Ukraine daily update March 5, 2026

This post is dedicated to Ukraine but hard not to start with Iran.

The fact that the Iranian hydra reaches far into the West is clearly demonstrated by Carl Bildt and Fredrik Reinfeldt when they spew out tweets about international law and how unlawful the USA is. Since I haven’t figured out how to get paid by Iran, I still report honestly, but if anyone has contacts, a friend of mine would like to know how to get blood money from Iran directly to Swish.

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Israel is targeting objectives in western Iran with dumb bombs and direct hits, if it had been JDAM, the aircraft wouldn’t have been seen gliding by – I lost the footage. This tells us that the Iranian air defense is non-existent in that area at least.

It also tells us that Israel doesn’t have a huge stockpile of missiles and JDAMs because they would never risk such an overflight if they didn’t have to โ€“ manpads is real.

Israel is presumably interested in regime change, and the USA should also consider this path as their cost for this war requires a pro-Western government in Iran that starts trading with them.

Starting with diplomacy now is not of interest to them, even though Iran is obviously trying to lie their way out of this โ€“ first threaten like a divine warrior, and then immediately chicken out and start asking for peace – that’s apparently where we are now in time.

What is the Iranian regime and do they deserve to be buried alive in their bunkers?

In the 1970s, Iranians were not entirely satisfied with the Shah, and political Islam emerged as an attractive alternative for the left, nationalists, and liberals when they were promised equality, welfare, social safety nets, and more individual freedom. Equality was particularly attractive to women who helped vote Khomeini into power.

Evidently, it was all a lie, and political Islam had no intention of delivering any of this but instead rapidly created one of the world’s worst dictatorships, where the left and liberals were executed on day two. The women who enthusiastically supported Khomeini’s rise to power quickly realized that they had voted themselves straight into hell, but that is now history, and all we can do is learn from the mistakes perhaps?

The IRGC was created directly because the religious leaders did not trust the army; it seems that Iran consists of politics and the army running parallel with the IRGC and the religious leaders – two power structures where the IRGC and the religious leaders have the decisive vote every day of the week.

Quite similar to the Soviet model, and although it is not discussed much, you can probably guess that they had a hand in the seizure of power.

Since the IRGC directly answers to the religious leaders, they have become the country’s elite, and generals from there get prominent positions as politicians or governors, and together with the religious leaders, they have enriched themselves immensely โ€“ suitcases full of gold bars immensely.

Everyone, the IRGC and the religious leaders, have families living luxurious lives in the West, attending the best schools, while completely oppressing the citizens โ€“ especially women are treated very poorly, where one can be arrested, raped, tortured, and ultimately murdered for showing a few strands of hair, and it’s completely arbitrary.

Iran has destabilized the entire Middle East, engaged in subversive activities in Europe and the USA on a massive scale, and even been caught paying gangs and criminal clans in Sweden to commit violent crimes for them.

Exiled Iranians are frequently murdered as well.

Does this remind you of any other country, perhaps Russia?

If Iran falls, calm will settle in the Middle East, and 50% of influence operations in the West will disappear.

For 47 years, Iranians have lived under this oppression, and the US’s all-in bet is that they can carry out a people’s revolution with a little support from JDAMs.

Don’t forget that Iranian navy ships provided Houthi with target coordinates for their anti-ship missiles and drones (received from Iran), where they targeted over 300 civilian cargo ships and sank several.

Now the USA has activated the Kurds; I am a bit surprised by the strategy of first betraying the Kurds in Syria and then asking for their help in Iran, but this has been planned for several months, so the two events ran parallel to each other โ€“ try to explain that if you can.

The idea is probably to try to weaken as much of the IRGC and the police as possible through indirect capabilities and then, with the help of the Kurds, SOF, and Iranian citizens, simply take over the country by running over whatever is left.

Krister Sfeir on SR doesn’t mention a word about this, which was surprising because he is supposed to be a Middle East expert that at least our media listens to. I think he is wrong to predict diplomacy because this is a serious attempt at a change of power – Israel knows that one day the regime will have operational nuclear weapons, and then the window is closed.

https://www.sverigesradio.se/artikel/kan-kriget-i-mellanostern-leda-till-langsiktig-fred

I believe we have reached “the tipping point,” but it will take a few weeks for this to unfold, and in the meantime, drones rain over MENA.

Terrorist attacks will increase exponentially in Europe, and Western embassies in all Muslim countries are attacked in an attempt to make us retract, which the UK has already done, of course. Starmer has completely messed up, but that’s another story.

The IRGC and the religious leadership are already equipped with fake passports and suitcases full of dollars ready to flee.

If things get tough, an Israeli division and US Marine Corps may be deployed, but ideally, they would probably want to avoid that and make this look like a people’s revolution, at least the Potemkin facade of it.

I have already written a post about the Kurds, and they are not “one country” at all but 4-5 different “countries” within other countries.

Quite like Israel and now Ukraine, they are a nation in defense where women are plentiful in combat units and are probably the best marksmen in the Middle East (on par with Israel).

But they have no ambitions for power beyond achieving autonomy or preferably their own country in the areas they have staked out, which are inaccessible mountainous regions where no one else wants to live.

Read below and understand that in a region of constant ethnic cleansing, the Kurds are a beacon of light โ€“ if there are any people who should be supported, it is them, and I was immensely disappointed when the USA threw Rojava under the bus.

With a bit of luck, post-Iran and post-upcoming war in Syria, Iran-Kurds-Israel may form a security-building alliance in the region?

We haven’t seen the last of Turkey yet, even if they probably tread a bit more cautiously in the future once Iran falls.

We all remember when Turkey fell because their fail-safe with a military coup didn’t work โ€“ Erdogan had managed to buy over too many senior officers, so Turkey today is a dictatorship that may also fall in the future as they operate like Iran and Russia in the West.

Back to Ukraine excuse the detour –

It’s actually a new war in Ukraine now with a drone-saturated battlefield in 2026.

In 2025, Ukraine figured out how to conduct defensive warfare in clouds of FAB and drones, but it was a costly lesson.

They master the drone weapon fully and now have interceptor drones that can combat all drone targets and sometimes robots.

70% of Geran was shot down with interceptor drones in February, unclear if it was 70% of those shot down or 70% of the total, but it’s an absolutely enormous development that has instantly neutralized the Russian drone threat against Europe as soon as we get them in place.

It neutralizes long-range drones but not close-range FPV drones yet, but we will probably get there quite soon too as “interceptor ammunition” fired from various handheld platforms is incoming.

https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/4097519-interceptor-drones-shot-down-over-70-of-shahed-drones-over-kyiv-in-feb-syrskyi.html

Last autumn, the offensive strategic reserve started with mobile offensive warfare, and after a rough start northeast of Pokrovsk, things are going very well now.

What Ukraine lacks is enough LV because the USA stopped all deliveries just in time for Putin to start the winter bombing of the power grid, so it has looked bad, but at the fronts, it’s positive.

Ukraine is now targeting drone goals further and further back, which to me takes the form of pre-emptive strikes, and you all know what pre-emptive strikes precede, right ๐Ÿง

Russia is unable to conduct defensive warfare at all and has resorted to low-intensity offensive combat where soldiers are expendable ammunition sent forward in a steady stream so they have full control over the fronts – “every hour a group must run forward towards the farm until we see a Russian flag from the farm’s roof.” Simple enough for the officer corps to succeed in following.

All mechanized falls in recent months have ended in catastrophic losses for Russia.

Behind it all sits a flask-bottom-glasses Chinese person multitasking Russia’s digital battlefield that they built and operate for them, but it seems to work less well in mobile warfare – that’s the impression I’ve got.

It’s probably the kill chain to hit the target that is still too slow to keep up since the effective fire must come from Russian weapon systems manned by Russians.

Russia itself couldn’t get its digital battlefield to work, but unfortunately, now it does with China’s help. Since 2023, China has actively stepped in and supported Russia in various capabilities, not least their war industry – both in building it up but also with critical components and raw materials.

What does Russia have – they have 700,000 ground troops that are decreasing, don’t know the distribution, but it’s poorly expendable infantry and “better units” that have performed just as poorly in offensive operations.

The 76th GAAD was fully deployed at Pokrovsk, it went poorly, and then they were completely used up – it must be considered one of Russia’s better reserves as they have been in reserve as a rapid reaction force for a long time far away at the Dnieper and were resourced and trained.

UA has over 60,000 in its strategic offensive reserve, which is at least 5 times more than RU, as they never fight with less than a 1:5 loss ratio, often more.

Since Ukraine started fighting with sparse defenses in 2025, most maneuver brigades must have been in reserve and able to be resourced, and the personnel issue has been discussed for several years – must be resolved now. UA’s defense force is 1.2 million or so, so starting to move to frontline service cannot be impossible.

There is thus another reserve behind the strategic offensive reserve whose size we do not yet know, but it should be considerable and mechanized.

We can safely assume that they have been trained in the latest offensive and defensive warfare tactics that were first tested by Azov at Bakhmut in 2023.

Russia is simply in decline, which lends some credibility to the rumors of mobilization, and after Iran collapsed in a huge fireworks display in all four directions, one might wonder what Russia is planning – or you already know because you read the posts.

We have previously suggested mobilization as a likely reason for Telegram being shut down, and now even Zelensky seems to have read my posts because he says the same.

Hungary will fall in a few months, and they deserve it, it has come out that their defense force moved unnaturally on February 24, 2022, so it’s not unlikely that they never got started, and that’s why Orban fired 100 senior officers.

Czechia and Spain are probably the last ones left, Spain was apparently Iran-bought, I read somewhere?

Belarus is just waiting to liberate itself, and Ukraine will assist with capability.

And finally, Russia turns inward – there is a reason why 400,000 domestic troops never set foot in Ukraine because they are needed for the upcoming power struggle (final battle).

Early April is probably the time for offensive operations again when the ground starts to bear, as Argus on the other blog clarified for us that by then the grass has taken hold and stabilized the soil – for that, he was dubbed the Mud Conqueror as an honorific he didn’t feel honored by at all.

The USA seems preoccupied with Iran, and besides Trump recently condescendingly called Zelensky something, they seem to be left alone.

Flamingo has recently targeted several goals, including the Iskander factory, and in Novorossiysk, five (5) ships were damaged the other day, and a frigate was sunk.

A year or two ago, it would have upset johanno1.se, but now it just elicited a yawn when MXT posted it.

After this desert journey where Ukraine has already accepted a ceasefire and if Russia just said yes, we would have a promising start – if Europe manages not to betray Ukraine in 2026, this war should be won?

It will end this year, you know that because you have faithfully read Johan No.1 and gotten all the information you need, but the USA has really tried to sabotage Ukraine’s chances here.

Small puzzle pieces – UA advances on all fronts, RU, as sore losers, have exhausted all their robots, a larger RU offensive seems unlikely, and Russia will soon carry out a major mobilization.

1. Mobilization is a last resort for RU, which they only do if forced, 2022 forced…

2. RU will only target all expensive infrastructure in Ukraine if they realize they will never take it over. Shooting all ammunition before retreating is a bit of their signature move.

3. Since last autumn, Ukraine has shown us that they can conduct offensive warfare in a drone-saturated battlefield with minimal losses, at least a 1:5 advantage.

4. UA has domestic production of what they need, and the personnel supply has been discussed for two years now, so it’s not impossible to urgently deploy with a peak of 350,000 – 400,000 and a defense force of over 1.2 million.

The offensive operations are dizzying – it’s not the 2023 NATO attack anymore that dies on its own and not about taking terrain either. They isolate a Russian unit and then attack the defense systems, which is the most challenging warfare alongside urban combat, with the aim of eradicating the defense.

Ukraine took all the difficult moments and put them together into a new standard procedure in their offensive operations, which also take place in a drone-saturated combat environment – it all began with Azov SV around Bakhmut in 2023.

Those who have argued with me over the years that Ukraine doesn’t have the world’s best marksmanship should send me a thousand bucks pronto as punishment for their embarrassing general errors.

There is no other unit in Europe, apart from a few thousand in special forces, that has even started training on this, and Ukraine has developed dozens of brigades with this capability from actual missions now.

Now we have two parallel events, firstly the global conflict, aka our time’s world war, which is probably underway now, and then we have the path to a Ukrainian grand victory in their war.

I don’t believe the global conflict is still hanging in the balance because China has โ€“

-lost the Panama Canal

-lost the Venezuelan oil.

-lost Iran.

-received a huge blow from economic warfare on January 29.

I think we can assume that a Chinese countermove is coming now that Xi Jinping has sacked the entire military leadership.

The alternative is for China to back down and bend the knee โ€“ do you really think they are capable of that after tasting “multipolar world order,” “US shall fall,” “BRICS currency” which they have actively worked on for almost 20 years.

For Europe, it’s crucial that we have Ukraine’s back and break Russia’s back, mine the border again, and permanently close it.

Belarus needs to fall and Kaliningrad needs to be permanently demilitarized, an autonomous enclave trading with the EU – some kind of land-based ferry where everyone goes for cigarettes and strong liquor?

When we reach this point and then turn towards Africa with FAIR trade agreements, Europe’s golden age as an economic powerhouse has only just begun โ€“ our children will have a hundred good years.

It’s better than being divided, infiltrated by Russia, Iran, and China, and completely dependent on handouts from the USA, right ๐Ÿ˜€

Ukraine into the EU, of course, as a thank you for dying for us for almost five years before the Russian puppet show collapsed.

Goodness, how fiercely this vision has been fought against, and is being fought against. In the face of this development, where the USA, Russia, China, and Iran all see a strong EU as a bigger threat than each other, it seems.

Follow the Kurdish guy @serupek on Twitter for the latest on Iran, he has a few hundred followers including me, who is the only one sharing his posts, but he reports everything in concise one-liners and doesn’t miss a single robot strike, I suspect he has some connection to the Kurds but has emerged as a credible source.


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13 thoughts on “Ukraine daily update March 5, 2026”

  1. Russia’s losses in Ukraine 2026-03-05

    Unfortunately, there is no visible slowdown when it comes to UAVs, on the contrary, we now have a new record. The old one was at 1851 and was thus beaten by almost 99 units. A lot of artillery and a lot of soft vehicles but also some tanks.

    • 900 KWIA
    • 4 Tanks
    • 7 AFVs
    • 41 Artillery systems
    • 1950 UAVs
    • 210 Vehicles and Fuel tanks
    • 1 Special equipment

     

     

    SLAVA UKRAINI

  2. AFU reports:

    • 118 combat clashes
    • 85 air strikes
    • 238 KAB
    • 9,054 kamikaze drones
    • 3,407 shells (61 from MLRS)
    Here we also have a new record regarding the suicide drones (the old one was 8,990).
  3. Thank you for the post, Johan no 1.
    Interesting as usual. More enjoyable to read Your informative posts than to stare at two babbling chatterboxes on TV 1 and TV 4 in the mornings.
    One learns as long as one has students, as my old physics teacher told me when I tried to convince him that the earth is pear-shaped.๐ŸŒ

  4. N Slobozhansky-Kursk 2
    S Slobozhansky 1
    Kupyansk 3
    Lyman 3โ†˜๏ธ
    Slovyansk 6โ†˜๏ธ
    Kramatorsk 2
    Kostjantynivka 15๐Ÿ’ฅ
    Pokrovsk 22๐Ÿ’ฅ
    Oleksandrivskij 7โ†˜๏ธ
    Huliaipole 14๐Ÿ’ฅโ†˜๏ธ
    Orikhivsk 0
    Prydniprovskij/Dnipro 2

    Sum sectors 77๐Ÿ‡ท๐Ÿ‡บโ†˜๏ธ
    Unlocalized 41(๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ฆ)
    Total 118โ†˜๏ธ

    1. I hope so, waiting for it to at least level off and stop increasing.

      Seemed to decrease for a while when it comes to FPV but then they have started increasing again.

      For UAVs, there has been a nearly exponential increase clearly since the summer of 2025 (with some variations up and down of course).

      Back then, the seven-day average was 130-150 per day. At the turn of the year, the average was around 500 and right now it’s up to 1600.

      They have probably saved up large quantities to be able to use them during the winter, so maybe we will see the number decrease. However, if they manage to constantly scale up production, I am afraid it could become devastating in the long run.

      Ukraine has already admitted that Flamingo production was delayed due to Russian attacks.

  5. SnapphaneiExil

    Here is the first post from a person with some personal insight into the situation in Iran. Thank you Johan for your fantastic initiative to start your own blog, by the way! (And yes, I am a paying subscriber ๐Ÿ˜‰

    I have one Iranian parent who came to Sweden before the revolution. I will start by saying that my Iranian parent was very loyal to the Shah.

    The image I had during my upbringing was that the Pahlavi dynasties I and II were a fantastic time in Iran. As I grew older, I realized that this was a matter of the observer’s perspective. The truth probably lies somewhere between my parent’s perspective and Johan No 1’s quote above that “the Iranians were not completely satisfied.” A lot of people, especially liberals (in the sense of preferring Western ideals), enjoyed the Shah’s era. I guess that this group also constituted a large part of those who moved/fled Iran to the Western world (UK, USA, Canada, Switzerland, Australia, and the Nordic countries with large Iranian diasporas) before/after the revolution. As a counterpoint to these, there were religious conservatives who saw the rise of Western ideals as a threat. And this group then created an unholy alliance with the radical left (one might wonder if the Soviet Union had a hand in financing the left…?) to overthrow the Shah in 1979. According to the latest episode of the Spionpodden podcast, on the other hand, the participant claims that the religious/conservatives were supported by the USA to create a counterbalance in the Middle East to potential leftist influence from the Soviet Union. Who really knows!

    Overall, my impression is that for those who were not blinded by hatred towards the Shah, there were clear signals of what the mullahs were capable of and what their plans were; namely, an Islamic state (with all that it entails). For example, a source for a quote here from a speech in 1964 by Khomeini where it is clearly stated that boys and girls should not play together or attend the same school:

    http://www.professorcampbell.org/sources/khomeini.html

    Furthermore, the prelude to the revolution was initiated by the fact that my relative’s cinema was set on fire, resulting in hundreds of deaths:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_Rex_fire

    Initially, there were rumors that the secret police were behind the attack, but nowadays it is widely accepted that it was the revolutionaries (the leftist faction). The personal account I received was that my relative, who owned the cinema and was relatively wealthy, refused to contribute money to the revolutionary movement. It should also be noted that the cinema was located in a city influenced by British culture and infrastructure because it was an oil city where BP had a significant influence (in a positive sense if you are liberal).

    I don’t really know where I’m going with this, but perhaps I want to counterbalance the image that sometimes arises that all Iranians despised the Shah. The truth is probably that it was a segregated country (north vs south, city vs countryside, monarchists and liberals vs religious and the left).

    I also want to partly counterbalance the fact that the non-religious (radical left) who allied with the mullahs during the revolution did not have the opportunity to realize who they were allying with. I believe it is a mental defense mechanism for Iranians with leftist sympathies who later fled to the Western world.

    I sincerely hope that the mullahs are now on the decline and that they are brought down by the USA/Israel. But I am a bit concerned that Iran could become a new Iraq, i.e., divided. I am quite sure that, for example, Israel will be satisfied with toppling the mullahs and then stepping back. I cannot see any Israeli self-interest in, for example, an Iranian democracy. The most important thing is to overthrow the leadership that has declared Israel as the archenemy. And I do not see it as a given that the USA would focus on supporting the return of the Shah to then declare democratic elections. Time will tell!

    1. Thank you for the insight.

      I believe that in the case of the USA, they are consciously making a Venezuela, meaning they are removing the cancerous tumor and leaving the country to heal on its own. (A bit like Swedish healthcare?) In other words, they are not making any efforts to impose a new regime on the country but rather leaving it to the country itself, meaning the forces that have not been significantly weakened in the removal of the previous leadership. And whatever remains of the previous leadership has to deal with the consequences of continuing in the footsteps of the previous leadership. They now not only have eyes on them but also a gun barrel against their temple.

      As you write, Israel primarily aims at removing the leadership hostile to Israel and incapacitating the country’s military threats.

  6. Just a brief update on the situation in the UAE, it’s very calm here and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the USA and Israel have truly managed to eliminate the launch sites. By the way, Sweden has now sent an emergency team to MENA, thank you, I already feel relieved when three people come to the rescue, goodness…
    https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/ud-har-skickat-nodteam-kan-utfarda-pass-och-lana-ut-pengar

    No, I don’t need to be rescued but sending three people to an entire region is hardly showing determination.

    I was out running some errands at a shopping mall and IKEA, it was completely empty, really a pandemic feeling when large spaces echo completely empty.

    Johan, you bring up China and their potential gains and how they think. My understanding is that Iran has had equipment from both Russia and China, and it didn’t even take 24 hours for the USA/Israel to take control of the airspace, do you think this will change China’s attitude when they see that their military equipment doesn’t measure up?

    1. If this is true, we may see the difference here in effective drone control (Ukraine) and air superiority (USA/Israel). In the latter case, they remove the archer, which results in 100%, while Ukraine, which has to fight the arrows, reaches between 75-95%. The 5% that still get through are five percent of several hundred drones hitting their targets, in other words, quite a lot.

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