I spent all day researching the intricate details and numbers in this latest missive from my imaginary friend, General Sneaky.
"There are now clear defaitist signals coming out of Russia, and it is not from nobodies, no it is coming from leaders of the duma, generals, etcetera.
Basically all of those that have spoken point in the direction of Russia not being able to compete with the West in regards of weapons and production figures.
They are also starting to mention a specific month in regards of their woe's, it is November that they are worried about, and not from a standpoint of Trump being at risk of loosing, no in regards of weapons.
I will write more about it at a later date, I just wanted to point it out. (November is when he has said for some time the crux is reached)
Victory 1
With extensive knowledge about Africa, and how brutal it can be, I was sort of expecting something like this to happen.
Russia had 2 full Battalions in Mali from Wagner, that might not sound like a lot, but they have all of the best equipment, and massive firepower for the region, and they are mainly operating as support for the local Government Army.
At the same time they are extracting all the natural resources that they can, and do their usual pillaging and raping.
Unlike in Ukraine these where fullstrength Battalions of well trained soldiers, with unlimited resources and heavy equipment, so around 1 500 soldiers in total, plus support staff and aviation, so in total around 2 500.
From a purely Ukrainian perspective this does not sound like a heck of a lot, but since the scale here is much smaller, it is a hefty force to say the least.
Opposing them are a coallition of groupings opposing the government that usurped power together with Wagner and Russia.
The backbone are the Tuaregs.
And, as the French Foreign Legion mantra says, "You simply just do not **** with the Tuaregs, ever!"
They are extremely good desert fighters.
This bunch has limited support from Sweden, France and Ukraine.
The Malian Government was attempting an offensive against Tuareg controlled area to take a town.
They sent two companies of their own soldiers, and a company of Wagnerites backed by armour and helicopters.
The mission for the Wagnerites was to plow the way to the town, provide heavy firepower, and ransack the place and kill as many civilians as possible.
The particular battalion that the company came from is known as Rusich, an open neo-nazi battalion led by none other than the wanted War Criminal Alexey Milchakov (as bad as they ever come).
In the Rusich movement (it is also an open neo-nazi political party) you have Russias largest Military Propagandist, Grey Zone.
His real name is not known
For reasons unknown, Milchakov had turned over command of the Rusich Battalion to "Lotus", Anton Yelizarov, the person who took command of Wagner after Prigozhin purportedly bit the dust in a plane crash.
En Route to the town Tuareg Forces ambushed to column of the Company, and annihilated them.
Not losses and wounded, no they vamoozed them from the planet, well except 16 that they took prisoner for "reasons".
The rest died, among the dead was the Admin of Grey Zone, known under the names "Belyi" (White) and "Pyatisoty" (Cargo 500), and "Lotus" (Yelizarov).
84 Wagner soldiers died outright.
The attack has obviously thrown Wagner as a whole into disarray and confusion, and they lost a full 1/8th of their combat power in a matter of minutes, plus one Mi-28 attack helicopter that was hit and crashed.
And the almost hysterical part is that there are no recorded losses, not even wounded, among the Tuaregs.
As mentioned, don't **** with the Tuareg, they are after all the inspiration for the Fremen in Dune and for good reasons.
Africa can be a really nice place, but not if you are a mahoosive dingus.
Now Milchakov is screaming to high heavens demanding to get reinforcements from Russia to kill all of the Tuaregs in Mali.
Something tells me that he will not get that, I rather suspect that the Russian MOD is giggling about the Tuaregs killing their Wagner problem, and I bet they wish that Milchakov himself had been among the killed.
Anyway, the Tuaregs have reached out to the Government of Ukraine offering to transfer the captured war criminals to Ukraine for trials, citing the undying friendship between them and Ukraine.
As victories go, this is a major political coup, and a severe weakening of Russia in Africa.
Sad Russia Noises...
Air Victory
Let us kick off the next party inside of Ukraine.
I could have dubbed this part as Changes, sung by Bowie.
All of a sudden there's videos of Ukrainian attack helicopters operating close to the frontline providing fire support and lobbing rocket artillery on Russian positions.
Something that we have not seen Ukraine do for a long time due to the horrendous lossrate from such activities.
Also, Ukraine had almost ran out of attack helicopters, so they had been relegated to carting around the arses of various generals, scaring the living **** out of them (me).
All of a sudden there's a mysterious amount of old Soviet helicopters gallumphing about, firing upon things.
These have been donated by various companies far and near to Ukraine together with prodigious amounts of missiles.
But what really changed is that Russia now has almost completely run out of handheld air defense systems (manpads).
If those had been present in large numbers these aerial attacks would have been akin to suicide attacks.
But Lackings gives us Changes leading to Air Victories.
Let us now go to Crimea.
Yesterday Ukraine struck the airfield in Yevpatoria with ATACMS missiles, a conservative number is two SU-24 attack aircraft, and 2 Mi-28 helicopters was ceasing permanently to function.
There may be more injured from shrapnel wounds.
15 personnel was taken to hospital for treatment of wounds.
Let us now go to Bilhorod.
A state of the art SU-34 attack aircraft crashed after suffering from, check's notes: "Taking debris up via the rear cowling of a motor".
In other words, it was shot in the **** by source unknown.
Let us now go to Olenegorsk.
Welcome to the spectacular main show.
For "reasons", I can't describe details about "how the ****" it was done.
Several drones was fired from location unknown towards the Oleniya Strategic Bomber Air Base on the Kola Penninsula.
Oleniya is situated 1850km from Ukraine as the crow flies, and if the place of fire was Ukraine, that means that they more likely flew more than 2 500km to avoid Air Defenses and Radar Installations.
Initially it was believed that 1 TU-22M3M strategic jet bomber had been hit, but satelite images confirm that two such stupendously rare birds was struck directly, and judging from distances to other TU-22M3M's it is possible that 4 more got hit by shrapnel from the explosions.
In total the Soviet Union produced 497 of them between 1967 and 1993.
At the end of the Soviet Union 370 of them remained in Service.
60 of those was scrapped in Ukraine, leaving 310.
63 remained in service in 2018, and it is believed that less than 50 were operational as the war began.
1 was confirmed shot down previously by Ukraine, and one crashed on landing during the war.
But we are here not talking about the Baseline TU-22M3 version, nope this is the Kinzhal carrier M3M variant.
Russia had 10 of those in operation, it is the latest and best that they have.
Prior to the war breaking out they produced 2 per year, nowadays not so much.
With one previously shut down, the crashed one was a standard M3, and 2 destroyed now, Russia is down to 7 platforms that can launch Kinzhals.
If 4 more was critically damaged, it is indeed ouch in bumbum.
But, even "only" 2 is severe pain, these are not resources that Russia can get back.
It was at this point in writing that I was told that for reasons not nefarious that Russia had lost another airframe, this time it was a nice shiny SU-35 Fighterjet that decided that it did not wish to continue to exist, and unalived itself near Volgograd.
I will though put it on the 24 hour of airplane ouchery.
Did I note that all of this happened in one day?
Let me reiterate:
2 TU-22M3M's
2 SU-24's
1 SU-34 (Through direct ouch in bumbum)
1 SU-35 (Autodestruct sequence engaged)
3 Mi-28's
Sad Russia Noises!
Reverse Numbers
Before I lost track of the direction of my head yesterday I had intended to write about the Numbers Effect for Russia, and instead I barely hinted at it.
In a perfect world you have 5 times as many troops and equipment, adjusted for the offset factors I wrote about yesterday, Training, Quality, Air Superiority and Consumables Superiority.
I made the case why Ukraine can't perform a Big Offensive, but perhaps can do a Limited Offensive due to Offset Factors being in their favour, and somewhat troop numbers.
Now let us look at Russia instead.
From a troop number point of view Russia should be digging down like so many groundhogs in heat trying to build nests for future spouses that may amble past.
At a 1:1.5 disadvantage it is idiotic to continue offending since they are having a theoretical 3:1 KIA-lossrate visavi Ukraine while being on the offensive.
In reality the KIA-lossrate is way higher, more like 7:1 due to Ukrainian treatment of wounded being much better than the Russian one.
Sidenote: Ukraine has 1:3 Wounded in Action rate, but due to the care received more return to duty, and less are killed.
This lack of manpower explains why Russia has so little gains from such horrendous losses, they just do not have the manpower to push home gains made.
And from this perspective Russia using manpower in meatwaves in increasing amounts for such a long time was almost ending the war.
It is as I mentioned not until now that they have started to rely more on their big advantage, equipment.
We have now seen a radical shift in equipments usage.
How extreme is this shift?
On average during the war Russia has used manpower/equipment at a ratio of 20:1, and in the last 3 months this went down to 50:1 on average as Russia husbanded their "not-endless" supply of equipment.
In the last 5 days they have used a ratio of 4:1...
I would call that a significant shift.
This is more according to Soviet Doctrine, in that they were supposed to use between 1:5 to 1:10 in armour visavi infantry.
It is anyones guess why Russia did not do this early on when they could've pushed home far harder if they had done so.
But, here's the problem.
Russia only has a 2.5:1 advantage over Ukraine in regards of equipment in the theatre of operations.
That alone is not enough to offset the lower numbers in manpower, for that they would need a 5:1 advantage.
And it becomes worse now.
Ukraine has better equipment, and that decreases the Russian advantage in quantity.
And to compound the problem, Ukraine and Russia is now fighting on fairly equal terms in Consumables.
Ukraine even has a hairsbreath of an advantage now in that regards.
So, let us say that with these offsets accounted for Russia has an equipment advantage of 1.5:1, roughly the same as the their troop disadvantage.
So, from the equipment standpoint Russia should be groundhogging themselves like if Punxsutawny Phil had smoked all the opiates in Appalachia.
But as we all know, Russia is on other drugs than opiates... so, they continue to offend like no tomorrow.
Anyway, groundhogs and marmots aside, Russia should be able to get an edge from their airpower, not achieving air superiority withstanding.
Sadly from a Russian perspective this is no longer gonna work.
Through various means, and the West cheating at every corner it can, Ukraine is now holding their own and biting back very hard.
And things are about to get truly weird for the Russians soon in the Air.
And here we come to the final part.
Russia and Ukraine have symmetric lossrates, percentagewise Ukraine suffers as many wounded as Russia counted over population sizes, and for Wounded in Action, but it is asymmetric if we count Killed in Action.
If we instead look at equipment lossrates it is brutally asymmetric, Ukraine is first of all using comparatively little equipment visavi Russia, this due to Ukraine mainly being on the defense, and that decreases lossrate quite a bit.
Also, Ukraine is recieving slightly more equipment now compared to what is lost, this is enabled due to increases in production of consumables, whereas Russia is not receiving receiving as much as it is loosing.
This is now getting worse.
Russian equipment figures peaked during the second half of Avdiivka, after that they husbanded stuff, and still the numbers started to drop, especially in regards of artillery.
But, now all of a sudden they are husbanding troops and are increasing their armour usage, lifting the lossrates further.
This means that Ukraine will reach numerical parity faster, and if we factor in the quality offset we see that they will be even worse off in November than we thought.
Thoughts on Victories
Russia has now most likely built enough missiles for some good old rage missiling.
It will likely happen tonight or tomorrow night, or even during daytime if they feel adventorous.
So, it is basement sleeping if the air raid alert goes out now.
After all, Russia has had quite a few setbacks to ragemissile about, hohum.
But, last time Russia did this Ukraine ragedroned right back, and to be honest Ukraine's response was utterly asymmetric both in numbers and target quality.
The same thing will happen this time around too... Ukraine has also produced back up the numbers for something quite painful for Russia.
As I mentioned previously, from now on it will be a very costly thing to ragemissile.
Also, it will take some time to missile that far away at Olenya and similar distant spots, let us say roughly a month, but that rate will pick up ever so slowly, so think 4 weeks, 3 weeks, 2 weeks, once a week...
It is all about ramping up production at this point.
Thoughts on Change
"Russia will go hard, until they go home."
I think that is what we are seeing now, they are at any cost at this point trying to gain ground as fast as possible.
Not that it is making a heck of a big difference.
It would still take them roughly 5 years to get all of Donetsk and Luhansk.
But, my thinking is that they are trying to grab as much as possible prior to agreeing to a peace negotiation in the hope that they will have shown that they can continue, and try to wrangle out keeping some parts of Ukraine.
This will not fly in Ukraine, and even more so this would not fly in EU.
It might work in the US, depending a bit on who wins, and what "Biden" decides to do, assuming that they will try to "peace their way out" in November.
It obviously depends also on what Harris think when she wins, she has so far been extremely non-committal on her plans for Ukraine.
She will obviously not debate on help to Ukraine unless Trump would start to talk about aiding Ukraine directly and massively.
She knows that it will be internal to US politics that will get her the presidency, and not a war in a far flung place.
She also knows that there is now bipartisan support in both the Senate and the House, regardless of who is running what after the election.
Zelenzkyy was advised to show Johnson images of bombed baptist churches and images of blown apart baptist children.
This truly got to him, it is probably being the only thing that could get to him so hard that he overruled Trump, due to him being a baptist, and his own church also got to see the same images...
So, for purely religious reasons he will help in getting weapons to Ukraine.
Thankfully Russia hates all forms of Baptists, and made damn certain to kill as many of them as possible in Ukraine.
So, for now Russia is playing a game of gaining ground regardless of cost.
If Trump looks like he is winning they will then attempt a "Trump Peace", and if that fails they will be forced to accept worse conditions, but peace all the same.
Only problem is that they are still not getting that Ukraine has received binding promises by EU to secure a victory, and they know that they are fine on shells and a few other critical items from EU, it will be harder, but they will get there.
And that has now stiffened the backbone again.
I will leave things here for now.
Two victories, who would've thunk?
I have stacked up on cookies and snacks in the sub-basement.
Life will be good."
