Let’s start off today with one important thing that’s been in need of clearing up. A lot of Western press still mindlessly parrots the trope about Russia’s so-called ‘frozen funds’ and how ‘devastating’ this is supposed to be for Russia’s economy. At this point, they’re grasping at straws because they have very little ammunition left in the barrel for pushing the false narrative that Russia has been gravely affected by the ‘war.’
Saudi will never 'abandon' the US whoever is the fake POTUS otherwise it will be Tbilissi 2.0 or maidan 6.0 but much more violent, MBS will go...lot of pro US princes are waiting in line.
Ditto for me. Only been coming here for about a week. Your work is thought thru with excellent critical thinking skills. Took me over 30min to read this piece. I don’t want to miss anything!!
The so called siege of Sarajevo is one of the persistent distortions of history: Serbs lived in the suburbs, due to historical reasons (Ottoman rule). Sarajevo was never under actual blockade, there was a corridor that was passable and the airport was open all that time.
Thank you, Simplicious. Well, low and behold, the Russians are right now bombing the living daylights out of Ukraine, from east to west, and north to south. Massive missile and drone attacks, likely the largest yet hitting all regions tonight. Odessa has 10-15 explosions as an example. It sounds like the Russians a critical mass of western weapons were now juicy targets, as well as knocking out the rest of the energy infrastructure and AD systems. This attack seems like it is around 150 missiles and who knows how many drones. Epic. Russians will surround Vugledar and bomb it into oblivion - no need to travers dense minefields.
The myopically blinkered "1d and 2d bloggers" as I'll call them (since they like to pejoratively call us folk the '5D Bloggers') were always quick to believe that Russia is incapable of interdicting Ukrainian supplies, but it's also been a known tactic of Russia's for quite some time to instead allow the supplies to trickle in and then hit the consolidation point where you can destroy them all at once.
It's no surprise that long ago Poland was said to have provided 250+ T-72M tanks to Ukraine yet only a couple dozen of them at the most were ever actually seen in the wild ...hmm I wonder why
If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with 🐂💩. I'm grateful you excel at the former, as the latter are a dime a dozen. BTW, your extensive links to back up your analysis are one of the main reasons I follow you. Without evidence, blogs are simply regurgitated opinion pieces. People who want fewer links can simply not click. If I can ever get past just surviving, you'll be my first to $upport.
Thank you mate, you'd have made a damn good reporter in the 60s-80s too. Your citations validate & confirm your considerable effort. The intellectually lazy, the gullible & those stricken with 🐿️ syndrome will always ignore proof for brevity of belief confirmation. You deal out supported facts, not opinion, but with incisive unique analytics even on strategic level without bias to the best ability in the fog of war & balance it with both sides perspective. You have a decent bs detector, too. Rare traits in the best of times.
Bear in mind, I'm just an ooold Scot Canuck, 100% Biased ☦️, who's been reading the "news" daily since age 7 after hearing endless 🐂💩 in school & tv about the 1962 Cuban/Turkeii (aka🦃)/NATO missle crisis & of course "Duck & Cover" & kiss your arse goodbye drills, 🤕🤥adults, etc... I quit believing "news" completely after the Jimmy "KoolAid®️™️" Jonestown Massacre, while hanging out/working for reporters, editors, owner of a national/intl magazine, & other assorted criminal types on both sides of the fence. I learned to never ignore proven factual reporting regardless of the sources allegiance. Your style makes me keep my F👀k & Wagnell®️™️ 1974 dusted & handy👍. Straight up, I have an ulterior motive in hoping to $upport you. If you're successful on substack & all your others ventures, my hope is you'll never sell your skills & soul for a position in military analytics, psy ops or govt covert, because frankly you're good enough to be dangerous😜
BTW- DIDUNO🤔 ¿¿¿
Jonestown "Massacre" Myth : Precisely zero-0-not one person died from poison KoolAid®️™️. A man I know personally investigated right up to/inside the morgues, with confirmation from the top govt coroner. Nearly all, 90%+/-, if I rember correctly, died from lethal 🐍💉. The exceptions were firefight ambush on the senators group, another small but significant group with 1 to the back of the 🧠 who likely refused 💉, & the balance allegedly suicide by firearm after killing all the others. The C👁️A pharmaceutical psy op experiment for profit xfered for location unknown🕳️. People don't want truth. It's destroys their preconceived world view.
Twas looking forward to how the JDAMs would work after your article and watching the vids of planes catapulting into the sky to reach appropriate elev in order to reach Russian positions and not get shot down. Dudsville. The waste of NATO/USA hyper-technology and our tax dollars. Explosions in Kyiv and Lviv?
You're right, let's wait til the smoke clears and see what was hit. By all accounts it's sounding like a large strike--and so it should be, Russia has saved up several weeks worth of missiles it seems
perhaps they consider it worth the loss? one pilot and one aircraft to deliver a more precise larger bomb to a position kamikaze style? They have a few dozen planes left, maybe if they sacrifice all of them they can do some damage on some places on the line? From what I've seen the ones in charge of Ukraine's forces, the US, just want to kill as many Russian soldiers as they can for PR reasons, regardless of how many Ukrainian human drones they need to sacrifice.
I doubt it. While you're correct about the USA's willingness to sacrifice Ukrainian troops, the image of a burning hanger, warehouse or trench system is far less of a propaganda boost that footage of a smouldering aircraft with its Ukrainian roundel clearly visible.
I doubt it. My logical prediction is they will choose the middle way. They'll loft from 5-10k (which still puts them in great danger but not as much, since they can do it much quicker. Climbing to that alt can take seconds vs. minutes) and launch them 10-20km which they'll basically just use as a more powerful form of artillery. Unfortuntaely 10-20km will only allow hitting frontline positions and not any important rear C2/supply areas which ultimately means it's a negligible project
Russia's failures in Ugledar is a reminder how modern warfare has changed and why offensive's are so difficult to pull off. We have seen Ukraine's disastrous Kherson offensive that chewed up all its reserves and equipment. Kharkov was also very expensive for them. Russia took most of its losses in the early days of the SMO.
Back to Ugledar. It is obvious that Ukraine is pursuing a scorched earth policy. By entrenching in urban settings, it is forcing their destruction. Even when Ukraine withdrawals they have been seen to deliberately target infrastructure as they retreat. In the case of Ugledar, I think Russia had hoped to capture the city relatively in tact. It didn't work out.
I don't what Russia will do if they ever get close to big population cities such as Kharkov, Dnipro, Zaporozhye. Odessa is a beautiful city. To see it destroyed would be criminal. Ukraine doesn't want to leave Russia with anything. I hope that the Ukrainian Army can be defeated so that some cities can spared and surrendered unscathed.
Modern stand off/ Area Denial systems are just very good now, I've just read an article by the US air force commander at some air power symposium talking about how this war has opened his eyes on how challenging running an Air Campaign truly is with capable layered defence.
I see where Russia had concluded an agreement with Belarus for the future building of S-25's. I was curious to know if the development of AD had reached the point where manned Aircraft was superfluous or not. Only now, after a year in the conflict are we starting to see Russian Aviation in any numbers. It has taken this long to degrade the Ukrainian AD. Would Russia not be better off spending its resources exclusively on Drones?
I'm in disagreement on drones tbh, they are way overrated, they are good for local recon but the larger assault ones needed to carry larger bombs are just as affected by AD systems as anything else, and even worse aren't really as good as a human, can get easily hacked, and need a lot more technological investment. They are good at terrorist strikes, and for assassinations, but I'm not sold on investing all your energy into drones as the future. Russia should just import them from Iran, they've proven to be good enough.
PIB, great point. What's your take on the tradeoff between, say, one multi million dollar manned fighter/bomber versus, say, 500 unmanned drones (even, say, the ones now developing that are paired to a manned aircraft that can direct the drones outside of AD systems? Given the premium on human pilots, wouldn't 500 low cost drones, even w high casualty rates, be better than one manned aircraft? Especially when each AD missile costs many times that of the drone?
A lot of people took the putative 'failures' of Ugledar out of context based on 2-3 total videos showing maybe 10-20 total vehicles destroyed (most of whose crews survived). The Ugledar theater has upwards of ~10-12k Russian forces, maybe less. This constitutes upwards of 2 motor rifle brigades while the videos showed at most a motor rifle COMPANY or less of materiel losses. And those were temporary anyway as now the Russian forces have already won back their previous territory and are again entrenched in the 'Dachas' district, so even those losses appear to be temporary blips which have already been corrected and vindicated.
But you bring up a good point I too have wondered what Russia will do when faced with the actual real "cities" rather than medium-sized towns. I too doubt they want to fully assault them and perhaps will simply surround and cut them off then force surrender.
With Zapor/Dnipro of course that'll be impossible cus they're bisected by the river and 'surrounding' them is not a possibility but with Kharkov/Odessa I can see it happening perhaps.
Maybe better to force a mega siege(this time with enough forces) of Kiev, till zelensky clique surrender(even if it takes 6 months), then other cities will follow and surrender without fighting as no more logistic, money(salaries), food, weapons, manpower and lack of motivation after the Junta fall.
But if this approachs be sure demented neocons will send 'boots' or worse(mega false flag). We will be well in 2024, though in full potus election year, it is also risky for the US NATO to send 'boots' and then hundreds or thousands of 'boys' body bags returning home during the elections blitz...not really a good P R for Joe or whoever is dem candidate.
In 2024, all EU countries will be in elections year (in may for the EU Europarl), some big countries will have national and regional elections as well.
If 404 becomes a total disaster for them, people will take revenge (energy invoices losses, inflation).Regime changes to some point may happen even if unlikely.
23/24 winter will be much worse for energy and inflation as starting in the end of coming april they will have to find natgaz this year with almost no russian deliveries(except turkstream and the pipe via 404).Let's hope next winter will be very cold..
My view as well - Russia forcing Ukraine to commit more and more of its reserves at these critical fortified areas and chewing them to pieces. Eventually, they will not have the forces necessary to defend the large cities and their entire defensive line will collapse.
Agreed. History legends recently did a video on the battle and made it seem that we dealing with something like the battle of Battle of Carrhae. Russian forces lost some equipment, but the loss of life seems negligible. If the losses were so heavy we would expect the various brigades to be withdrawn and reconstituted which hasn't happened.
Yep which is why the most authoritative pro-UKRAINIAN casualty source Mediazona only counted 19 total Russian Marine casualties for the entirely of January and February of this year. Most of the vehicles were disabled by mines and contrary to what people think, 90% of cases no one dies in a mine blast. Hell, there's tons of videos of even civilian vehicles like cars and Humvees and such hitting large mines and everyone inside survives, so imagine a tank/BMP which is super reinforced. These guys survive and get evac'd. Sure it's an equipment loss but even that is exaggerated as much of the equipment is later recovered and repaired as often it'll just be a thrown track or something minor like that.
"I don't what Russia will do if they ever get close to big population cities such as Kharkov, Dnipro, Zaporozhye. Odessa is a beautiful city. To see it destroyed would be criminal. Ukraine doesn't want to leave Russia with anything. I hope that the Ukrainian Army can be defeated so that some cities can spared and surrendered unscathed."
I am no military expert, but I would say that cities are speedbumps. Surround them, cut them off and keep moving.
Its become a theatre of the absurd hasn't it? The only thing more ridiculous than the Russians bombing their own pipeline (but leaving the Druzhba pipeline intact) is that a half dozen dudes and a doc rented a boat from luxuryyachts.com, ordered half a metric ton of high explosive off of amazon, shaped and waterproofed the charges in a garage, then did a quick google map search for the pipelines and went for a sunday swim at 70m depth. Then successfully remote detonated, and escaped. But wait, they didn't scuttle the boat because that would... ah... something.
The western propaganda leviathan on one hand produces epic psyops; you have to hand it to them. But sometimes its like they hand over a task to their DEI team and, well, you get this.
thanks to JC below yes I just recently set one up and completely forgot to post it in the above post so here you go http://www.buymeacoffee.com/Simplicius
Looks like those greedy oligarchs, who dismantled the Soviet union with the Wests support, must be questioning their choices of having off-shore bank accounts now, and just how much they are actually worth to their CIA connections.
Great read as usual. How does anyone advance at all with all those mines? Seems like you couldn't move at all in combat and I'm amazed Russia moves as fast as they do.
About funds - I've seen reports that Russia could seize over 2 trillion in NATO related assets in Russia if they wanted as they are more invested in Russia than Russia in them... so whatever Russia wins on asset forfeiture too if they so choose. Still funny MSM has to lie about everything even reserves taken by an order of magnitude and it hurts them because when countries hear a huge amount like 350 billion they are less likely to leave their reserves out there for US to grab. Idiots.
Trade turnover between Russia and the EU breaks records, by K-Politika
Europe has found itself in a deep sanctions impasse, as evidenced by the trade turnover between Russia and the EU in 2022. Based on data published by Eurostat, Brussels has reached a record trade deficit with the Russian Federation – 148.2 billion euros, double the figure for 2021.
At the same time, in general, trade turnover broke the records of the last eight years. It increased by 2.3% over the year and reached 258.6 billion euros, but thanks to Russian exports to Europe. They increased by a quarter – to €203.4 billion, slightly below the historical high of €203.6 billion in 2012. At the same time, imports from the EU to the Russian Federation decreased by 38.1% – to 55.2 billion euros in 2005) . And, apparently, “unpleasant” indicators for the European economy will soon be published. Although 10 anti-Russian sanctions packages have already been adopted to restrict half of exports to Russia, Washington is demanding more sacrifices from Europe.
I'm confused about the following quote: "Of course, the UA twittersphere claims this strike was on a ‘Russian trench position’. But it’s a tad odd that it’s being viewed by another Russian trench position with binoculars."
Since the LOC is about 1,000km, couldn't the 2 trenches just be somewhere along the line ?
No there would never be 2 trenches parallel to each other or built right on top of each other 1km apart, what would be the point of that? Trenches are typically built in one long line along the particular defensive line. Then there's different 'echelons' like 2nd and 3rd echelons of trenches which you can fall back to if your first line is breached. But those echelons are typically separated by many kilometers. But as one commenter here calculated, the distance in that video is about 1200m from the POV of the cameraman's trench. He calculated it by how long the sound of the explosion takes to get to the camera. That means the 2nd "trench" is 1km away? Why would one put 2 trenches on top of each other 1km away? That's not something that's done
Curious as how those trenches and fortifications are built during war action. Are they built with heavy equipment or with a shovel? Supplies needed too. And where do the soldiers sleep and eat while deployed on front line? Info for the non-military types.
But in some places where time is of the essence and the machine isn't around, they do them by hand as well.
As for sleeping and eating, it's a variety of places depending on location. If it's a more remote trench work they build 'dugouts' into the trench which are small cubby spaces that can fit a few people. These are usually reinforced with wood or even concrete and can build a whole mini apartment there with a wood stove, bed, etc.
But other places near cities they have secure underground shelters they can live inside of under some apartment blocks or in warehouses juryrigged into a barracks etc.
Other places more in the 'rear' they have little tent cities with large generators to give everything they need there
Nordstream story is a huge own goal. It will provide Russia with all the justification it needs for continuing and stepping up the attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure. As of this morning, it's already happening. Added bonus will be that it will draw away air defense systems from the front lines.
Wellllll ... ‘pro-Ukrainian group’ ... could be used to describe anyone in the west providing support for, or cheering on, Ukraine. For example, the US or Norway ....
Saudi will never 'abandon' the US whoever is the fake POTUS otherwise it will be Tbilissi 2.0 or maidan 6.0 but much more violent, MBS will go...lot of pro US princes are waiting in line.
Saudis simply play all sides, business first.
I have a list of analysts I follow. Yours is the one I drop everything to read. Excellent work sir!!
That's a big honor, thank you
Ditto for me. Only been coming here for about a week. Your work is thought thru with excellent critical thinking skills. Took me over 30min to read this piece. I don’t want to miss anything!!
Same here…this is…the go to, must read site! ❤️🇷🇺💙
Yep. First read of the morning - every morning.
Me too!
Agree, it's first rate analysis, and well written.
The so called siege of Sarajevo is one of the persistent distortions of history: Serbs lived in the suburbs, due to historical reasons (Ottoman rule). Sarajevo was never under actual blockade, there was a corridor that was passable and the airport was open all that time.
Thanks for the much needed contextualization
Thank you, Simplicious. Well, low and behold, the Russians are right now bombing the living daylights out of Ukraine, from east to west, and north to south. Massive missile and drone attacks, likely the largest yet hitting all regions tonight. Odessa has 10-15 explosions as an example. It sounds like the Russians a critical mass of western weapons were now juicy targets, as well as knocking out the rest of the energy infrastructure and AD systems. This attack seems like it is around 150 missiles and who knows how many drones. Epic. Russians will surround Vugledar and bomb it into oblivion - no need to travers dense minefields.
The myopically blinkered "1d and 2d bloggers" as I'll call them (since they like to pejoratively call us folk the '5D Bloggers') were always quick to believe that Russia is incapable of interdicting Ukrainian supplies, but it's also been a known tactic of Russia's for quite some time to instead allow the supplies to trickle in and then hit the consolidation point where you can destroy them all at once.
It's no surprise that long ago Poland was said to have provided 250+ T-72M tanks to Ukraine yet only a couple dozen of them at the most were ever actually seen in the wild ...hmm I wonder why
I appreciate the discursive nature of the discourse and the pleasant absence of snark and obsequious bloviating. Truly refreshing.
Ha, I love the expansive verbiage 😀
Scopious indeed. And no need to bowdlerize the text, thus depriving it of its essence.
supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with 🐂💩. I'm grateful you excel at the former, as the latter are a dime a dozen. BTW, your extensive links to back up your analysis are one of the main reasons I follow you. Without evidence, blogs are simply regurgitated opinion pieces. People who want fewer links can simply not click. If I can ever get past just surviving, you'll be my first to $upport.
Thank you very much, I was hoping at least someone finds the glossary of citations helpful
Thank you mate, you'd have made a damn good reporter in the 60s-80s too. Your citations validate & confirm your considerable effort. The intellectually lazy, the gullible & those stricken with 🐿️ syndrome will always ignore proof for brevity of belief confirmation. You deal out supported facts, not opinion, but with incisive unique analytics even on strategic level without bias to the best ability in the fog of war & balance it with both sides perspective. You have a decent bs detector, too. Rare traits in the best of times.
Bear in mind, I'm just an ooold Scot Canuck, 100% Biased ☦️, who's been reading the "news" daily since age 7 after hearing endless 🐂💩 in school & tv about the 1962 Cuban/Turkeii (aka🦃)/NATO missle crisis & of course "Duck & Cover" & kiss your arse goodbye drills, 🤕🤥adults, etc... I quit believing "news" completely after the Jimmy "KoolAid®️™️" Jonestown Massacre, while hanging out/working for reporters, editors, owner of a national/intl magazine, & other assorted criminal types on both sides of the fence. I learned to never ignore proven factual reporting regardless of the sources allegiance. Your style makes me keep my F👀k & Wagnell®️™️ 1974 dusted & handy👍. Straight up, I have an ulterior motive in hoping to $upport you. If you're successful on substack & all your others ventures, my hope is you'll never sell your skills & soul for a position in military analytics, psy ops or govt covert, because frankly you're good enough to be dangerous😜
BTW- DIDUNO🤔 ¿¿¿
Jonestown "Massacre" Myth : Precisely zero-0-not one person died from poison KoolAid®️™️. A man I know personally investigated right up to/inside the morgues, with confirmation from the top govt coroner. Nearly all, 90%+/-, if I rember correctly, died from lethal 🐍💉. The exceptions were firefight ambush on the senators group, another small but significant group with 1 to the back of the 🧠 who likely refused 💉, & the balance allegedly suicide by firearm after killing all the others. The C👁️A pharmaceutical psy op experiment for profit xfered for location unknown🕳️. People don't want truth. It's destroys their preconceived world view.
Take care🍻 🙏
Ditto
Twas looking forward to how the JDAMs would work after your article and watching the vids of planes catapulting into the sky to reach appropriate elev in order to reach Russian positions and not get shot down. Dudsville. The waste of NATO/USA hyper-technology and our tax dollars. Explosions in Kyiv and Lviv?
You're right, let's wait til the smoke clears and see what was hit. By all accounts it's sounding like a large strike--and so it should be, Russia has saved up several weeks worth of missiles it seems
perhaps they consider it worth the loss? one pilot and one aircraft to deliver a more precise larger bomb to a position kamikaze style? They have a few dozen planes left, maybe if they sacrifice all of them they can do some damage on some places on the line? From what I've seen the ones in charge of Ukraine's forces, the US, just want to kill as many Russian soldiers as they can for PR reasons, regardless of how many Ukrainian human drones they need to sacrifice.
I doubt it. While you're correct about the USA's willingness to sacrifice Ukrainian troops, the image of a burning hanger, warehouse or trench system is far less of a propaganda boost that footage of a smouldering aircraft with its Ukrainian roundel clearly visible.
I doubt it. My logical prediction is they will choose the middle way. They'll loft from 5-10k (which still puts them in great danger but not as much, since they can do it much quicker. Climbing to that alt can take seconds vs. minutes) and launch them 10-20km which they'll basically just use as a more powerful form of artillery. Unfortuntaely 10-20km will only allow hitting frontline positions and not any important rear C2/supply areas which ultimately means it's a negligible project
Russia's failures in Ugledar is a reminder how modern warfare has changed and why offensive's are so difficult to pull off. We have seen Ukraine's disastrous Kherson offensive that chewed up all its reserves and equipment. Kharkov was also very expensive for them. Russia took most of its losses in the early days of the SMO.
Back to Ugledar. It is obvious that Ukraine is pursuing a scorched earth policy. By entrenching in urban settings, it is forcing their destruction. Even when Ukraine withdrawals they have been seen to deliberately target infrastructure as they retreat. In the case of Ugledar, I think Russia had hoped to capture the city relatively in tact. It didn't work out.
I don't what Russia will do if they ever get close to big population cities such as Kharkov, Dnipro, Zaporozhye. Odessa is a beautiful city. To see it destroyed would be criminal. Ukraine doesn't want to leave Russia with anything. I hope that the Ukrainian Army can be defeated so that some cities can spared and surrendered unscathed.
Modern stand off/ Area Denial systems are just very good now, I've just read an article by the US air force commander at some air power symposium talking about how this war has opened his eyes on how challenging running an Air Campaign truly is with capable layered defence.
I see where Russia had concluded an agreement with Belarus for the future building of S-25's. I was curious to know if the development of AD had reached the point where manned Aircraft was superfluous or not. Only now, after a year in the conflict are we starting to see Russian Aviation in any numbers. It has taken this long to degrade the Ukrainian AD. Would Russia not be better off spending its resources exclusively on Drones?
I'm in disagreement on drones tbh, they are way overrated, they are good for local recon but the larger assault ones needed to carry larger bombs are just as affected by AD systems as anything else, and even worse aren't really as good as a human, can get easily hacked, and need a lot more technological investment. They are good at terrorist strikes, and for assassinations, but I'm not sold on investing all your energy into drones as the future. Russia should just import them from Iran, they've proven to be good enough.
PIB, great point. What's your take on the tradeoff between, say, one multi million dollar manned fighter/bomber versus, say, 500 unmanned drones (even, say, the ones now developing that are paired to a manned aircraft that can direct the drones outside of AD systems? Given the premium on human pilots, wouldn't 500 low cost drones, even w high casualty rates, be better than one manned aircraft? Especially when each AD missile costs many times that of the drone?
f-16 is unsuited to deploy to Ukraine theater, aged. bc f-35 is late with no date for resolving f-35 flaws.
iow a vietnam or Iraq level air campaign is logistically impossible, even as it would be useless
A lot of people took the putative 'failures' of Ugledar out of context based on 2-3 total videos showing maybe 10-20 total vehicles destroyed (most of whose crews survived). The Ugledar theater has upwards of ~10-12k Russian forces, maybe less. This constitutes upwards of 2 motor rifle brigades while the videos showed at most a motor rifle COMPANY or less of materiel losses. And those were temporary anyway as now the Russian forces have already won back their previous territory and are again entrenched in the 'Dachas' district, so even those losses appear to be temporary blips which have already been corrected and vindicated.
But you bring up a good point I too have wondered what Russia will do when faced with the actual real "cities" rather than medium-sized towns. I too doubt they want to fully assault them and perhaps will simply surround and cut them off then force surrender.
With Zapor/Dnipro of course that'll be impossible cus they're bisected by the river and 'surrounding' them is not a possibility but with Kharkov/Odessa I can see it happening perhaps.
hopefully by that point most of the Ukraine forces would have collapsed leaving them only in their city fortresses to wait for NATO intervention.
That's what I'm hoping as well
Maybe better to force a mega siege(this time with enough forces) of Kiev, till zelensky clique surrender(even if it takes 6 months), then other cities will follow and surrender without fighting as no more logistic, money(salaries), food, weapons, manpower and lack of motivation after the Junta fall.
But if this approachs be sure demented neocons will send 'boots' or worse(mega false flag). We will be well in 2024, though in full potus election year, it is also risky for the US NATO to send 'boots' and then hundreds or thousands of 'boys' body bags returning home during the elections blitz...not really a good P R for Joe or whoever is dem candidate.
In 2024, all EU countries will be in elections year (in may for the EU Europarl), some big countries will have national and regional elections as well.
If 404 becomes a total disaster for them, people will take revenge (energy invoices losses, inflation).Regime changes to some point may happen even if unlikely.
23/24 winter will be much worse for energy and inflation as starting in the end of coming april they will have to find natgaz this year with almost no russian deliveries(except turkstream and the pipe via 404).Let's hope next winter will be very cold..
My view as well - Russia forcing Ukraine to commit more and more of its reserves at these critical fortified areas and chewing them to pieces. Eventually, they will not have the forces necessary to defend the large cities and their entire defensive line will collapse.
Agreed. History legends recently did a video on the battle and made it seem that we dealing with something like the battle of Battle of Carrhae. Russian forces lost some equipment, but the loss of life seems negligible. If the losses were so heavy we would expect the various brigades to be withdrawn and reconstituted which hasn't happened.
Yep which is why the most authoritative pro-UKRAINIAN casualty source Mediazona only counted 19 total Russian Marine casualties for the entirely of January and February of this year. Most of the vehicles were disabled by mines and contrary to what people think, 90% of cases no one dies in a mine blast. Hell, there's tons of videos of even civilian vehicles like cars and Humvees and such hitting large mines and everyone inside survives, so imagine a tank/BMP which is super reinforced. These guys survive and get evac'd. Sure it's an equipment loss but even that is exaggerated as much of the equipment is later recovered and repaired as often it'll just be a thrown track or something minor like that.
"I don't what Russia will do if they ever get close to big population cities such as Kharkov, Dnipro, Zaporozhye. Odessa is a beautiful city. To see it destroyed would be criminal. Ukraine doesn't want to leave Russia with anything. I hope that the Ukrainian Army can be defeated so that some cities can spared and surrendered unscathed."
I am no military expert, but I would say that cities are speedbumps. Surround them, cut them off and keep moving.
Its become a theatre of the absurd hasn't it? The only thing more ridiculous than the Russians bombing their own pipeline (but leaving the Druzhba pipeline intact) is that a half dozen dudes and a doc rented a boat from luxuryyachts.com, ordered half a metric ton of high explosive off of amazon, shaped and waterproofed the charges in a garage, then did a quick google map search for the pipelines and went for a sunday swim at 70m depth. Then successfully remote detonated, and escaped. But wait, they didn't scuttle the boat because that would... ah... something.
The western propaganda leviathan on one hand produces epic psyops; you have to hand it to them. But sometimes its like they hand over a task to their DEI team and, well, you get this.
A yacht doesn't even have the capacity to carry the equipment necessary for such an operation, unless they used Jeff Bezos or Gates own superyachts.
You should consider setting up a “Buy me a Coffee” for one time donations sir.
http://www.buymeacoffee.com/Simplicius
thanks to JC below yes I just recently set one up and completely forgot to post it in the above post so here you go http://www.buymeacoffee.com/Simplicius
Sent….not a big coffee fan if it were me would buy a couple drinks 😉
Looks like those greedy oligarchs, who dismantled the Soviet union with the Wests support, must be questioning their choices of having off-shore bank accounts now, and just how much they are actually worth to their CIA connections.
Great read as usual. How does anyone advance at all with all those mines? Seems like you couldn't move at all in combat and I'm amazed Russia moves as fast as they do.
About funds - I've seen reports that Russia could seize over 2 trillion in NATO related assets in Russia if they wanted as they are more invested in Russia than Russia in them... so whatever Russia wins on asset forfeiture too if they so choose. Still funny MSM has to lie about everything even reserves taken by an order of magnitude and it hurts them because when countries hear a huge amount like 350 billion they are less likely to leave their reserves out there for US to grab. Idiots.
Trade turnover between Russia and the EU breaks records, by K-Politika
Europe has found itself in a deep sanctions impasse, as evidenced by the trade turnover between Russia and the EU in 2022. Based on data published by Eurostat, Brussels has reached a record trade deficit with the Russian Federation – 148.2 billion euros, double the figure for 2021.
At the same time, in general, trade turnover broke the records of the last eight years. It increased by 2.3% over the year and reached 258.6 billion euros, but thanks to Russian exports to Europe. They increased by a quarter – to €203.4 billion, slightly below the historical high of €203.6 billion in 2012. At the same time, imports from the EU to the Russian Federation decreased by 38.1% – to 55.2 billion euros in 2005) . And, apparently, “unpleasant” indicators for the European economy will soon be published. Although 10 anti-Russian sanctions packages have already been adopted to restrict half of exports to Russia, Washington is demanding more sacrifices from Europe.
https://k-politika.ru/tovarooborot-mezhdu-rossiej-i-es-pobil-vosmiletnij-rekord/?utm_source=finobzor.ru
I'm confused about the following quote: "Of course, the UA twittersphere claims this strike was on a ‘Russian trench position’. But it’s a tad odd that it’s being viewed by another Russian trench position with binoculars."
Since the LOC is about 1,000km, couldn't the 2 trenches just be somewhere along the line ?
No there would never be 2 trenches parallel to each other or built right on top of each other 1km apart, what would be the point of that? Trenches are typically built in one long line along the particular defensive line. Then there's different 'echelons' like 2nd and 3rd echelons of trenches which you can fall back to if your first line is breached. But those echelons are typically separated by many kilometers. But as one commenter here calculated, the distance in that video is about 1200m from the POV of the cameraman's trench. He calculated it by how long the sound of the explosion takes to get to the camera. That means the 2nd "trench" is 1km away? Why would one put 2 trenches on top of each other 1km away? That's not something that's done
Curious as how those trenches and fortifications are built during war action. Are they built with heavy equipment or with a shovel? Supplies needed too. And where do the soldiers sleep and eat while deployed on front line? Info for the non-military types.
Both: Russia has trench diggers like the BTM-3 seen here: https://www.bitchute.com/video/MMVEh6lR1unz/
https://www.military-today.com/engineering/btm_3.htm
But in some places where time is of the essence and the machine isn't around, they do them by hand as well.
As for sleeping and eating, it's a variety of places depending on location. If it's a more remote trench work they build 'dugouts' into the trench which are small cubby spaces that can fit a few people. These are usually reinforced with wood or even concrete and can build a whole mini apartment there with a wood stove, bed, etc.
But other places near cities they have secure underground shelters they can live inside of under some apartment blocks or in warehouses juryrigged into a barracks etc.
Other places more in the 'rear' they have little tent cities with large generators to give everything they need there
Thank you. Really great that you take the time to answer questions❤️
Nordstream story is a huge own goal. It will provide Russia with all the justification it needs for continuing and stepping up the attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure. As of this morning, it's already happening. Added bonus will be that it will draw away air defense systems from the front lines.
Wellllll ... ‘pro-Ukrainian group’ ... could be used to describe anyone in the west providing support for, or cheering on, Ukraine. For example, the US or Norway ....
Nice that they left that little "linguistic loophole" as it may come in handy a bit later....
Great take on current events, as usual.
Love the West/Russian food comparison, serves them right.
Also, I cannot imagine the moral in the Ukroid army.
Glory to Russia