A surprising development
"Things are suddenly not going well at all for Russia on the battlefield. The Noises of the Punderati have all of a sudden grown very quiet while they attempt to figure out where things went wrong.
This though not stop the WSJ from just releasing an article claiming that Russia had a 10:1 advantage in troops. I do not understand how 1 million soldiers could be less than 720 000, but that is just me I guess.
These are the total number engaged in the war, and not as such the numbers of combat troops. It is also the peak number of Russian. It has dropped by 180 000 down to 540 000 due to injured and killed.
For Ukraine the number in combat roles was 800 000, with 300 000 of those in Western Ukraine and 500 000 in Eastern Ukraine.
But what are the numbers now? Russia still has only 540 000, and Ukraine has transferred 100 000 from West to East, leaving them with a slight numerical advantage.
Now you are probably screaming at the screen, soldiers do not equate combat power and firepower. And you are absolutely right in doing so. We all know that the Russian combat power has dropped off since November, so much so that somehow donkeys are a new elite weapon in the Russian army, same is happening to the weight of firepower.
Ukraine on the other hand have slowly but steadily received arms, vehicles, artillery, and all sorts of whatnots. Ukrainian peak firepower came in the summer of 2023, and have from that point never dropped, and in some respects have in fact increased with new abilities.
At this point in the war Ukraine is heaving more combat power and fire power compared to Russia. But the Punderati just looked at Russia slowly pressing ahead in select areas, and not looking at Ukraine holding everywhere else, nor even bothered with Kursk overly.
You know that Ukraine instead saved troops and equipment for the day it was time to do something to the Russian invaders. That day has now come.
Kursk
After taking 100km2, Tank Girl has throttled back a bit on the advances.
One part of the throttling is to have time to set up new logistics, rotate tired troops, and get ready to pick apart the new lines that Russia is holding. The other reason is that North Koreans are back on the menu.
Somehow Kim Yo-jong agreed to throw them back into battle to save Russia’s ****, both figuratively and literally. They are though not faring better than before; in fact, they are in a worse pickle now compared to previously.
First of all, last time around there was 10 000 of them, whereas there are now 6 000 of them. And at the same time there are fewer Russians around. Russia lost 2 000 in wounded and killed in just 6 days, and to make things even worse, 1 200 of them got captured. And they were severely understaffed prior to losing a Brigades worth of soldiers.
TG being TG she will soon have removed the last artillery and softened up the North Koreans and Russians enough for another bout of lang-grabbing. But unless she finds a hole in the Russian lines, she will not do another big push, or in reality, she might decide to go soon, she is very opportunistic so she most often doesn’t know what she will do the next day, and she is always ready to do something as you know.
Kakhovka direction
On the former Eastern shore of the Kakhovka Dam the newly minted Brigade Commander “Husband of Thor” is doing his very best to emulate TG (his former boss). That means picking apart things with sadistical glee with intermittent heavy bombardments.
Right now, he is doing the: take a field here, take treeline there, maul a trench there, and the Russian side is having huge problems with stopping him from nibbling off chunks.
This has led Russia to develop a very manly military plan to turn the tide at this part of the frontline. And this time it does not involve donkeys; no, it involves sulking and trying to get West to make the mean Ukraine’s to go back to Kamyanske.
The Russian strategy to achieve this is to not allow IAEA crew rotations until Ukraine withdraw from the ground that they have taken.
Let us just say that nobody is **** bothered with this, especially the Ukrainian commander that is busy looking dapper in his lieutenant colonels uniform while trying to impress his former commander.
So far it is just indicative of Russia being in trouble, but that they would be able to stabilise things if they just paused their hyper-focus on Pokrovsk.
Putin Interlude
“The situation in Kursk is very difficult”, seeing a sombre if not even shell-shocked “Putin” state this on Russian television was probably very reassuring for the general Russian TV audience. We have gone from Kyiv in 3 days, all the way to “Moscow is still safe”.
Not that the average Ivan hadn’t already figured out that things are going increasingly badly in Ukraine and Kursk on his own, all he needed to look up and whimper a sad “blyat” as Ukrainian drones fly over his house to bombard something painful in Russia.
To the best of my knowledge this was though the first time that Putin has ever stated that things are not going to plan.
This was though prior to his next problem arriving, and this time it is a major one. It arrived in the form of…
General Lieutenant Olexander Tarnovskyy
After having orchestrated the masterful defence of Vuhledar, he got shafted with the defence of Avdiivka. A defence that was totally impossible in the long run due to the 7 month hiatus of US assistance, and back then inability of Europe to fully supply Ukraine with arms and shells.
Let us here note that both TG and I were there attempting to hold the line, and we had figured out that it was impossible in the long run, but she got moved out in the end and replaced with Tarnovskyy.
Zyrskyi did Olga a solid by pulling her out back then, he fully well knew that any general in command there would get the blame fully from Zelenzkyy. He did though succeed with saving Tarnovskyy from being fired or sent as an Ambassador to Mongolia.
Instead, he was sent out into the cold to manage the Northwestern defence, replacing a general so failed that he was sent to Mongolia. And, in the end the lack of Generals in Ukraine became so big that Zyrskyi managed to sneak Tarny back into command, and he got the new Southeastern Command, and even an extra star.
He rapidly shored up the defences and stabilized the situation, and Russia noticed that they could not manage a head on assault this time around, so the instead attempted to do a double envelopment of Pokrovsk, the one to the Northeast failed as the tried to get over the escarpment.
In the South the climb was though easier, so they concentrated an entire division as a spearhead and started pushing in endless meatwaves, and slowly they grunted their way forward. At tremendous cost they managed to cut the T0515 road and threatened to take the T0406 road. That would have left Ukraine with only 3 remaining main roads into Pokrovsk.
Obviously any cut road is a problem, but Ukraine would still have had 3 left, enough to hold on for a long time.
That division was given everything that Russia could muster this late in the war in regards of reinforcements, heavy equipment, artillery, Hero of the Soviet Union medals, and not a single donkey.
This means that they remained as a heavy mechanized division, and they had as they progressed gotten concentrated into a small area. How small? 4 by 4 km, equivalent to 1 000 Russians per square kilometre including their complete loadout of heavy equipment and other assorted munition dumps etcetera.
In other words, Russia had produced the world’s largest and juiciest nipple to chew off. This was the moment that Tarnovskyy had waited for. In fact, it is the moment that not only Ukraine had waited for it, an entire world had waited for it.
So, he chomped down, hard.
As you perhaps remember I told you that back in his school years and as a junior officer he was getting extra income as a magician, and all generals that are good utilize our weird junior year party tricks almost ad nauseam. His tricks involve sleight of hand magic tricks.
In Vuhledar he hid a mechanized Brigade in a mine adit. In Pokrovsk he took that trick and elevated into a level that would have made David Copperfield envious by its scale. Remember that Pokrovsk have several mines, and that those were closed down as a safety precaution due to Russian advances.
Somehow he brought in brigade after brigade after brigade without anyone noticing, neither I, nor TG is sure how he achieved that. But, to sum it up, in the end he had an entire mechanized army corps inside of Pokrovsk, and nobody noticed it.
Tank Girl uses agility and speed during her attacks in a choreographed ballet of motion to create surprise. Her trick up the sleeve is actual choreography back from a youth spent trying to become a prima ballerina. Also creating the somewhat odd appearance of a General that does not stomp forth and instead dances forth.
Me? I conduct **** along to music if you haven’t noticed or use statistics to my advantage. The difference between mathematics and writing a fugue is after all negligible.
Now imagine being the General Major in command of said Division sitting in a perfect nipple and seeing huge columns of mechanized armour materialise out thin air together with endless swarms of drones and shells, and not at one spot, but at 3 spots at the same time.
One cutting in from the Southwest and two from the Northeast. If the Russian division is cut off, the offensive in Pokrovsk is over, or at least back to exactly where it was 6 months ago, but with a much worse situation in troop numbers and equipment.
If Ukraine manages looping off an entire Division having the bulk of the remaining armour in this sector, they will have a massive victory on their hands.
Beyond the initial confusion of the impossible surprise attack, there is no way to do this neatly. It will most likely be the bloodiest single battle in the entire war.
Russia has no other option than to throw everything they’ve got into an attempt to stop the pincers from closing. Expect cats, donkeys and kitchen sinks to come flying. And obviously Tarnovskyy will do exactly the same thing.
Now that the trap has closed, there is no possibility of sleight of hand, at least on this scale. It is now all about grunt, brute force, blood and willpower.
Conclusion
A couple of days ago I wrote about Russia’s options on how they would react to the sudden Kursk Offensive. In it I wrote that one option would be to move troops from Pokrovsk.
I knew that Ukraine had opted for a different solution, forcing Russia to keep those forces in Pokrovsk by a surprise offensive there. Sorry about that, it is not always I can write based on what I know will happen.
I have previously written that Ukraine can’t win the war on the battlefield, and that Ukraine would win either by diplomacy, or Russia collapsing back home.
I do not believe in the diplomatic solution, it is still some ways away, and not in our best interest. Russia collapsing back home is still an option, but it is hard to predict when this will happen, all we know is though that in the long run it is inevitable at this point.
I though have to change my mind on the Ukrainian victory on the battlefield. I can now see a path forward to achieving that. Still the path is narrow, and it requires further success in these 3 key areas that I wrote about above.
If Ukraine can continue to lob off parts in Kursk and create a credible threat to Russia there, while at the same time continue to slowly advance near Kakhovka Dam and threatening to cut off Kherson and Crimea, and winning the battle at Pokrovsk, then the pathway will widen considerably.
It is though still a tall order, but there is now a slight possibility for it to happen.
This means that we now have a race on our hands. Russia collapsing is at about 97 percent chance to happen between now and 22 nd February of 2026, I will explain that in a later musing. Diplomacy is likely to start within 3 to 9 months but is still a reckless thing to do.
But, if Ukraine can score a big win, both the collapse-equation and the diplomacy-equation changes wildly.
If Ukraine wins that big victory, the timeframe of the inevitable collapse shortens, and the likelihood of Russia suing for peace in a settlement increases dramatically. After all, if Ukraine can pull of winning further gains at Kakhovka and Kursk, while looping off a division at Pokrovsk, or more likely forces them back to where they where 6 months ago, then Russian defeat is almost certain on the battlefield.
And here we circle back to a certain Orange ****. We are about to know soon how much in cahoots he is with Russia. Because you can be sure that Russia now will do anything it can to get a peace treaty in place leaving them with at least something before they are getting kicked out.
If so we will see the Peesident kick into high gear on the Ukraine Peace Plan. I he doesn’t he is either not beholden to Russia any longer, or he sees Russia’s weakness as a to great liability for himself.
Regardless, we will very soon see Russia doing anything to get a peace deal. And Europe will struggle back to delay things as much as possible.
And remember that NB8 and Poland doesn’t want to see any negotiations at all, they want that outright victory. And the majority in Europe are quite fine with delaying things as much as possible to hurt Russia some extra.
We shall see. What does TG believe? Well, she’s spent the day practicing the Swan Lake, that is what she thinks will happen, and she want to be ready for that joyous day. "
english.nv.ua
