At least we have some good news from Ukraine to start the week with. You brew yourself a cup of coffee, tell the boss that you need to think about how to solve the problem, and then take half an hour to read the post – works every time until the boss realizes he never mentioned any problem, so you have to vary it a bit, unpredictability is always best.
Ukraine will manufacture ASTER (ballistic interceptor) and Storm Shadow themselves. Since we in Europe cannot significantly scale up production, the right decision has finally been made. We went through ASTER a while ago if you remember.
If one were to guess, Ukraine has already dismantled some interceptors and missiles, manufactured the machines, and is just waiting for legal permission to produce them. The 3D printers are waiting for the blueprints.
Aster will probably completely replace Patriot in Europe in about a year when Ukraine churns out thousands, and Storm Shadow will become the go-to missile for wetworks.
Of course, we need time, but the UA weapons industry is currently operating at 25% capacity according to themselves, and there are 200 billion euros of frozen oligarch funds in banks in Belgium, all of which now seem to agree in one way or another to go to Ukraine except for the damn Belgians.
It’s a bit like waiting for a geyser to erupt in Yellowstone, roughly; we were actually there once but the geysers had taken the day off, though we were chased by a large bison.
We are in a race with China, which is trying to catch up with Russia equivalently if this gets going now.
Everything else is probably being manufactured, so those were the two big bottlenecks, and they can’t 3D print or bend the advanced aircraft in a garage yet for at least half a year.
Tough to be the manufacturer of Taurus right now; they had a wake when they weren’t even allowed to participate in licensed production for Germany. Why we haven’t produced a few thousand of them since 2022 is a mystery we’ll never get an answer to. I’ve guessed that the German state has held back because there is guaranteed to be an application this week on the defense minister’s desk for either purchase or licensed production from Ukraine. If you remember, we discussed that the manufacturer already in 2022-2023 offered to massively scale up Taurus production and also lower the price to the cheapest, but no one bought Europe’s most modern missile.
I am now of the opinion that Europe will make the difficult decisions required, and the possible misstep would be if Putin manages to get inside our decision circle so that it becomes too little too late. Now he was dumb enough to both deeply immerse us in an obvious hybrid war while also needing to wait for the Duma election on September 20-21, which gave us time to get organized.
If he hadn’t done that and instead drove his two idle army corps straight through the Baltics prompted by deep infiltration without any warning, we would have had a fate-compliant to consider instead with all sorts of attractive ways to back out for peace in our time, especially when everyone is sitting in their archipelago cottage drinking rosé wine in the middle of the deepest vacation.
Historians will argue about this for the next 40 years as usual and get filthy rich from their books where they stole 90% of the material from johanno1.se.
Burnham seems to have sent a lot of Storm Shadow and is pretty sure Ukraine has been allowed to manufacture the French Hammer, which is their version of JDAMS, because during the operation against the 51st CAA (army staff), just as they had a higher staff meeting in their bunker, about a dozen large detonations were reported. A large part of the army staff was knocked out.
Lyman is now starting to come out – we have been keeping an eye on that area for a long time and now it seems to be outside Budanov, and me, who have been the only ones aware of the operation; the soldiers themselves had maps that were mirrored and thought they were fighting in Oskil, so secret it was.
Some variation whether it’s 4000-2000-500 involved, and it seems they have driven the wedge a bit further west than I gave Budanov directives for, but it looks good.
In fact, there is also an advance towards Terny, and then a few more will have trouble retreating.
Quietly, due to strict OPSEC, Ukraine is now conducting offensive operations in several places within the corps’ geographical areas and mandates, I guess?
No big overarching strategic offensive like crossing the Dnieper or breakthrough would we hear about immediately; these are the army corps conducting operations over a long period.
We are misled by OPSEC to believe not much is happening, but Ukraine’s army corps are now conducting offensive operations in many places – the summer offensive of 2026.
For example, the ships in the Black Sea, it never ended but UA stopped reporting on it and they sink vessels every day.
Others we have discussed are down by Kamyanske, and then the Russian 90th TD is having a tough period as well. There are supposed to be some more they keep quiet about, but it will probably come out eventually.
At least Drapatyi has made the right decision early, and the Donetsk front will be divided into two “army groups” where Prokopenko (1st Azov) and Biletskyi (3rd AC) will each command a grouping.
Army Group Azov.
They are thus moving from corps commanders to military district commanders on the eastern front and will get a large area each with presumed brigades and maybe army corps subordinate to them?
It has been whispered that they have a total of 100,000 under their responsibility, and they have a direct line to Magyars Birds.
You have to look hard to find a better decision; both have fought like gods from group, platoon, company, battalion, brigade, and most recently army corps. Prokopenko has also been a prisoner of war, I believe?
They have spread their competence by hiring capable troop leaders under them, and recruitment has been voluntary throughout the war. Both the 3rd Assault Brigade and Azov were extremely early with difficult aspects like drone warfare, fortification raising, and mechanical failures.
Throughout the war, they have fought with what they have, solved the task where others would have felt they had too little. Never backed down from a fight, gladly helped out in the toughest areas, and always tried to get more autonomy and self-determination for the best possible fight.
These two were never controllable by previous Chiefs of Defense, so great was their legendary status; now giving them total responsibility for all of Donetsk is probably Putin’s worst nightmare.
Expect a flood of anti-Nazi propaganda from RU because they didn’t like this.
Then they make a deputy Air Assault corps commander the overall commander for the defense of Slovyansk-Kramatorsk, probably also very cleverly breaking out the defense battle of the fortress area to its own troop commander.
Now pretty much anything can happen when the right men with the right tools are in the right place – Putin is at least furious about personnel policy and is WhatsApping Trump in the middle of the night to vent.
Then Zelensky is to reinforce Zaporizhzhia, good, good, because the Azov thrust is a bit delayed according to the timeline I gave him earlier. In our projects, that would be liquidated damages for such things, but I haven’t invoked that yet in my contract with Ukraine.
The situation is, as always, difficult but Ukraine is making progress every day, they don’t have the full initiative and they are not breaking through deeply but this is not going very well at all for Putin now who mostly just receives violent slaps right now.
Wildberries became Ozon and will become insolvent banks – we are probably already there since both were highly leveraged and now written off, Ozon is also publicly traded. Hats off to whoever came up with that, very clever.
A Chinese joint project for some chemical factory that took six years to build took Ukraine two drones to dismantle – the protest note from Xi Jinping was ignored, lost the link.
On August 27th, I had a total of 194 attacks on refineries during the war, these are large drones in distillation towers or serious fires so no small push there.
They have expanded their scope to oil depots, export infrastructure at ports, command nodes, pumping stations and also oil fields so it is easy to understand why Russia now has to buy fuel from Turkey and India.
None of this stops the war immediately and Putin’s oligarch pals can only step in and buy up insolvent companies that they hold onto until the end of the war, but Ukraine is causing damage.
51st CAA is the second army staff in some month and they strike when there is a staff meeting for maximum joy. Without army staff, it gets quiet in the field monkey and you all know how much initiative a Russian troop commander dares to take on their own.
Yes, Putin can increase efforts with mobilization, missiles and maybe tactical nuclear weapons but beyond that he is just sitting and taking beatings now. Ukraine promises “nuclear dust” as a response to nuclear weapons, a bit of construction dust from some nuclear power plant mixed with black powder and delivered by drones over Moscow – a sensible response in my opinion which they have let various experts discuss in the media.
Europe has completely turned against him and there is little Trump can do, moreover the USA put their foot down against Putin’s plans for a Greater Baltics – Deepstate broke out of the enchantment.
Now we want to see a violent drone campaign against the Baltic Sea for a few months together with all targets in the area up to the Baltics – that would be good.
The Baltic Sea is almost ridiculously calm when we know the condition of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, and that they are behind in the Baltic Sea preparations since they have been spared.
Ukraine can also take on Kaliningrad, why not shoot in Storm Shadow and French hammers there to make a mark?
If you entertain yourself for two weeks by knocking out all air defenses and radars, that would surely pull down Putin’s boxer shorts quite a bit?
Yes, I know Burnham says a lot but the UK also still has a limit, one can dream on a Monday.
The fact is that 2-3 Ukrainian brigades between Rezekne – Tartu would probably build the threshold Putin does not want to see?
They can also train the Baltics continuously.
Whether it is politically less explosive than our units there, I don’t know.
Why Ukraine would do it is however a good question.
Putin is extremely cornered, he will escalate – it is too far gone, period, and it is self-playing. The only thing that will hold him back is if the probability of getting a massive beating is too high even for his yes-saying terrified analysts.
But…
Ukraine is causing real damage now and the unwillingness to fight for the army and the unwillingness to see their existence destroyed for the citizens should not be underestimated.
Putin can handle power struggles, plotters are arrested or murdered all the time and a few more just to be safe rather than sorry.
The only thing he and his accomplices are terrified of is losing control over the army or popular uprising – no leader can ever handle that.
If we get there – mobilization is an excellent first step and it has been a long time coming for Putin, we discussed this already in autumn 2022.
600,000 under arms is just as many weapons that can be turned against him, and that is the number currently flying around for the personnel to be mobilized starting this autumn.
Putin needs to show a victory quite soon and therefore he will escalate but it is a huge risk especially with Ukraine fully engaged in asymmetric warfare. Dudayev has already foreseen this.
If Europe can just manage to balance this now we should get there but every difficult decision we make now will have consequences for future generations.
The Nordics are generally considered united and fully prepared to take the fight against Russia if needed. Sweden as a country ranks top in support per capita and in addition we have supplied Ukraine with the best weapons of the war – Archer, rocket 15, Gripen, Carl Gustaf, Strf90, SB90, Strv 122.
That is good, very good, overwhelmingly good.
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