Fattyfoggon
Well-known member
sorry man, but you are a bit cryptic I have not got clue what you are on about
The end?
- Thread starter borolad259
- Start date
sorry man, but you are a bit cryptic I have not got clue what you are on about
Well you'd need to read, in full, the two Igor Sushko threads posted by Lefty, and you'd have to have been following the machinations of the Russian elite via my pal, or by watching the Inside Russia youtube channel. And even then you'd probably be wondering wtf is going on. Whatever, I think I can say with some confidence, that we have moved a little bit closer to "The End" than we were when a few deputies in ST Petersburg had the temerity to challenge the Kremlin.
Last night's missive
"Russia has cancelled all May 9th victory parades around Russia with the exception of the main on in Moscow.
The reason given is security.
They claim that Ukraine would drone their parades to kill soldiers.
I know for a fact from the man himself that this was never a plan since the risk of injuring and killing civilian spectators is way to large.
But, it is interesting that they fear it.
And if we look at the Kremlin celebration of May 9th that seems to be radically altered and shrunk.
1. The March of the Immortals, meaning the marching of relatives to killed soldiers is cancelled entirely, and will instead be "a digital march", whatever now that means.
The cancellation is most likely due to Kremlin fearing that people would use the march to protest against the war.
2. The airshow is cancelled.
We believe there are two reasons for this, the first is that the airplanes would be at risk if Ukraine performed an attack and the air defence systems would have to be fired.
The second reason is that they fear that a pilot would use his plane in a suicide attempt against the stand with ranking Kremlin officials and to take out Putin.
Obviously Putin will not be attending, instead there will be a "Putin" instead.
3. It also seams like they are not gonna do a troop march due to them being afraid of the place being bombed by Ukraine.
Instead it seems like they will display captured western vehicles, and that will basically be it.
Maybe there will also be a T-34 on display.
This will obviously be "very popular" among the population.
This is one of the big party days in Russia, and Russians enjoy getting drunk on this day.
But, to fix this Russia has banned all sales of alcohol after 19.00 every day from now on.
Also "very popular" in Russia.
The inauguration of Tzar "Putin" on the 7th is also mostly cancelled.
It will either be a pre-recorded version with a "Putin" in the Duma being sworn in, or just an entirely digital affair with some sort of Putin swearing the oath on TV from wherever now that Putin is held.
I find all of this interesting to say the least.
It is remarkable how low there confidence is now.
If the war somehow is still a thing on May 9th of 2025 I think we will get to see a "negative celebration", with negative numbers of tanks and participants. How now that will be achieved is beyond me, but I am sure Russia will find a way
In Ukraine on the other hand a "Russia Victory Celebration & Russian Presidential Inauguration Part General" has been appointed by Presidential decree to kindly help Russia to celebrate properly since Russia seems to have forgotten how to do it.
It is obviously none other than the fount of joy and celebration, Budanov.
How thoughtful of the Ukrainians to lend a hand.
He has promised fireworks, music, and even a special Presidential speach!
He is so kind.
There will even be special infrastructure projects declared and started.
Russia Rejoice!
Fonts
Ocheretyne is now being stabilised by newly arrived reinforcements and supplies.
It is not yet stable, but counter-attacks are now possible to perform, and a large scale anti-logistics campaign towards Russian positions is now being performed.
We expect that over the next few days Russia will completely have ground into a halt, or even start to be reversed.
We are also seeing endless meatwaves in many other directions now, Russia is trying to take advantage of the situation right now before the big packages have fully arrived.
This means that for the next 4 weeks it is possible for Russia to move forward in week spots.
It should thoug gradually became harder and harder for them.
And their advances right now are very costly for them, and this means that when the period of advancments are over, they will be weakened.
Rasputitsa
Irritatingly enough the Rasputitsa this year is very weak.
It is the driest Rasputitsa in a decade, and this is helping Russia.
Also, we had planned to use the Rasputitsa to rest, reconstitute and reequip forces, this means that we had pulled back forces that in retrospect should not have been pulled back.
The hilarity of it is that Russia in turn is drowning in the worst Rasputitsa season in more than a century.
While the deep heartland of Russia is destroyed by nature, they are utilising that it is dry in Ukraine.
Climate Change, now affecting even wars.
Return of Murica, Part II
While we are busily distributing the initial 1 billion USD from the Senate 61 billion package, and rejoicing over all that candy, a new package somehow dropped from Murica totally to the surprise of everyone.
It was announced at the Rammstein Format Meeting, and contains a supplemental 12 Billion USD that is not included in the previous 61 billion USD package.
From this Rammstein Package 6 billion in equipment will be taken out of NATO storages and distributed over the next 4 weeks, and the remaining 6 billion will be distributed over the rest of the year.
This package on top of the other package, and followed by EU packages in response to Murican packages will totally transform the war.
So much so that we now have to start pondering if we couldn't perform offensive operations faster than previously planned.
I have already stated that I was wrong, and very happy that I was wrong.
But now the US is back on such a scale that it sort of reminds me of Rocky IV Movie and that Ivan Drago is just about to get knocked on his ****.
I have stated that the Senate Package was equally, if not more, a vote about the soul of the US.
It was also a vote on the future of US, both as a nation and as a superpower.
Yesterday none other than Xi Jinping confirmed this.
During his meating with Anthony Blinken he in both words and action recognized that the US was back in force, and he will now double down on fecking Russia, and also work on deescalation with the US.
His words, not mine.
For Xi keeping EU happy was a way to keep his economy going.
But an angry US back to "going Murica" on things, that is a direct threat to China's existence.
Put those two together, and you get meek and nice China for years to come.
Finally the Lion roared and snapped back at the circling Jackals!
Welcome back Murica, you have been dearly missed!"
"Russia has cancelled all May 9th victory parades around Russia with the exception of the main on in Moscow.
The reason given is security.
They claim that Ukraine would drone their parades to kill soldiers.
I know for a fact from the man himself that this was never a plan since the risk of injuring and killing civilian spectators is way to large.
But, it is interesting that they fear it.
And if we look at the Kremlin celebration of May 9th that seems to be radically altered and shrunk.
1. The March of the Immortals, meaning the marching of relatives to killed soldiers is cancelled entirely, and will instead be "a digital march", whatever now that means.
The cancellation is most likely due to Kremlin fearing that people would use the march to protest against the war.
2. The airshow is cancelled.
We believe there are two reasons for this, the first is that the airplanes would be at risk if Ukraine performed an attack and the air defence systems would have to be fired.
The second reason is that they fear that a pilot would use his plane in a suicide attempt against the stand with ranking Kremlin officials and to take out Putin.
Obviously Putin will not be attending, instead there will be a "Putin" instead.
3. It also seams like they are not gonna do a troop march due to them being afraid of the place being bombed by Ukraine.
Instead it seems like they will display captured western vehicles, and that will basically be it.
Maybe there will also be a T-34 on display.
This will obviously be "very popular" among the population.
This is one of the big party days in Russia, and Russians enjoy getting drunk on this day.
But, to fix this Russia has banned all sales of alcohol after 19.00 every day from now on.
Also "very popular" in Russia.
The inauguration of Tzar "Putin" on the 7th is also mostly cancelled.
It will either be a pre-recorded version with a "Putin" in the Duma being sworn in, or just an entirely digital affair with some sort of Putin swearing the oath on TV from wherever now that Putin is held.
I find all of this interesting to say the least.
It is remarkable how low there confidence is now.
If the war somehow is still a thing on May 9th of 2025 I think we will get to see a "negative celebration", with negative numbers of tanks and participants. How now that will be achieved is beyond me, but I am sure Russia will find a way
In Ukraine on the other hand a "Russia Victory Celebration & Russian Presidential Inauguration Part General" has been appointed by Presidential decree to kindly help Russia to celebrate properly since Russia seems to have forgotten how to do it.
It is obviously none other than the fount of joy and celebration, Budanov.
How thoughtful of the Ukrainians to lend a hand.
He has promised fireworks, music, and even a special Presidential speach!
He is so kind.
There will even be special infrastructure projects declared and started.
Russia Rejoice!
Fonts
Ocheretyne is now being stabilised by newly arrived reinforcements and supplies.
It is not yet stable, but counter-attacks are now possible to perform, and a large scale anti-logistics campaign towards Russian positions is now being performed.
We expect that over the next few days Russia will completely have ground into a halt, or even start to be reversed.
We are also seeing endless meatwaves in many other directions now, Russia is trying to take advantage of the situation right now before the big packages have fully arrived.
This means that for the next 4 weeks it is possible for Russia to move forward in week spots.
It should thoug gradually became harder and harder for them.
And their advances right now are very costly for them, and this means that when the period of advancments are over, they will be weakened.
Rasputitsa
Irritatingly enough the Rasputitsa this year is very weak.
It is the driest Rasputitsa in a decade, and this is helping Russia.
Also, we had planned to use the Rasputitsa to rest, reconstitute and reequip forces, this means that we had pulled back forces that in retrospect should not have been pulled back.
The hilarity of it is that Russia in turn is drowning in the worst Rasputitsa season in more than a century.
While the deep heartland of Russia is destroyed by nature, they are utilising that it is dry in Ukraine.
Climate Change, now affecting even wars.
Return of Murica, Part II
While we are busily distributing the initial 1 billion USD from the Senate 61 billion package, and rejoicing over all that candy, a new package somehow dropped from Murica totally to the surprise of everyone.
It was announced at the Rammstein Format Meeting, and contains a supplemental 12 Billion USD that is not included in the previous 61 billion USD package.
From this Rammstein Package 6 billion in equipment will be taken out of NATO storages and distributed over the next 4 weeks, and the remaining 6 billion will be distributed over the rest of the year.
This package on top of the other package, and followed by EU packages in response to Murican packages will totally transform the war.
So much so that we now have to start pondering if we couldn't perform offensive operations faster than previously planned.
I have already stated that I was wrong, and very happy that I was wrong.
But now the US is back on such a scale that it sort of reminds me of Rocky IV Movie and that Ivan Drago is just about to get knocked on his ****.
I have stated that the Senate Package was equally, if not more, a vote about the soul of the US.
It was also a vote on the future of US, both as a nation and as a superpower.
Yesterday none other than Xi Jinping confirmed this.
During his meating with Anthony Blinken he in both words and action recognized that the US was back in force, and he will now double down on fecking Russia, and also work on deescalation with the US.
His words, not mine.
For Xi keeping EU happy was a way to keep his economy going.
But an angry US back to "going Murica" on things, that is a direct threat to China's existence.
Put those two together, and you get meek and nice China for years to come.
Finally the Lion roared and snapped back at the circling Jackals!
Welcome back Murica, you have been dearly missed!"
Excellent and, as you say, corroborating much of what General Cherrycola has been saying for some time. I've just sent it to him.
They started last week, but yep .... they'll kick the Russian puppets out before long I think.
And speaking of General Cherrycola. He has had a busy day looking at the new gear...
"I got kicked in the **** in the morning and told to get dressed, or more to the point, I got a cup of coffee stuck under the nose got my beard scratched...
Before I knew it I had been kidnapped for a helicopter inspection of various border crossing and main roads, just to get a feel of things.
Ukrainians have a very weird way of making even the weirdest things feel homely.
But sitting in a UH-60 Blackhawk with rugs, ornaments, curtains and an icon, was not something I ever expected to see in my life.
My Swedish utilitaristic and minimalistic upbringing is slowly seeing the advantage to this approach in life.
Why the need to live in a steel box for years when you can indeed have nice things, even if there is a war going on.
On the way we picked up the new ** General that has arrived on site and went for lunch back in *****.
Tanks
A few days ago AFU MOD calmly stated that they are withdrawing their Abrams tanks from frontline duties, citing low survivability.
The punderati and the general population at this point started to scream bloody murder.
I should here clarify that the Abrams are not faring much worse compared to other western tanks, and definitely better than the Russian made tanks, at least in a western tank it is likely that the crew will survive getting blown up, and that definitely does not go for the Soviet ones with the exception of the T84 Oplot that is similar to Western tanks.
In fact, it is now probably better since the newbuilds have a far thicker roof and engine cover compared to any other tanks.
The reason to remove the Abrams was based on Ukraine having the lowest number of them, and by withdrawing them they simplify their logistics a lot.
But, there's a lot more to this story, in fact...
R.I.P. Main Battle Tank!
It did not survive this war as a weapons platform, at least not in any form looking like today.
It is a mastodon that have lost its ability to survive on the battlefield.
There have been a quiet civil war in professional tank circles for more than a decade, with roughly half of the tank commanders saying that it is over, and the rest going "muh... must have tank..."
We all knew that the traditional role of the tank was gone, but we thought we would find a way to at least make us of the ones we had as short range armoured artillery support for the infantry.
Note here that there have been only 2 tank on tank battles in the entire war, and both was decided by artillery and not tanks.
I participated in Kreminna, the last large tank battle in history most likely, and the other was a series of smaller tank skirmishes at Vuhledar.
A battle with 10 000 MBTs on the theater, and only two minor tank battles?
Eh... that is roughly 100 billion dollars worth of tanks doing almost nothing.
And then both sides failed at using them for frontline breaching.
I will though give Olga that she did two successfull breaches, and I pulled off one.
But once again it was not the tanks that made it possible.
At all 3 points it was highly agile CV90s and APCs together with artillery and drones that made the breach possible.
Tanks are just to slow and cumbersome to deliver the speed needed on the modern battlefield.
And Russia slowly lumbering up with tanks is even worse, even a babushka with an ATG will have ample time to take it out.
Not even speaking about lightning fast drones darting in to blow up a tank mine on the top of the turret, or the engine hatch.
And not even close artillery support is working, they are to slow and easy to hit.
And on top of that the guns on tanks suck, their range is to short at cirka 5km, and due to not being rifled the precission is not the best.
No, there are better and faster alternatives that are pretty well armoured.
We knew this so well that we started building a replacement for the tank about 10 years ago, the Swedish version is the CV90120 Ghost.
Active armour, high landspeed, quiet tracks, nightfighting, Electronic warfare kid, drone garage, and an anti-drone weapons mount with its own radar.
It weighs half of a normal tank.
But, it has a problem, one so big that the production has been stopped.
The gun sucks since it is a smoothbore anti-tank 120mm.
So, new rifled longer ranged guns for heavy infantry support are being tested, plus more missiles will be attached, and a Dragonfire.
I suspect there will be two versions working in tandem...
Obviously other countries are working on other faster lighter less cumbersome stuffs.
Personally I think it is somewhat to late, it should be completely rebuilt so that it has no crew at all.
Time to AI the **** out of it while we are at it replacing the dead MBT.
Even Russia has discovered that the tank is dead, that is probably why they haven't even attempted to build any new tanks, and instead just refurb old ones.
It is definitely one of the reasons for them cancelling their T-14 Armata.
Instead they are using them now as barned monstrosities carrying large EW units on top of their mobile barn protection cages.
They also use them as crappy cumbersome infantry vehicles to move troops, with neither tanks, nor troops, having a high rate of survivability.
Things
This has led to Ukraine cancelling tank orders, and kindly asked to not receive any more.
They have enough for the few times it is useful.
Instead they get far more faster APC and armoured things like CVs and other modern things.
An Abrams cost 10 million USD, for that you get 5 Bradley's, and the tank and a Bradley has the same survival rate, so basically you get 5 things with a useful gun on top, a missile launcher, and armoured space for troops.
Much better really, and a Bradley's chain-gun can do a lot of stuff against trenches... no need for a big gun really.
This made for an odd view as we flew over the trains and truck convoys hauling in things.
Seeing tens of kilometres of APCs, IFVs and similar equipment was odd, at least I subconsciously looked for the tanks "that should be there", but was not.
The second thing that struck me was the scale of things.
Throughout Poland one lane has been cordoned off for military use on all EW highways, same goes for the highways from the ports in Poland.
Still things are backed up all the way into Germany.
Nonstop convoys, it is like one huge armour snake, multiply with five roads through Poland, and 2 from Romania.
Add to that 100s of trains carrying the truly heavy stuff like 100s of Paladin 155 self-propelled armoured howitzers.
Murica is doing what it does best, and there is a swagger to it that I have not seen since Stormin' Norman was at it.
Murica is most definitely back at it.
The amount of "stuffs" is just mindboggling.
And somehow, struggling, grunting, exerting itself until a noosebleed, EU, EU Countries + Friends are keeping lockstep to this humongous Murican effort.
Even I am surprised at us being able to do it, and I knew what was happening and what was happening on the EU side.
We had made the hard choice to hold back on new equipment and armour to Ukraine from our factories, and we had to trickle feed things to save up.
If we had sent in a just a few pieces each week they would just have gotten mulched, and Russia would have learned how to fight these brand new vehicles and equipments.
So, we had to make the incredibly painfull choice to wait until summer, and then deliver everything to punch a stop to the Russian onslaught.
It was the hardest choice we have ever had to do... the pain was real since we know what it did to Ukraine, but it was strategically correct.
But, with Murica back with a Bang and irritating Swagger
It was all of a sudden less need to start sending in all the stuff, and there is a surprising amount of it.
And some stuff is so new that I have no clue what the heck it is.
Seeing lowslung heavy wheeled black armoured thingies hauling **** down highways at 120km...
So, how much is it?
12 new Brigades of various types, armoured, air defence, artillery and whatnots.
There's also consumables for 50 Brigades rolling there.
And behind that is double as much in factory marshalling yards and on ships, but there is just not enough trains and trucks to haul all of it for now.
There's so much stuffs that there is not even soldiers for all of it.
Some will go to replenish existing units bringing them back to full strength.
Some will go to units in need of equipment change, or that are available that can be retrained.
But, there is definitely a need for more armoured units now, so Zyrskyi has said sod it and gone to complain for Zelenzkyy until he budges and allow a bigger mobilisation.
But, as I wrote previously.
This is not a quick fix.
The consumables will most definitely help, both in firepower and in morale, it will still take up to 4 weeks before we truly see the effects of that.
But, Ukraine is now totally emptying out the frontline storages to start to turn the tide as fast as possible, no need to save anything with this avalanche running through Ukraine.
In 4 weeks the armoured units will be back to strength.
But, the ones reequipping will need 3 months before they can be chucked into the battle.
But they are barely making a dent in the amount of gear.
It will take 6 months to train and equip the new units that will be created, it is not until then that things will start to really take effect.
And out of the Blue a new supplier have stepped up to the plate.
Right out of the gate they batted 81 Mig-29s, Mig-27s and Su-24s.
All of it in good nick.
They got bought for a nominal sum by a US Company, that then sold them on for a nominal sum to Ukraine, with Brussels picking up said nominal sum and the freight cost.
So, what superpower jumped out from nowhere and delivered an entire air force worth of flying boom-stuffs?
Kazakhstan and the eternally beaming President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, cementing his and Kazakhstan's spot on the Western table as a true partner.
Instead he will later on get US F-16s paid by EU, and later on Kazakhstan will get a 6th Generation air force funded by EU as our early responce air force towards China.
The very surprised Kazakhstani are busily high-fiving Jomart for highly unexpectedly having transformed them from a Backwater to the center table as equals with the Big 'Uns in the West.
Once more the mantra proves true: Location, location & location.
EU is about to double in size...
And, it is safe to say that so will NATO, I don't think China really thought about it, but Kazakhstan will end up being a NATO country, and I do not think China will enjoy having that next to its soft pudgy bottom.
Anyway, it is easy to snicker about 81 old Soviet aircraft, but this will now become an airwar.
And Ukraine have developped fixtures and fittings for almost every possible western weapon for their existing airplanes, and these will obviously also be retorfitted.
And with West pumping in bombs and missiles to break Russian frontline, these work quite well for that purpose.
It definitely means that more Western aircrafts can go hunting Russian aircraft.
While all of this is happening, Russia is trying to win a few last battles, and take more ground, so without further adue.
Fonts
Luhansk and South are superstable and Russia is getting nowhere with gusto.
It is that blasted corner in Southern Donetsk that is a headache.
Avdivka Westwards, here Ukraine is now stepping back behind two rivers, all the figths here are now delaying actions.
There is just no way to keep the troops supplied since there are no villages to use as depots and frontline hubs.
If anything I am a tad surprised at how slow it is going.
Marinka is for once somewhat stable again, but we expect Russia to start pushing here again soon.
Ocheretyne is now the scene of one of the hardest battles in the war with both sides throwing in everything and the cat.
He has now brought in as much reinforcements as can be supplied by the flimsy logistics chain here.
And he is slowly gnawing things to a standstill, but Russia is still advancing.
So, being the sleight of hand master he is, he has produced new supply roads by using mules.
Well, not physical mules, but he has tanks, and you can strap a lot of junk on a tank and send it ambling across fields to supply points.
So, during the night 3 tank trains will drive 10km each way across open fields with crates strapped to them (and what fits inside).
This is enough for a bonus Brigade to be brought forward, and he think that this is enough to turn the tide.
At the same time Russia is moving units from everywhere here to try to take advantage of the breakthrough.
Tarnyy is having none of it in his usual knuckledragging fashion.
It is now a battle of who has the thickest forehead and stamina, my money in the long run is definitely on Tarnyy, but Russia will take more ground before that.
The all important Chasiv Yar offensive have now turned into a comedy.
Tarnyy's former sub-commander (now suitably upgraded) is busy reaming out openings in the Russians, and then he bends them over for a good fisting.
After weakening them with artillery, drones and missiles he then punched a hole in their Southern flank, completely undercutting the entire Russian party, while they tried to stop that, he instead punch them in the middle by just running past the forlorn Russian infantry in those 3 prongs.
Then he mauled the prongs until they basically consisted of a few sad forlorn Russians sitting all alone kilometres away from their own lines that they can't reach, nor can get supplied from.
What I mean is that he restored the Ukrainian line, with 3 small clicks of Russian infantry without any heavy gear sitting alone between TWO Ukrainian lines.
Now and then he shell them just to remind them how fooked they are, but otherwise he is mostly waiting for them to give up on their own.
Instead he is now shelling and droning the original Russian line, and missiling their rear.
If your celebration offensive is going this spectacularly badly it is probably time to call it quits on that particular idea, but hey, it is Russia so they will continue to remove their trousers and impale themselves on that particular fist.
I think they enjoy it.
I see that commander doing great stuff in the future, Tarnyy trained him well.
28 and commander of the Bakhmut Sector... they grow up so fast.
When Zyrskyi have time to swing by he will become the youngest Brigadier in Ukrainian history, probably for a month or so."
"I got kicked in the **** in the morning and told to get dressed, or more to the point, I got a cup of coffee stuck under the nose got my beard scratched...
Before I knew it I had been kidnapped for a helicopter inspection of various border crossing and main roads, just to get a feel of things.
Ukrainians have a very weird way of making even the weirdest things feel homely.
But sitting in a UH-60 Blackhawk with rugs, ornaments, curtains and an icon, was not something I ever expected to see in my life.
My Swedish utilitaristic and minimalistic upbringing is slowly seeing the advantage to this approach in life.
Why the need to live in a steel box for years when you can indeed have nice things, even if there is a war going on.
On the way we picked up the new ** General that has arrived on site and went for lunch back in *****.
Tanks
A few days ago AFU MOD calmly stated that they are withdrawing their Abrams tanks from frontline duties, citing low survivability.
The punderati and the general population at this point started to scream bloody murder.
I should here clarify that the Abrams are not faring much worse compared to other western tanks, and definitely better than the Russian made tanks, at least in a western tank it is likely that the crew will survive getting blown up, and that definitely does not go for the Soviet ones with the exception of the T84 Oplot that is similar to Western tanks.
In fact, it is now probably better since the newbuilds have a far thicker roof and engine cover compared to any other tanks.
The reason to remove the Abrams was based on Ukraine having the lowest number of them, and by withdrawing them they simplify their logistics a lot.
But, there's a lot more to this story, in fact...
R.I.P. Main Battle Tank!
It did not survive this war as a weapons platform, at least not in any form looking like today.
It is a mastodon that have lost its ability to survive on the battlefield.
There have been a quiet civil war in professional tank circles for more than a decade, with roughly half of the tank commanders saying that it is over, and the rest going "muh... must have tank..."
We all knew that the traditional role of the tank was gone, but we thought we would find a way to at least make us of the ones we had as short range armoured artillery support for the infantry.
Note here that there have been only 2 tank on tank battles in the entire war, and both was decided by artillery and not tanks.
I participated in Kreminna, the last large tank battle in history most likely, and the other was a series of smaller tank skirmishes at Vuhledar.
A battle with 10 000 MBTs on the theater, and only two minor tank battles?
Eh... that is roughly 100 billion dollars worth of tanks doing almost nothing.
And then both sides failed at using them for frontline breaching.
I will though give Olga that she did two successfull breaches, and I pulled off one.
But once again it was not the tanks that made it possible.
At all 3 points it was highly agile CV90s and APCs together with artillery and drones that made the breach possible.
Tanks are just to slow and cumbersome to deliver the speed needed on the modern battlefield.
And Russia slowly lumbering up with tanks is even worse, even a babushka with an ATG will have ample time to take it out.
Not even speaking about lightning fast drones darting in to blow up a tank mine on the top of the turret, or the engine hatch.
And not even close artillery support is working, they are to slow and easy to hit.
And on top of that the guns on tanks suck, their range is to short at cirka 5km, and due to not being rifled the precission is not the best.
No, there are better and faster alternatives that are pretty well armoured.
We knew this so well that we started building a replacement for the tank about 10 years ago, the Swedish version is the CV90120 Ghost.
Active armour, high landspeed, quiet tracks, nightfighting, Electronic warfare kid, drone garage, and an anti-drone weapons mount with its own radar.
It weighs half of a normal tank.
But, it has a problem, one so big that the production has been stopped.
The gun sucks since it is a smoothbore anti-tank 120mm.
So, new rifled longer ranged guns for heavy infantry support are being tested, plus more missiles will be attached, and a Dragonfire.
I suspect there will be two versions working in tandem...
Obviously other countries are working on other faster lighter less cumbersome stuffs.
Personally I think it is somewhat to late, it should be completely rebuilt so that it has no crew at all.
Time to AI the **** out of it while we are at it replacing the dead MBT.
Even Russia has discovered that the tank is dead, that is probably why they haven't even attempted to build any new tanks, and instead just refurb old ones.
It is definitely one of the reasons for them cancelling their T-14 Armata.
Instead they are using them now as barned monstrosities carrying large EW units on top of their mobile barn protection cages.
They also use them as crappy cumbersome infantry vehicles to move troops, with neither tanks, nor troops, having a high rate of survivability.
Things
This has led to Ukraine cancelling tank orders, and kindly asked to not receive any more.
They have enough for the few times it is useful.
Instead they get far more faster APC and armoured things like CVs and other modern things.
An Abrams cost 10 million USD, for that you get 5 Bradley's, and the tank and a Bradley has the same survival rate, so basically you get 5 things with a useful gun on top, a missile launcher, and armoured space for troops.
Much better really, and a Bradley's chain-gun can do a lot of stuff against trenches... no need for a big gun really.
This made for an odd view as we flew over the trains and truck convoys hauling in things.
Seeing tens of kilometres of APCs, IFVs and similar equipment was odd, at least I subconsciously looked for the tanks "that should be there", but was not.
The second thing that struck me was the scale of things.
Throughout Poland one lane has been cordoned off for military use on all EW highways, same goes for the highways from the ports in Poland.
Still things are backed up all the way into Germany.
Nonstop convoys, it is like one huge armour snake, multiply with five roads through Poland, and 2 from Romania.
Add to that 100s of trains carrying the truly heavy stuff like 100s of Paladin 155 self-propelled armoured howitzers.
Murica is doing what it does best, and there is a swagger to it that I have not seen since Stormin' Norman was at it.
Murica is most definitely back at it.
The amount of "stuffs" is just mindboggling.
And somehow, struggling, grunting, exerting itself until a noosebleed, EU, EU Countries + Friends are keeping lockstep to this humongous Murican effort.
Even I am surprised at us being able to do it, and I knew what was happening and what was happening on the EU side.
We had made the hard choice to hold back on new equipment and armour to Ukraine from our factories, and we had to trickle feed things to save up.
If we had sent in a just a few pieces each week they would just have gotten mulched, and Russia would have learned how to fight these brand new vehicles and equipments.
So, we had to make the incredibly painfull choice to wait until summer, and then deliver everything to punch a stop to the Russian onslaught.
It was the hardest choice we have ever had to do... the pain was real since we know what it did to Ukraine, but it was strategically correct.
But, with Murica back with a Bang and irritating Swagger
It was all of a sudden less need to start sending in all the stuff, and there is a surprising amount of it.
And some stuff is so new that I have no clue what the heck it is.
Seeing lowslung heavy wheeled black armoured thingies hauling **** down highways at 120km...
So, how much is it?
12 new Brigades of various types, armoured, air defence, artillery and whatnots.
There's also consumables for 50 Brigades rolling there.
And behind that is double as much in factory marshalling yards and on ships, but there is just not enough trains and trucks to haul all of it for now.
There's so much stuffs that there is not even soldiers for all of it.
Some will go to replenish existing units bringing them back to full strength.
Some will go to units in need of equipment change, or that are available that can be retrained.
But, there is definitely a need for more armoured units now, so Zyrskyi has said sod it and gone to complain for Zelenzkyy until he budges and allow a bigger mobilisation.
But, as I wrote previously.
This is not a quick fix.
The consumables will most definitely help, both in firepower and in morale, it will still take up to 4 weeks before we truly see the effects of that.
But, Ukraine is now totally emptying out the frontline storages to start to turn the tide as fast as possible, no need to save anything with this avalanche running through Ukraine.
In 4 weeks the armoured units will be back to strength.
But, the ones reequipping will need 3 months before they can be chucked into the battle.
But they are barely making a dent in the amount of gear.
It will take 6 months to train and equip the new units that will be created, it is not until then that things will start to really take effect.
And out of the Blue a new supplier have stepped up to the plate.
Right out of the gate they batted 81 Mig-29s, Mig-27s and Su-24s.
All of it in good nick.
They got bought for a nominal sum by a US Company, that then sold them on for a nominal sum to Ukraine, with Brussels picking up said nominal sum and the freight cost.
So, what superpower jumped out from nowhere and delivered an entire air force worth of flying boom-stuffs?
Kazakhstan and the eternally beaming President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, cementing his and Kazakhstan's spot on the Western table as a true partner.
Instead he will later on get US F-16s paid by EU, and later on Kazakhstan will get a 6th Generation air force funded by EU as our early responce air force towards China.
The very surprised Kazakhstani are busily high-fiving Jomart for highly unexpectedly having transformed them from a Backwater to the center table as equals with the Big 'Uns in the West.
Once more the mantra proves true: Location, location & location.
EU is about to double in size...
And, it is safe to say that so will NATO, I don't think China really thought about it, but Kazakhstan will end up being a NATO country, and I do not think China will enjoy having that next to its soft pudgy bottom.
Anyway, it is easy to snicker about 81 old Soviet aircraft, but this will now become an airwar.
And Ukraine have developped fixtures and fittings for almost every possible western weapon for their existing airplanes, and these will obviously also be retorfitted.
And with West pumping in bombs and missiles to break Russian frontline, these work quite well for that purpose.
It definitely means that more Western aircrafts can go hunting Russian aircraft.
While all of this is happening, Russia is trying to win a few last battles, and take more ground, so without further adue.
Fonts
Luhansk and South are superstable and Russia is getting nowhere with gusto.
It is that blasted corner in Southern Donetsk that is a headache.
Avdivka Westwards, here Ukraine is now stepping back behind two rivers, all the figths here are now delaying actions.
There is just no way to keep the troops supplied since there are no villages to use as depots and frontline hubs.
If anything I am a tad surprised at how slow it is going.
Marinka is for once somewhat stable again, but we expect Russia to start pushing here again soon.
Ocheretyne is now the scene of one of the hardest battles in the war with both sides throwing in everything and the cat.
He has now brought in as much reinforcements as can be supplied by the flimsy logistics chain here.
And he is slowly gnawing things to a standstill, but Russia is still advancing.
So, being the sleight of hand master he is, he has produced new supply roads by using mules.
Well, not physical mules, but he has tanks, and you can strap a lot of junk on a tank and send it ambling across fields to supply points.
So, during the night 3 tank trains will drive 10km each way across open fields with crates strapped to them (and what fits inside).
This is enough for a bonus Brigade to be brought forward, and he think that this is enough to turn the tide.
At the same time Russia is moving units from everywhere here to try to take advantage of the breakthrough.
Tarnyy is having none of it in his usual knuckledragging fashion.
It is now a battle of who has the thickest forehead and stamina, my money in the long run is definitely on Tarnyy, but Russia will take more ground before that.
The all important Chasiv Yar offensive have now turned into a comedy.
Tarnyy's former sub-commander (now suitably upgraded) is busy reaming out openings in the Russians, and then he bends them over for a good fisting.
After weakening them with artillery, drones and missiles he then punched a hole in their Southern flank, completely undercutting the entire Russian party, while they tried to stop that, he instead punch them in the middle by just running past the forlorn Russian infantry in those 3 prongs.
Then he mauled the prongs until they basically consisted of a few sad forlorn Russians sitting all alone kilometres away from their own lines that they can't reach, nor can get supplied from.
What I mean is that he restored the Ukrainian line, with 3 small clicks of Russian infantry without any heavy gear sitting alone between TWO Ukrainian lines.
Now and then he shell them just to remind them how fooked they are, but otherwise he is mostly waiting for them to give up on their own.
Instead he is now shelling and droning the original Russian line, and missiling their rear.
If your celebration offensive is going this spectacularly badly it is probably time to call it quits on that particular idea, but hey, it is Russia so they will continue to remove their trousers and impale themselves on that particular fist.
I think they enjoy it.
I see that commander doing great stuff in the future, Tarnyy trained him well.
28 and commander of the Bakhmut Sector... they grow up so fast.
When Zyrskyi have time to swing by he will become the youngest Brigadier in Ukrainian history, probably for a month or so."
Jonny_Rondos_Disco_pants
Well-known member
Just remember, Kazakhstan is home to some very large Oil projects (chevron) that require American support for the money poured in. Im on one of them.
I think that may have played a part in getting the Americans' act together.
You might want the sound off.
Lots of photos of Police joining the protests. Georgia will go its own way.
Lots of photos of Police joining the protests. Georgia will go its own way.
Some significant Ukraine breakthroughs in progress. Chasiv Yar and one other place.
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Hap
Well-known member
That's a bit of welcome news...
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I can elaborate a little. Tank Girl has been busy encouraging here commanders to take advantage of any thinning of the Russian lines they spot. TheCommander in Chasiv Yar has taken advantage well, using newly arrived "stuff". There UAF have broken through the second Russian line and are busy causing havoc. Down at the mouth of the Dnipro, further islands have now been taken .... this represents 10x the territory taken by the Russians around Avdiivka/Ocheretyne in just 36 hours. I believe the rest of the islands in the estuary are now grey zones. It's fairly obvious where this is heading. Take those gains alongside the wiping out of all Russia's air defences around Robotyne ...and the strikles on Crimean AD and iirfields overnight and you may build a picture of what might be afoot. It will happen in stages though.
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Update in brief. More preparations in Crimea last night. All the islands at the mouth of the Dnipro to the North of the main channel are now in UAF hands. The ones on the south are now grey zone.
And there has been a new arrival .... won't be operational just yet (waiting for its friends to sneak in). Hangars are all underground.
And there has been a new arrival .... won't be operational just yet (waiting for its friends to sneak in). Hangars are all underground.
And just to remind folks why this battle has to be won.
This is a well known recreational area where the people of Odesa go to walk/jog/run ... relax. Zero military value. Purely targeting ordinary people, with cluster munitions.
This is a well known recreational area where the people of Odesa go to walk/jog/run ... relax. Zero military value. Purely targeting ordinary people, with cluster munitions.
Decent_Left
Well-known member
& to remind folk of why the Ukrainians can win if we just give them what they need
Some catching up to do. With some interesting side orders. Like this one.
"It has now become generally known that GPS is toast.
I earlier alluded that EW is now so strong that you can eat it with a spoon.
And it will get far worse, soon all radio-signal based communications will be utterly impossible.
This means that the war is temporarilly devolving for both sides.
It is time to declare the death of GPS based weapons systems.
Both sides have installed such massive EW systems targeting GPS systems that several types of GPS weapons have become obsolete.
This means that GPS-based glidebombs are now flying imprecise kites careening everywhere.
GLSDB have become a very longrange GRAD system.
And the staple of precise fire, the Excalibur is now just a very longrange standard shell.
Obviously the EW systems are far from all-encompassing, but more and more areas are affected.
It is also affecting aircraft on both sides, basically we are returning to an age of maps, compass and sextants to navigate around.
And it does not help that the roadsigns have been exchanged to messages like Putin Khuylo 220km, and turned in other directions...
This is affecting drones at around half of the frontline, but Ukraine had already developped AI self-searching drones that are impervious to jamming, and they can switch between radio-control frequencies within minutes if needed for those that are operator controlled.
So, the effect is much less obvious for the drones.
And, Russia is months, if not years behind on the AI-tech part, so sort of a win for Ukraine.
Russia is also installing GPS-jammers along its border.
They started with one at Kaliningrad, but that suffered an "accident", so they put a new one up on the border to the Baltic States, it is this new one that is now causing problems for civil air traffic.
This one is easier to "accident" compared to the previous one due to being inside Russia propper.
But, there are more spots like this, and we believe that Russia is on the route to install these systems along their entire border to EU and Ukraine, or perhaps even further.
This is somewhat baffling since this also endangers Russian civil aviation, but... Russia is not known for caring about civilian losses or Russian lives.
For now we need to invent ways to take this larger systems down.
But, in the medium future we definitely need a new system that is safer than GPS.
And we should here remember that this is also affecting civilian shipping to an extreme amount.
The Baltic Sea is not the most easy to navigate, and almost all lighthouses etcetera have been decommissioned, so right now ships are sailing blind, and many of those are tankers of dubious Russian origin and state of repair and competency.
We will sooner or later have a large accident, either aircraft or ship.
For the time being paper maps have become a thing again in the Baltics.
In Ukraine there is now a hunt going for those new Russian EW systems.
But, it is better to just accept that in some aspects the war devolved to older and more stupid types of systems.
And, weirdly this is now benefitting Ukraine.
Russian glide bombs are careening into fields mostly, or turning around to bomb Russians.
And Russia was highly depending on those due to artillery shortages.
At the same time Ukraine is swimming in shells of the dumb type.
We should also point out that both the French ASSM and the US JDAM are non-GPS ones, and the Paveway IVs can be redirected for non EW'd parts of the front.
What surprised most of us is how fast this shift came, previously the EW systems was pretty useless, but now all of a sudden both sides came up with functional stuff at the same time.
All I can say is that the EW development is now so fast that I expect anything electronic to be in trouble soon, until everything is shielded and we are back to the beginning again."
On the economy
"So, a few days ago the Bank of Russia and Rosstat declared that the Russian economy is in deep dodo, and that the ruble has reached Junk Bond Status.
But that we sort of already knew.
One tidbit is that even though the industrial production of Russia increased by 4 percent, the civilian production is down by a whopping 39 percent over the period of 12 months.
That means that 43 percent of the entire industrial output of Russia is wartime production funded with government money.
Money that Russia doesn't have.
Now, we should note that Russias economy was never based on Industrial production.
60 percent was based on oil and gas that is separately reported.
Half of that is gone, and 75 percent of profits.
Ouch.
Now returning to the industrial part.
Prior to the war 50 percent of the entire non-hydrocarbon industry revenue came from a single company, a true juggernaut in the world.
Norilsk Nickle Ltd, the worlds largest producer of nickel and paladium, and the 5th largest producer of copper.
One third of the revenue is from copper, 10 percent from paladium, and the rest at 57 percent is from nickel.
All of it coming from the Norilsk-Talnakh complex, formerly known as the **** end of the Siberian Traps.
Why am I bringing up Norilsk Nickel?
After all they are not even under sanctions due to the world economy tanking if we did that.
Yes, new mines are opened as fast as possible, but nickel... phew...
People often point to Norilsk Nickel as one of the main reasons that the sanctions are not working, or at least are like a Swiss Cheese, filled with holes.
Partially this is obviously true, we could increase sanctions, and we should do so.
But, here's the thing.
Norilsk Nickel just became the living proof that sanctions work, albeit slowly.
The ore brought up out of the Talnakh is first refined, then separated in steps into fractions.
The first thing taken out is the copper since that is "poison" for smelting and separating out the nickel/paladium parts.
The copper concentrate in turn is pushed into a huge smelter plant in Norilsk, and out comes oodles of copper.
It is a very profitable business, and it creates thousands of jobs in Norilsk, and a lot of tax revenue for Russia.
Problem is that the smelting plant was old, and need of a huge overhaul that was scheduled to have started in january of 2023.
The worlds large companies was contracted like for instance Siemens.
Workers, consultants, machines... all coming out of the West, aiming to building one of the worlds best and most efficient smelting plants out of the Stalinistic monstrosity.
And all of those companies cancelled the contracts since that would have broken oh so many sanctions.
So, Norilsk Nickel had to turn to China in an attempt to get at least replacement machinery to tide them over until they could build that new plant, because the old stuff was cracking, and the western sub-parts installed also needed servicing that could not be done due to sanctions.
On top of that Russia could not even build new Soviet-style machinery.
That knowhow and those factories are long gone.
So, contracts was signed, partial payments was made to pay for the Chinese companies to start building, paid in dollars.
Back then Norilsk Nickel had a lot of dollars to spend.
But, over time China became less inclined to do business with Russia, and in the end all banking contacts was cut, contracts cancelled, and not even large specialised equipment without dual use could be delivered.
Instead Norilsk Nickel hatched a plan to use their Chinese subsidiary and have that build a new copper smelting plant in China.
This plan was approved by the Chinese government, this means that all that copper concentrate will be sold from Norilsk Nickel to the Chinese Company, and the value-adding smelting will be done there instead.
This moves the tax revenue for it out of Russia into China, same with the revenue of the Copper sales.
Basically, this is a heist...
1/6th of the Industrial value of Russia (prewar, more now) is thusly moved to China.
Any economist would **** themselves at this news, but Kremlin is only interested in themselves, and secondly the war.
Also, ponder the enormity of transports that will be required.
Instead of loading produced copper on a train and haul it to port, now ten times as many trains will be needed to haul the concentrate to port, and then send that to China.
Now let us just state that the single-track railway serving between Norilsk and the port of Dudinka on the Yenisei can best best described as rustic.
It used to electrified, but the lack of upkeap made them deelectrify and go to diesel locomotives a couple of decades ago.
And that railroad is barely coping as is, and there are frequent derailings.
There was a plan to bring in Western companies to reelectrify and rebuild the railroad, but that was cancelled due... sanctions.
Now let us return to Port of Dudinka, not a fancy cruiseport, it is sad place open for shipping between June to October, the rest of the year it is frozen over.
The port is equipped to load processed nickel and copper, not to load ships with copper concentrate.
So, somehow they will need to buy and install that during sanctions, with not even China willing to sell **** to Russia.
Wonder how they will solve that problem.
But, there is another problem with the port.
It can't take big ships, so instead of a few large ships plying the port during shipping season an army of smaller ships will have to service a mad-dash run, and no shipping company on Earth will submit the cost of servicing that for just a few months.
Why?
Well, there's not enough free bulk carriers small enough to do the job available, so they would need to order new to be build, and with work only around from Junde to October that would carry a huge loss for them.
Let us now reiterate and clarify a pile of dung.
Russia will ship oodles of copper concentrate on a failing railway not equipped for the weight and amount of trains, on trains that are on the verge of breaking down as is.
Then that will reach a small port with shallow draft that is only open for 5 months per year.
A port that lacks suitable port facilities to load the copper concentrate.
After that it will be loaded on non-existing ships.
And those non-existing ships will deliver said copper concentrate to a Chinese smelting plant that is state of the art, owned by a subsidiary that will default quickly since it can't produce due to the above.
Basically Russia is giving a state of the art copper smelting plant free of charge to China...
The other large copper companies of the world are slapping their knees and roar with laughter...
Because they know this is a stupid idea troughout, and they also know that they are basically seeing an end of a competitor and that prices on copper will go up quite a bit in the near future.
Now, how desperate are Norilsk Copper, because that is definitely a factor in this mad scheme.
Very is the answer, they are shuttering the smelting plant in September, if not even before that.
From then on they will just store the copper concentrate out in the open in what rapidly will become the worlds largest and most valuable, but poisonous dungpile."
Hairyplanes and frontlines ... more or less latest
"I thought it was time to make a short frontline update going clockwise.
What I do not mention is boring and stable... ie., very effective in grinding Russians.
But, first a short update on the F-16s now that we sort of have an official date.
They will arrive after Easter, and Easter is on May 5th here in Ukraine.
So a few days after that they will be operational.
In reality they have already started to sneak in to that Swedish designed underground base.
There is two more being constructed, meaning that Russia will have one **** of a problem reaching the planes.
Anyhoos, they will reveal themselves with a bang.
Terny
Here Zyrskyi have halted the Russian advance, but he did not want to be completely overshadowed by what Tank Girl, Tarny and the plucky colonel at Chasiv Yar is doing, so he decided that he needed a field.
So South of the push towards Terny he found a weak spot and pushed in taking a field.
This was done to undermine the advance attempts further, and to force Russia to reallocate some of the forces in the region.
The secondary reason was to make certain that these troops was not moved to increase Russian strength in Chasiv Yar or Ocheretyne.
Chasiv Yar
After having pushed a couple of fields further in, forcing Russia to divert attention into defending their Southern flank things are now mostly at a standstill.
For reasons we have not had an explanation to yet, the commander decided to adopt 5 Russian soldiers sitting inside a narrow forrest belt.
They are entirely cut off from reinforcements and supplies as they got left behind previously.
This left the map unupdated, showing that slim thin sliver of Russian held territory reaching almost to the Canal near the Fortress Bunker from Hell.
Yesterday those 5 adopted Mobiks took a stroll for about 100 meters in the direction of the main Ukrainian defence line, and sat down looking forlorn.
For reasons unknown they were not fired upon, mostly because they sure as heck did not fire on the Ukrainian line.
The result of this was that 5 sad Russian mobiks going on a walk moved the Russian held territory 100 meters up to the defence line.
Now ponder this, 5 sad Russians hold a line 2km long and 100 meters wide.
So why?
Either he is hoping that those 5 little Russkies will get tired and give up as they run out of food, or he is using them as a trap.
Sooner or later Russia will try to reconnect with their 5 sad mobiks, and with the surveillance drones feeding images directly to him, he would then be able to whipe them out.
Or, he just enjoy having pets around...
Ocheretyne and Beyond
Tarnyy had to step back south of the breach to conserve life of his troops due to Russia having cut the only possible bad road used to supply the forces.
This is a main defence line that was abandoned, so definitely not something to celebrate.
At the same time Keramik North of the protrusion was taken by the Russians.
And they started to push further to the Northwest from the front of their salient.
Next to fall will be Novooleksandrivka to the NW, and most likely Arkhanhel'ske that is surrounded now on 3 sides.
Problem here is that Russia is willing to sacrifice as many soldiers as it take, just to take Berdyche with a prewar population of 300 people, Russia left behind 1 500 corpses.
For those 1 500 men they got roughly 80 houses and 2 streets... not that the houses are standing any longer.
And it is the same everywhere.
Most people think that Russia will extend this all the way to the small city of Pokrovsk 10km away, prior to the start of the war Pokrovsk had 61 000 inhabitants, so fairly sizeable.
This is the main command and logistics hub for this section of frontline, and it is blessed with quite a few good roads.
This would be a miracle if they tried that.
For every km Russia would move forward Ukraine would get better supply routes, while Russia got further into a logistical nightmare.
Also, the defence would be stronger the further the Russians move in this direction, my bet is that they would bog down halfway.
No, it is far more likely that they will continue to the Northwest to hook up to the T0504 that in the end goes to Chasiv Yar.
Continuing that direction would in the end loop off quite an area and undercut the Southern side of Chasiv Yar.
But even going the 5km to the road is quite a tall order for them, I have a hard time believing that Tarnyy will allow it.
There's also quite a bit of obstacles this way.
See this more of a goal for Russia, than something that they will achieve in the near future.
After all, that would double the length of the breach, and remember that Russia is having the same problems with moving supplies from now on.
But, as I have said, it looks likely that it will take Tarnyy two weeeks more to stabilise the front.
And at that point he is more than likely to counterpunch.
So, how much resources does Russia expend here?
More than in Bakhmut and Avdiivka per average day.
That tells a lot about how hard the fight is, and how insane this Russian push is.
It is not Tarnyy underperforming, there is just no way right now to stop this with the resources he has at hand, he has to sacrifice land against dead Russians until they run out of steam in this sector, or his logistics situation is improved enough.
At the going rate Russia is depopulating Russia for these small gains, it is not sustainable even for Russia in the long run.
Urozhaine
Russia made a very small gain here of about 100 by 200 meters wide towards Urozhaine.
It is the first time in months that Russia attacked here, and they were rapidly stopped.
I guess they are trying to divert attention away from Ocheretyne more than anything else.
Robotyne
Russia attacked once again, or more to the point, one of their daily 3 meatwaves, and was successful in reaching the first two house ruins in the village.
After a couple of hours the houses had been sanitized with artillery and order restored, but it caused a small map update, that really should be reversed.
Kherson/Island Liquefaction
As a part of her campaign in the Islands TG is redeploying and reconcentrating troops in Kherson.
This will cause changes that may seem strange for laypeople, and I will explain those as well as I can as and when they get publically known.
It is though part of her plan to refocus and retool the entire campaign to suit her future needs in the far larger plan.
So, remember that if you hear strange news it is done according to her offensive strategy and by design.
As the local Russian commander tried to get in the way of her plans she got annoyed, and an annoyed TG is quite simply terrifying.
She did not have time to dabble with the fool, so she solved the problem with her usual massive barrages.
She decided to both clear the Islands on "her" side North of the shipping channel, she also cleaned out the Islands to the south of said channel.
And for good measure she also pounded the beach behind it, and the rear, and the deep rear.
It was made easy, she always has a massive fire line in place to take care of issues like this, something that she took from Zhukov and his plan for the Battle of Kursk.
Up close and personal she is pretty dainty, but for an enemy she is death incarnate and she is the most brutal general in Ukraine.
During this massive barrage she called me and asked for an explanation of why here Islands and the Southern bank was dissappearing.
So, I explained liquifaction to her.
Her constant pounding of nature caused seismic waves that made the muddy soil turn into liquid and just flow away in the river stream.
It got so bad that at least 10 percent of the islands are gone now, and sizeable chunks of the beach on the other side of the river are also gone.
Think localised constant M3-M5 earthquakes running for 12 hours... cheezus...
She used 24 pieces of Barrel artillery, 8 GRAD launchers and 4 Himars going at it again and again.
From a military perspective it was very effective.
The islands are now back in her hands, the islands to the south are denuded of Russians, and quite a bit of the troops that guarded the beach are no more, gone are also the boats that the Russians deployed here.
Beyond that the supply depots near the beach are gone, and behind that more depots, air defence and command posts.
In other words, the road forward is cleared.
It is up to her now if she will just continue to pound the Russians at a lower rate of fire, or if she will move forward a bit more.
Anyway, the stage is now set for Step 3 of the plan.
It will rock Russia to the core of its existence."
And just to put you in the picture of how my mate is living, his bedroom window was victim of shockwave from a nearby Russian missile blast a couple of nights ago. And he had a permanent cot and camp set up in a deep basement below his apt block. I wish they'd put some better AD around there. He's normally quite phlegmatic, but even he seems a bit peturbed by the prospect of being blown up.
"It has now become generally known that GPS is toast.
I earlier alluded that EW is now so strong that you can eat it with a spoon.
And it will get far worse, soon all radio-signal based communications will be utterly impossible.
This means that the war is temporarilly devolving for both sides.
It is time to declare the death of GPS based weapons systems.
Both sides have installed such massive EW systems targeting GPS systems that several types of GPS weapons have become obsolete.
This means that GPS-based glidebombs are now flying imprecise kites careening everywhere.
GLSDB have become a very longrange GRAD system.
And the staple of precise fire, the Excalibur is now just a very longrange standard shell.
Obviously the EW systems are far from all-encompassing, but more and more areas are affected.
It is also affecting aircraft on both sides, basically we are returning to an age of maps, compass and sextants to navigate around.
And it does not help that the roadsigns have been exchanged to messages like Putin Khuylo 220km, and turned in other directions...
This is affecting drones at around half of the frontline, but Ukraine had already developped AI self-searching drones that are impervious to jamming, and they can switch between radio-control frequencies within minutes if needed for those that are operator controlled.
So, the effect is much less obvious for the drones.
And, Russia is months, if not years behind on the AI-tech part, so sort of a win for Ukraine.
Russia is also installing GPS-jammers along its border.
They started with one at Kaliningrad, but that suffered an "accident", so they put a new one up on the border to the Baltic States, it is this new one that is now causing problems for civil air traffic.
This one is easier to "accident" compared to the previous one due to being inside Russia propper.
But, there are more spots like this, and we believe that Russia is on the route to install these systems along their entire border to EU and Ukraine, or perhaps even further.
This is somewhat baffling since this also endangers Russian civil aviation, but... Russia is not known for caring about civilian losses or Russian lives.
For now we need to invent ways to take this larger systems down.
But, in the medium future we definitely need a new system that is safer than GPS.
And we should here remember that this is also affecting civilian shipping to an extreme amount.
The Baltic Sea is not the most easy to navigate, and almost all lighthouses etcetera have been decommissioned, so right now ships are sailing blind, and many of those are tankers of dubious Russian origin and state of repair and competency.
We will sooner or later have a large accident, either aircraft or ship.
For the time being paper maps have become a thing again in the Baltics.
In Ukraine there is now a hunt going for those new Russian EW systems.
But, it is better to just accept that in some aspects the war devolved to older and more stupid types of systems.
And, weirdly this is now benefitting Ukraine.
Russian glide bombs are careening into fields mostly, or turning around to bomb Russians.
And Russia was highly depending on those due to artillery shortages.
At the same time Ukraine is swimming in shells of the dumb type.
We should also point out that both the French ASSM and the US JDAM are non-GPS ones, and the Paveway IVs can be redirected for non EW'd parts of the front.
What surprised most of us is how fast this shift came, previously the EW systems was pretty useless, but now all of a sudden both sides came up with functional stuff at the same time.
All I can say is that the EW development is now so fast that I expect anything electronic to be in trouble soon, until everything is shielded and we are back to the beginning again."
On the economy
"So, a few days ago the Bank of Russia and Rosstat declared that the Russian economy is in deep dodo, and that the ruble has reached Junk Bond Status.
But that we sort of already knew.
One tidbit is that even though the industrial production of Russia increased by 4 percent, the civilian production is down by a whopping 39 percent over the period of 12 months.
That means that 43 percent of the entire industrial output of Russia is wartime production funded with government money.
Money that Russia doesn't have.
Now, we should note that Russias economy was never based on Industrial production.
60 percent was based on oil and gas that is separately reported.
Half of that is gone, and 75 percent of profits.
Ouch.
Now returning to the industrial part.
Prior to the war 50 percent of the entire non-hydrocarbon industry revenue came from a single company, a true juggernaut in the world.
Norilsk Nickle Ltd, the worlds largest producer of nickel and paladium, and the 5th largest producer of copper.
One third of the revenue is from copper, 10 percent from paladium, and the rest at 57 percent is from nickel.
All of it coming from the Norilsk-Talnakh complex, formerly known as the **** end of the Siberian Traps.
Why am I bringing up Norilsk Nickel?
After all they are not even under sanctions due to the world economy tanking if we did that.
Yes, new mines are opened as fast as possible, but nickel... phew...
People often point to Norilsk Nickel as one of the main reasons that the sanctions are not working, or at least are like a Swiss Cheese, filled with holes.
Partially this is obviously true, we could increase sanctions, and we should do so.
But, here's the thing.
Norilsk Nickel just became the living proof that sanctions work, albeit slowly.
The ore brought up out of the Talnakh is first refined, then separated in steps into fractions.
The first thing taken out is the copper since that is "poison" for smelting and separating out the nickel/paladium parts.
The copper concentrate in turn is pushed into a huge smelter plant in Norilsk, and out comes oodles of copper.
It is a very profitable business, and it creates thousands of jobs in Norilsk, and a lot of tax revenue for Russia.
Problem is that the smelting plant was old, and need of a huge overhaul that was scheduled to have started in january of 2023.
The worlds large companies was contracted like for instance Siemens.
Workers, consultants, machines... all coming out of the West, aiming to building one of the worlds best and most efficient smelting plants out of the Stalinistic monstrosity.
And all of those companies cancelled the contracts since that would have broken oh so many sanctions.
So, Norilsk Nickel had to turn to China in an attempt to get at least replacement machinery to tide them over until they could build that new plant, because the old stuff was cracking, and the western sub-parts installed also needed servicing that could not be done due to sanctions.
On top of that Russia could not even build new Soviet-style machinery.
That knowhow and those factories are long gone.
So, contracts was signed, partial payments was made to pay for the Chinese companies to start building, paid in dollars.
Back then Norilsk Nickel had a lot of dollars to spend.
But, over time China became less inclined to do business with Russia, and in the end all banking contacts was cut, contracts cancelled, and not even large specialised equipment without dual use could be delivered.
Instead Norilsk Nickel hatched a plan to use their Chinese subsidiary and have that build a new copper smelting plant in China.
This plan was approved by the Chinese government, this means that all that copper concentrate will be sold from Norilsk Nickel to the Chinese Company, and the value-adding smelting will be done there instead.
This moves the tax revenue for it out of Russia into China, same with the revenue of the Copper sales.
Basically, this is a heist...
1/6th of the Industrial value of Russia (prewar, more now) is thusly moved to China.
Any economist would **** themselves at this news, but Kremlin is only interested in themselves, and secondly the war.
Also, ponder the enormity of transports that will be required.
Instead of loading produced copper on a train and haul it to port, now ten times as many trains will be needed to haul the concentrate to port, and then send that to China.
Now let us just state that the single-track railway serving between Norilsk and the port of Dudinka on the Yenisei can best best described as rustic.
It used to electrified, but the lack of upkeap made them deelectrify and go to diesel locomotives a couple of decades ago.
And that railroad is barely coping as is, and there are frequent derailings.
There was a plan to bring in Western companies to reelectrify and rebuild the railroad, but that was cancelled due... sanctions.
Now let us return to Port of Dudinka, not a fancy cruiseport, it is sad place open for shipping between June to October, the rest of the year it is frozen over.
The port is equipped to load processed nickel and copper, not to load ships with copper concentrate.
So, somehow they will need to buy and install that during sanctions, with not even China willing to sell **** to Russia.
Wonder how they will solve that problem.
But, there is another problem with the port.
It can't take big ships, so instead of a few large ships plying the port during shipping season an army of smaller ships will have to service a mad-dash run, and no shipping company on Earth will submit the cost of servicing that for just a few months.
Why?
Well, there's not enough free bulk carriers small enough to do the job available, so they would need to order new to be build, and with work only around from Junde to October that would carry a huge loss for them.
Let us now reiterate and clarify a pile of dung.
Russia will ship oodles of copper concentrate on a failing railway not equipped for the weight and amount of trains, on trains that are on the verge of breaking down as is.
Then that will reach a small port with shallow draft that is only open for 5 months per year.
A port that lacks suitable port facilities to load the copper concentrate.
After that it will be loaded on non-existing ships.
And those non-existing ships will deliver said copper concentrate to a Chinese smelting plant that is state of the art, owned by a subsidiary that will default quickly since it can't produce due to the above.
Basically Russia is giving a state of the art copper smelting plant free of charge to China...
The other large copper companies of the world are slapping their knees and roar with laughter...
Because they know this is a stupid idea troughout, and they also know that they are basically seeing an end of a competitor and that prices on copper will go up quite a bit in the near future.
Now, how desperate are Norilsk Copper, because that is definitely a factor in this mad scheme.
Very is the answer, they are shuttering the smelting plant in September, if not even before that.
From then on they will just store the copper concentrate out in the open in what rapidly will become the worlds largest and most valuable, but poisonous dungpile."
Hairyplanes and frontlines ... more or less latest
"I thought it was time to make a short frontline update going clockwise.
What I do not mention is boring and stable... ie., very effective in grinding Russians.
But, first a short update on the F-16s now that we sort of have an official date.
They will arrive after Easter, and Easter is on May 5th here in Ukraine.
So a few days after that they will be operational.
In reality they have already started to sneak in to that Swedish designed underground base.
There is two more being constructed, meaning that Russia will have one **** of a problem reaching the planes.
Anyhoos, they will reveal themselves with a bang.
Terny
Here Zyrskyi have halted the Russian advance, but he did not want to be completely overshadowed by what Tank Girl, Tarny and the plucky colonel at Chasiv Yar is doing, so he decided that he needed a field.
So South of the push towards Terny he found a weak spot and pushed in taking a field.
This was done to undermine the advance attempts further, and to force Russia to reallocate some of the forces in the region.
The secondary reason was to make certain that these troops was not moved to increase Russian strength in Chasiv Yar or Ocheretyne.
Chasiv Yar
After having pushed a couple of fields further in, forcing Russia to divert attention into defending their Southern flank things are now mostly at a standstill.
For reasons we have not had an explanation to yet, the commander decided to adopt 5 Russian soldiers sitting inside a narrow forrest belt.
They are entirely cut off from reinforcements and supplies as they got left behind previously.
This left the map unupdated, showing that slim thin sliver of Russian held territory reaching almost to the Canal near the Fortress Bunker from Hell.
Yesterday those 5 adopted Mobiks took a stroll for about 100 meters in the direction of the main Ukrainian defence line, and sat down looking forlorn.
For reasons unknown they were not fired upon, mostly because they sure as heck did not fire on the Ukrainian line.
The result of this was that 5 sad Russian mobiks going on a walk moved the Russian held territory 100 meters up to the defence line.
Now ponder this, 5 sad Russians hold a line 2km long and 100 meters wide.
So why?
Either he is hoping that those 5 little Russkies will get tired and give up as they run out of food, or he is using them as a trap.
Sooner or later Russia will try to reconnect with their 5 sad mobiks, and with the surveillance drones feeding images directly to him, he would then be able to whipe them out.
Or, he just enjoy having pets around...
Ocheretyne and Beyond
Tarnyy had to step back south of the breach to conserve life of his troops due to Russia having cut the only possible bad road used to supply the forces.
This is a main defence line that was abandoned, so definitely not something to celebrate.
At the same time Keramik North of the protrusion was taken by the Russians.
And they started to push further to the Northwest from the front of their salient.
Next to fall will be Novooleksandrivka to the NW, and most likely Arkhanhel'ske that is surrounded now on 3 sides.
Problem here is that Russia is willing to sacrifice as many soldiers as it take, just to take Berdyche with a prewar population of 300 people, Russia left behind 1 500 corpses.
For those 1 500 men they got roughly 80 houses and 2 streets... not that the houses are standing any longer.
And it is the same everywhere.
Most people think that Russia will extend this all the way to the small city of Pokrovsk 10km away, prior to the start of the war Pokrovsk had 61 000 inhabitants, so fairly sizeable.
This is the main command and logistics hub for this section of frontline, and it is blessed with quite a few good roads.
This would be a miracle if they tried that.
For every km Russia would move forward Ukraine would get better supply routes, while Russia got further into a logistical nightmare.
Also, the defence would be stronger the further the Russians move in this direction, my bet is that they would bog down halfway.
No, it is far more likely that they will continue to the Northwest to hook up to the T0504 that in the end goes to Chasiv Yar.
Continuing that direction would in the end loop off quite an area and undercut the Southern side of Chasiv Yar.
But even going the 5km to the road is quite a tall order for them, I have a hard time believing that Tarnyy will allow it.
There's also quite a bit of obstacles this way.
See this more of a goal for Russia, than something that they will achieve in the near future.
After all, that would double the length of the breach, and remember that Russia is having the same problems with moving supplies from now on.
But, as I have said, it looks likely that it will take Tarnyy two weeeks more to stabilise the front.
And at that point he is more than likely to counterpunch.
So, how much resources does Russia expend here?
More than in Bakhmut and Avdiivka per average day.
That tells a lot about how hard the fight is, and how insane this Russian push is.
It is not Tarnyy underperforming, there is just no way right now to stop this with the resources he has at hand, he has to sacrifice land against dead Russians until they run out of steam in this sector, or his logistics situation is improved enough.
At the going rate Russia is depopulating Russia for these small gains, it is not sustainable even for Russia in the long run.
Urozhaine
Russia made a very small gain here of about 100 by 200 meters wide towards Urozhaine.
It is the first time in months that Russia attacked here, and they were rapidly stopped.
I guess they are trying to divert attention away from Ocheretyne more than anything else.
Robotyne
Russia attacked once again, or more to the point, one of their daily 3 meatwaves, and was successful in reaching the first two house ruins in the village.
After a couple of hours the houses had been sanitized with artillery and order restored, but it caused a small map update, that really should be reversed.
Kherson/Island Liquefaction
As a part of her campaign in the Islands TG is redeploying and reconcentrating troops in Kherson.
This will cause changes that may seem strange for laypeople, and I will explain those as well as I can as and when they get publically known.
It is though part of her plan to refocus and retool the entire campaign to suit her future needs in the far larger plan.
So, remember that if you hear strange news it is done according to her offensive strategy and by design.
As the local Russian commander tried to get in the way of her plans she got annoyed, and an annoyed TG is quite simply terrifying.
She did not have time to dabble with the fool, so she solved the problem with her usual massive barrages.
She decided to both clear the Islands on "her" side North of the shipping channel, she also cleaned out the Islands to the south of said channel.
And for good measure she also pounded the beach behind it, and the rear, and the deep rear.
It was made easy, she always has a massive fire line in place to take care of issues like this, something that she took from Zhukov and his plan for the Battle of Kursk.
Up close and personal she is pretty dainty, but for an enemy she is death incarnate and she is the most brutal general in Ukraine.
During this massive barrage she called me and asked for an explanation of why here Islands and the Southern bank was dissappearing.
So, I explained liquifaction to her.
Her constant pounding of nature caused seismic waves that made the muddy soil turn into liquid and just flow away in the river stream.
It got so bad that at least 10 percent of the islands are gone now, and sizeable chunks of the beach on the other side of the river are also gone.
Think localised constant M3-M5 earthquakes running for 12 hours... cheezus...
She used 24 pieces of Barrel artillery, 8 GRAD launchers and 4 Himars going at it again and again.
From a military perspective it was very effective.
The islands are now back in her hands, the islands to the south are denuded of Russians, and quite a bit of the troops that guarded the beach are no more, gone are also the boats that the Russians deployed here.
Beyond that the supply depots near the beach are gone, and behind that more depots, air defence and command posts.
In other words, the road forward is cleared.
It is up to her now if she will just continue to pound the Russians at a lower rate of fire, or if she will move forward a bit more.
Anyway, the stage is now set for Step 3 of the plan.
It will rock Russia to the core of its existence."
And just to put you in the picture of how my mate is living, his bedroom window was victim of shockwave from a nearby Russian missile blast a couple of nights ago. And he had a permanent cot and camp set up in a deep basement below his apt block. I wish they'd put some better AD around there. He's normally quite phlegmatic, but even he seems a bit peturbed by the prospect of being blown up.
Decent_Left
Well-known member
Sad News
Muttley
Well-known member
Report that Ukraine has been targeting Russian supply lines, specifically railway overnight.
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