The end?

borolad259 said:
But alas, in a twist of fate she found that someone else had done a better job of describing that than I could muster, and in video-form with easy to interpret graphics no less. The producer of these videos gets info with a 24-to-72-hour delay, the only one with such access. The reason we did that is that the ****** is so good at figuring stuff out that we had to make a deal with him and his team, because he was figuring stuff out to fast to contain Opsec.
On top of that he and his team is delaying things a bit further, so he is generally 3 to 5 days late with the news, but it is always extremely accurate and factual, well unless we kindly ask him to “plant” stuff. It is through a rarely used option.
Anyway, Tank Girl was bored and looked at one of his episodes and came in laughing about him having cleverly sussed out how I operate and think and darn… he had. Also, he is Ukrainian, so the pronunciations are correct. "

The video referred to here is the Reporting Ukraine one that I posted last night.

It should be noted that, although you get stuff here faster by and large, here is an Opsec delay in much of what I post.
Click to expand...

Anyone watching those Reporting from Ukraine video's, especially in conjunction with the privileged info we get on this thread, must have concluded this channel were first class analysts and/or had inside info.
 
borolad259 said:
He just messaged me but I was in Copenhagen airport so no further details. Another bombshell dropped in a musing earlier. Budsnov has moved jobs. Will post it up later.
Click to expand...
It’s been mooted in a few posts for the last few days and then Budanov when on a kind of valedictory tour of the Donetsk front for the troops. Legend with the skill set he’s shown so far, wonder what else he can come up with.
 
He is going to help run Kharkiv section, as Tank Girl has her hands full in Kursk. He has no experience as a battlefield commander. My mate gives more detail and opinion which you will get when I arrive home.
 
Here goes

"War of the North
I’m now back home and have had time to sleep a bit on things. As I tried to write previously, we have been successful in pulling the Russian Army out of Ukraine, substantially so even.
Let us discuss how much force Russia had before we went into Kursk. They had two Brigades each in Bryansk and Kursk, but those were mostly conscripts or FSB Border Guards, so very low combat power.
In Bilhorod Russia had 15 Combat Brigades trying to hammer their way down to Kharkiv, very much in vain I might add.
On our side we had 10 Combat Brigades against the two Russian intrusions into Kharkiv Oblast, and 5 Border Guard Brigades in each of Bryansk and Kursk border areas, those were mostly tripwire units.

Now
Let us go from East to West.
In Bilhorod Russia now has 22 Combat Brigades of fairly good Russian standards, they are now met by 10 Ukrainian Combat Brigades and 5 Border Guard Brigades, and there’s more of a holding action to be honest.
Kursk, here Russia has 33 Brigades, mostly of good Russian Standard, and these have the bulk of the equipment in the Northern Front, and it is now to here that Russia is sending their reinforcements that they are still pulling out of Ukraine.
And to top this up there’s now 10 Brigades of unknown stature in Bryansk, those are countered by 10 Border Guard Brigades in Turn. Note that I am not giving out the number of Brigades on our side in Kursk, Opsec after all.
If we just assume that there are 3 000 soldiers in each Brigade, we get a staggering number of Russians that are fighting in The War of the North, there should then be 195 000 Russian soldiers here.
Problem here is that Russian Brigades are constantly short-staffed, so the real number is closer to half, let us say 100 000 Russian soldiers. And most of these are as good as Russia can muster at this point in the war, and they brought with them the bulk of what they had in regards of equipment.
And still Russia is not making any headway in throwing Ukraine out of Russia, so we can safely state that Ukraine has enough combat power to hold, or even push forward a bit.
And still the Russians are bumbling into the area at a good clip. Just to cover the staggering loss rate Russia need to push in 3.5 under-strength Brigades per week. And we should also remember that Russia is still trying to turn the tide, so they are sending in 4 more Brigades per week now to increase their combat power.
That is 11 000 men coming in each week into the theatre, and an increase in numerical strength of 6 000 soldiers each week. That is if it would continue 110 000 soldiers per every 10 weeks, or the entire Russian Army in less than a year.
I somehow though doubt that Russia will move out their entire Army from Ukraine. But as long as Ukraine can reciprocate and move in more Units this chicken race towards demilitarising Ukraine continues, at least for now.
I call this a remarkable success towards achieving the goal of moving the war from Ukrainian territory into Russian territory.

Problems
Ukraine has a shortage in senior command in general, and specifically in commanders that can perform Combat Manoeuvre Warfare and Combined Arms Army Operations. Ukraine currently is short at least 2 entire Army Staffs, and the Army Staffs that exist are short-staffed and in need of reinforcement with officers experienced in large scale operations.
And to put it bluntly, those officers do not exist. So, we cheat a bit. There’s a number of Western ranking officers moonlighting in Ukraine, it is not just me. Even the highly esteemed General Inspektor Landheer Deutchland, Christian Freuding moonlighted briefly as commander of 21 st & 95 th Brigades, and obviously he just had to utter “Panzer Vorvärts!” as he rushed into the Seym pocket.
The historical context of that is just mindboggling… But we can’t cheat too much for very obvious reasons. After all the West is supposedly not at war with Russia, regardless of moonlighting officers.
There’s also the problem that there’s not enough active European higher officers with combat experience to solve the problem. Nor are there enough retired higher officers that can physically withstand the rigors of battle.
And the final problem with that is that countries tend to want to have their general staff inside their own country in case the **** hits the fan.
So, instead Ukraine is forced to elevate officers ever higher, some will meet the standards, some will not. My experience is that the ones that are elevated and make the grade, are those that in peace time would have reached their lofty positions anyway, they just do it with a rocket strapped to their arses.
And those that do not make the grade would have washed out of the army totally in peace time, but now they get stuck in more menial positions as it is discovered that they have been elevated beyond their capacity. War is a harsh mistress.
And then we have ad hoc solutions, like using a good general in the wrong place. I have previously written that generals come in different flavours and abilities that we are suited for. And that leads us to our newest combat general.

General Unexpected
The Northern Army have grown to big for a unified command. Dealing with both the Second Battle of Kursk, and the liberation of the Russian Salients in Kharkiv is just plain to much. This was detrimental for the retaking of area in Kharkiv, not even Tank Girl could manage running both of those effectively, and obviously Kursk took precedence.
This lead to Kharkiv stalling out, even though the local commanders did a good enough job according to the broad guidelines they had been left with. It rapidly became apparent that a new commander was needed.
Zyrskyi wanted me to take over there, but Momsie ixnayed that for the simple reason that she needed me more, which is true. She has to look at the entirety of European Security, and she only has one general and one admiral at the moment.
And it was somewhat of a scare that we had to go into pre-combat mode in Armenia to thwart a coup attempt. But, just seeing EUEDF armoured vehicles patrolling was enough to make that one fizzle out in the end, but we got lucky with that one.
And if it had not been a medical emergency, I would not have been let out to play, and it will not be allowed again I take it. Well, I can moonlight for a weekend, but no more.
This left Zyrskyi in a pickle generally, ho-hum. So, desperate measures were needed since he could not move any sector commanding generals out to take up the Big Chair in Kharkiv as a sector commander. So, Zelenzkyy and he sat down and scratched their noggings collectively over a small vodka.
And they came up with a name, perhaps not the ideal name, but a name still. It is a noted general, even a famous general. Thankfully not infamous like the former general Sodol, even though he is infamous in Russia for sure.
Said general was so perplexed about his new role that he ended up shopping in supermarket in Kharkiv for those little life essentials that a combat general in the field would need, and he needed to be reminded about how to hold a rifle even.
He is well noted for a bunch of remarkable successes in his field of specialisation, but he has never led a large army in battle, the closest he is to have led men in battle is a frogman operation in 2014. To his advantage he is very bright, used to juggling hundreds of balls in the air, if he just remembers to not laugh like a donkey, I think he will learn well on the job under the tutelage of his new commanding officer.
I present to you Tank Girl’s new underling, General Budanov. Honestly, I think that they went the wrong way about this. Not to belittle Budanov but learning the ropes as a Combat Commander by being chucked into a massive enough battle is a very tough thing.
It would have been better to chuck into a calmer position, like for instance in Kherson or Western Zhaporizhzhia, and moved that general to Kharkiv. Or give him command of Chasiv Yar and move Brigadier Plucky into Kharkiv.
Let us just say that Olga had “opinions” and leave it at that. I have somewhat less misgivings compared to Olga, he is after all bright enough, and I know he has followed very closely what the more accomplished Combat Generals have been up to and studied up on CAA tactics and strategy. It is though not ideal.
And somewhere in the back of my head I have the irking feeling that it is all about penises. Having a female relatively unknown general leading the Northern Army is not sitting well with some who want a famous penis involved.
And, to make things even more grating, it is a penis with a higher rank. I know that Budanov does not give a ****, he will follow orders by his technical subordinate, after all TG is CinC Offensive
Operations, so by title she will outrank him in the army. But I bet there will be a bunch of juicy promo-shots of Budanov doing heroic stuff, and that will sort of push her out of history.
Partially this is Tank Girl’s own fault, she is avoiding publicity at every turn, and that is biting her in the ass in regards of obtaining that third star now. Not that she’s arsed about that either.
Perhaps it is just the raving feminist inside of me that is getting the feeling that this is being turned into a machismo sausage-fest. It is though a bit of a comfort to know that she will have a brilliant career in EU in the end, well at least if the war is won prior to the next EU-election, and probably even then.
If she had not her sense of duty she would probably have walked away already, to a severe detriment to Ukraine. I guess you can imagine how she is feeling deep down, she can either walk and become the highest-ranking officer in Europe or stay and get nowhere due to her equipment downstairs.
I know that neither Zyrskyi, nor Zelenzkyy, even thought about it being important with a penis in place, but this is how patriarchy is promulgated, by not thinking about it.
I know I am weird; I am a CIS-male in the most penis-dominated occupation on the planet, and still, I am very much a feminist. I think that the largest mistake we are doing is having this ridiculous sausage-fest. We need every good soldier and officer that we can get, and by limiting the potential of half of our population in the army, we are setting ourselves up for failure.
I would go even further; we need less penises running this world. This is a quiet observation from me since I can compare directly male visavi female leaders of the world. I should though admit that von der Leyen is skewering things a bit, she is in every sense of the word a formidable leader, whereas most male I meet are… lacking in the downstairs department.

The Big Hole
Now back to Budanov. He is leaving behind a very large Budanov-formed hole. He was formidable in his position, a once in a century leader of covert operations on the world stage. I just can’t explain how good he was/is.
But, almost 3 years in the same chair is hard, and you start to lack inspiration and new ideas, even if you are as good as he was/is. The was/is I write due to it not yet being certain that he is stepping down from his usual position.
I can only say that he himself wanted to do so, he himself saw that he was not able to come up any longer with fresh ideas and was closing in on a burn-out. I respect the heck out of that, it takes a great human to recognize this, and not rest on your own formidable laurels.
But filling his shoes will take quite something if that happens. I know that they are toying with breaking up his current fiefdom into 3 separate entities under one unified commander. One working with the drone part, one with special ops, and one with covert ops.
In the light of him having signalled that he wanted a new role, it is not that surprising that he is now purchasing water-bottles and grape-juice in Kharkiv. I just think that he should have had a dry-run first somewhere a tad calmer, but Budanov has never been much a friend of calm… I will though give him that he is looking much happier now, he had almost stopped laughing lately, and I know that his wife had complained about him becoming a tad dour of late.

Personal
I will now return to being the part-time leader of a much smaller army going places, the part-time part is on my request. I want to hammer home the message that I am not about to become the CinC in the future.
But, as with all part time jobs you basically end up doing a full-time job on half the salary, anyone that has done a half-time gig can attest to this axiomatic truth. If I had a brain, I would just say sod it and grab the hefty salary that comes attached to the job, it would also do wonders to my future retirement.
Anyway, for now I will fill in dry reports, go to “important” meetings of somewhat impotent nature like the Ramstein Format and various NATO-meetings, and the really important ones in EU. Between that I will inspect my small troops, and perhaps even do some soldiering if any **** hits a fan.
With my luck and living in interesting times I give that about 2-4 weeks before the **** is spraying once more into my face.
And no, I do not expect that Europe will end up at war with Russia soon, at least not in the way of them attacking us. No, the **** will be in the form of hybrid warfare attacks, or a small bush-war instigated by Russia to suck up energy.
The Armenian coup attempt was a stern warning that even though Russia is much weakened, they can still do bad things.
My current headache is the upcoming election in Georgia. With Russia cheating on the election- interference thing, EU has partially chucked out the rulebook and is also trying to influence things in our direction.
It is the first time that EU is directly attempting to provide the means for a country to become a member-state like this. Superpowering sometimes comes with somewhat dirty hands it turns out.
To much is at stake in the end. If we win in Georgia, we will have a very strong position in the Caucasus. If we win Russia might attempt to break out of their two “stolen enclaves”, but I see that as unlikely.
If we lose on the other hand, there will be a public uproar since that is pretty much a sign that the election results have been tampered with. Civil war might break out even.
And a win would also come with a war, even if Russia does not break out with their now diminutive forces. One of the first things after a new government is installed, would be a rapid attack to take back the land that Russia has stolen.
After all, EU is not about to leave any land in Russian hands inside what will become new EU- parts.
And that leaves us with Transnistria, my personal current boil in the ****. NATO will not do it for obvious reasons. Neither can any state do it since the ones willing to do it would not be palatable to the Moldovan government. Romania can’t do it obviously since it is a part of NATO anyway, and Ukraine is not that palatable since this used to be old Ukrainian territory.
No, it will have to be EU directly, without any aid of any national armies. Yes, the Moldovan army can partake, but that is honestly even a smaller army than my personal fiefdom of an army.
So, either I wait a year or two, and that is not acceptable upon high, or I cheat. To be able to achieve it with minimal, or even no bloodshed, I need 10 000 soldiers, and a ready reserve of 5 000 soldiers. And I have 8 000 soldiers, with 1 500 sitting in Armenia fiddling their thumbs for the foreseeable future, and I have to deduct the 5 000 from what remains. In short, I need to find 8 500 soldiers rapidly by cheating somehow.
Anyone got a spare army I can borrow? Jokes aside, there is a way, and that one takes roughly 6 months to get in place.
Who know, by that time Russia might be gone entirely. "
 
www.bbc.co.uk

Israel-Lebanon latest: Iran preparing to launch missile attack on Israel, says US, as Israel invades southern Lebanon

A senior White House official says an attack on Israel would "carry severe consequences for Iran".
www.bbc.co.uk



Are we now looking at a NATO/Russian confrontation on two fronts?

Israel are clearly out of control and fear nobody. They are committing genocide and barely a bad word has been spoken from any of the western leaders. Iran threatens Israel after they invade Lebanon.
Iran going piling in suits Putin, down to the ground, doesnt it? Deflects attention and money and arms to Ukraine, at the very least.

What is well documented in this thread is Russia's seeming reliance on Iranian weaponry and drones.
If this escalates and Iran attacks Israel, then surely the US goes after Iran. In this case, does Russia step in to protect one the few supply lines it has for the war in Ukraine?

Am I mental, or is this situation rapidly getting out of all control?
Are we watching two longstanding psychopaths in Putin & Netanyahu forcing a situation that could lead to a world war?

Or is this brinkmanship that assumes that, eventually, inevitably, calmer heads will prevail but Isreal and Russia will get just what they wanted all along?
 
MoggasDog said:
Iran going piling in suits Putin, down to the ground, doesnt it?
Click to expand...
Not so sure.

Iran are supplying Shaheed drones (and other munitions) to Russia, if they end up in a shooting war with Israel they can't send munitions to Putin. Plus I don't think Russia are in any position to "step in" to help anyone else.

The behaviour of Israel is indeed beyond the pale and (at least from my point of view) due to Netanyahu. You can accuse the Russian people of being blinded by propaganda, Israel is a democracy and Netanyahu should be accountable. I'm not by any means an expert on the balance of blame in Israel/Gaza/Lebanon but the actions of Israel seem to be out of all proportion to the threat posed by Hezbollah and Hammas.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top