.

Perhaps the world’s most effective defense force today with work experience and the right job courses.

And above all – if we do not treat these marksmen with respect, they will take what they believe is rightfully theirs in Europe’s underworld and become our new unstoppable mafia.

If Ukraine throws in the towel even in a ceasefire, it will be as expected because the Russian mafia, GRU, FSB, and SVR will ensure it.

Unemployment will skyrocket and they will move to Europe.

Just that should make our politicians sleepless with worry and ensure Ukrainian breakthrough as soon as possible.

I continue to pursue this for several reasons, but one is absolutely the total self-sacrifice all the warriors of light have made in Ukraine to keep the beyond-mural scourge away from our gardens in the rest of Europe.

They deserve infinitely more than they get, and will get, but today this is perhaps the most honorable task one can have in the world.

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