Bit of an update with an addendum
"It was an interesting day to say the least.
I had my monthly day at the "typewriter place".
A few things we discussed I can't discuss, but you do not need to be a genius to get that two of the topics was Turkey, and the other was the impending Russian offensive.
The topic was named "Sanctioning of Turkey", and it was quite schizophrenic to under that title discuss how to best aid Turkey.
Let us say that for now it is somewhat of an about turn as EU is scrambling to send help and aid.
Regardless of this, general consensus is that Turkey is out of the equation for the time being, and that all energy is better spent on helping the population.
So, let us move onwards to the more interesting topic of the Russian Spring Offensive.
I have been trying to say as much as I could about this, but obviously that was far from everything.
But, now I can say a fair bit more about it.
The general troop situation on the Russian side is as I have stated it, so bad if you are a Russian, but good if you are a Ukrainian.
Regardless, it will not be fun obviously for Ukraine.
Let me start with where Russia has injected troops.
Melitopol, about 20 000 new troops have arrived here.
It is believed that they are not there for any offensive purposes.
We believe that the attack in Zhaporizhzhia near the Nova Kakhovka dams northern end was just a feint to lock down Ukrainian troops.
Instead we have good reason to believe that these new troops are there to counter the upcoming Ukrainian Spring Offensive.
Mariupol has also received some 20 000 new troops.
These are believed to be there prior to a bigger offensive against Vuhledar.
Ukraine certainly thinks so, and they are prepared for them.
Urkaine does not want to be pushed away from the area, since Vuhledar will become important later on as it is the lynchpin defending the route towards Mariupol and towards encircling Donetsk in the future.
It is also important so that Ukraine can coninue to hurt transport routes along the land bridge to Crimea, and also so they can cut those roads and rail lines in a little while.
Russia is already on the offensive trying to push out the defenders from Vuhledar itself, but this is more staging than the big push.
But, already Russia is taking heavy losses there, both in manpower and equipment (11 tanks yesterday).
Ukraine has sent in the 72nd mechanised brigade to spearhead against the tanks, and they are among the top 4 armoured brigades.
Expect a large mechanized battle here in a few days.
I do not think Russia will get far, Ukraine is well prepared here, and Russia lacks the equipment needed to advance far.
Bakhmut is about to fall, at least partially according to the Ukrainians.
They are ready to fall back to a new defence line, so no big loss really.
The Russians are gonna try to push their advantage, but this will not be the site for a large offensive for now.
Soledar, Russia has reinforced here, and will try to push North to close the southern way to Kreminna, and also attack towards Kramatorsk. About 20 000 soldiers are enroute here or already there at the backlines.
Personally I think they will first strike towards the North since this would strengthen Kreminna.
Kreminna, here Russia is prepairing a large attack towards Lyman. Signs are that it has already slowly started.
Russia has already reinforced with 25 000 men here, and another 15 000 seems to be coming in.
Lyman hurt Russian pride, so this will for now be the main attack, and to succeed Russia must close the Southern gap from Soledar upwards.
Ukraine obviously have plans to stop this.
I think Russia might be able to close the gap to Kreminna, but they lack the manpower and equipment to take back Lyman.
Svatove, here the goal is first to push Ukraine out of Luhansk, support the push towards Lyman, and if things go well push back towards Kharkiv. To be able to this Russia has sent in 15 000 troops.
I think that here Russia will at worst get some limited advancements, but they lack manpower and equipment to go further.
Northern front, as of now we do not see any concentrations pointing towards any real attack. There are only 25 000 Russian soldiers along the entire line from Belarus border towards Poland all the way over to Kharkiv.
It is though likely that they will do probing attacks to try and draw away Ukrainian reinforcements from other sectors, but Ukraine will not need them, even if Russia would concentrate the forces unexpectedly.
It is weird, it must be the first time in history that a country is openly stating what they will try to do in advance of doing it.
Everything is pointing towards Russia really attempting to take all of Donbass.
Only problem is that they seem to conveniently have forgotten a couple of small things...
Rivers
Russia has proven themselves to be really bad at crossing rivers. This is a bit surprising really, we do not understand where all the river crossing equipment has gone that the Soviets used to have, and that we know that they used to practice a lot with.
Pretty much all attempts to cross rivers have ended up in a disaster in the last year, so how on Earth they are planning to all of a sudden master it during an offensive across river after river... against a superiorly armed and numbered enemy, is just beyond me.
Topography
Russia will be fighting uphill the entire way. I hope I do not need to point out how much more comfy it is to shoot down on your enemies compared to shoting upwards...
It is also hard to drive up hills and run up hills.
Equipment and logistics
Russia will if successful stretch their logistics quite a bit, and they would need an enormous amount of artillery shells that they seem to not have.
Russia also is severely lacking in both tanks and tank viagra.
And, they seem to not have brought forth any other large amount of armoured vehicles needed for a large scale offensive.
Numbers
400 000ish troops is a lot, but against an enemy that has the numerical advantage it is not good enough.
Yes, they will have the numerical advantage on the Eastern front to begin with, but Ukraine can as soon as they are sure about the offensive being real there send in reinforcements to slam the door shut.
Also, Ukraine have line after line to fall back into along the entire front.
Conclusion
Since Russia has not done another large scale mobilisation this is Mission Impossible for Russia.
They will not be able to grab Donbass, and after the offensive Russia will be totally spent.
Even at the current rate of losses the entire amount of fresh troops will be gone in 40-50 days, and I expect the losses to increase dramatically.
It will be an utter bloodbath due to the lack of heavy armour and artillery.
Even if Russia later on try to do a large scale mobilisation they will not be able to do it in time to affect the Ukrainian Spring Offensive, that will be done with troops that will not even be used in Donbass (a few might meander over to Vuhledar if needed).
Then there will be nothing left to reinforce against Ukraine.
For Ukraine they can loose a few dozens of square kilometres in Donbass against heaploads of dead and wounded Russians.
Donbass is big...
For Ukraine what is important is to go for the jugular, and that is Crimea.
Crimea is easy to cut off supplies to, and make it into a supersized version of Northern Kherson.
And the political punch would be ginormous inside of Russia.
Western Equipment
Do not trust all you see about late arrival dates etcetera for equipment to Ukraine.
This is in parts plain diversionary bull****.
Quite a bit of equipment is arriving far faster than flagged.
Tanks are arriving already, a poor Canadian tank is masquerading for a lot of other tanks ambling into Ukraine through various other routes.
Things are already arriving, and Ukraine will have loads as April comes around the corner.
A certain someone is already fondling the first batch of her stuff, and the rest will be there in good time for her to use.
GLSDBs? Well, a first batch will arrive quite a bit faster than expressed, etcetera.
A slight hickup happened though.
Russia did something incredibly dangerous and sent a couple of subs to a point between Gothenburg and Denmark.
One was a hunter/killer and the other a missile sub.
The missile sub forced us to send out and set up one of our Patriot AD systems at Gothenburg.
The missile sub commander then got it into his brain to open his missile hatches...
Thankfully we had a Gotland class sub hard on his tail, so it flooded the torpedo tubes noisily and started pinging the Russian with active sonar.
Russia got the picture right about as he was going to become fishfood and turned towards open sea and back to Murmansk.
The other sub will soon also be a problem moving towards Murmansk.
This put a corker in transports obviously, so the ship with 60 Bradley's had to beline to UK for a pitstop and wait while we and the Danes explain to the Russians that they will stop having toys to play with if they continue.
We have though been nice and explained that if any more funky stuff happens we will start sinking their toys in our own waters.
Our own waters being interpreted generously here.
Since it was said behind the scenes the Russians took it as a friendly but stern warning to be taken seriously.
They are though dismayed that we could track their subs in realtime.
Normal operations will soon resume."
Then this in brief late on
"Ukraine High Command just notified the world that Russia had performed shelling on Hola Prystan.
Ukraine only notifies if Russia shells Ukrainian held territory.
In other words, it is now finally official that Hola Prystan was indeed liberated by that attack.
Now it is an official race between Ukraine to expand the bridgehead and bring reinforcements, and Russia to send reinforcements to try to stop this unmitigated disaster in Russian planning.
I am now having a celebratory whiskey.
Now comes the rather intricate question, what the hell will this have for effect upon the Russian offensive?
Will they stubbornly plod onwards, or will they try to adapt to having a large Ukrainian army dildo reaming their back door?"