The end?

Ukrainian Politics Interlude
Hello from a Sunny place not that much West of *******. I will for rather obvious reasons not be too specific where we are holed up. Especially since we are quite a few here now.
I bet that all of you have read the news and are wondering in the name of all holy hell is going on in Ukraine. So, I thought I should give you a bit of a timeline, a background of sorts, and a bit of a background on both Zelenzkyy and Ukrainians, and a tad about of where this might end up, heck… let me reverse order that.
Zelenzkyy has committed political seppuku in one of the most spectacular fashions of all time. I have previously alluded to him sometimes being a wee bit “hasty” in his judgments, and that he sometimes tends to over-react.
Pair that with insane amounts of stress and pressure, and it was sort of a given that he would over-react and do something stupid in the end, but this is even from the standpoint of knowing him and his impatience, just out there.

Ukrainians and Maidan
Ukrainians are very proud of their democracy and their proven ability to Maidan any leader into oblivion. Ukrainian democracy is young, fresh, raw, and very much in your face. All leaders in Ukraine knows that if they crap up to much Ukrainians will Maidan their arses into the gutters.
Before the war started anti-corruption politics was the single biggest item on the mind of average politically interested Ukrainians. Both of the previous Maidan’s began as anti-corruption protests.
Ukrainians truly hate corruption, and especially corrupt politicians. That is something intimately associated with “Russia” and the Soviet Union.
The second topic before the war was “to belong”, and with that I mean belonging to EU, NATO, and the rest of the Western world. And Ukrainians fully well know that to be able to belong to EU, etcetera, they need to beat corruption into the ground.
When the war began Ukraine was promised those memberships if they just worked hard on rooting out corruption. This gave Ukrainians their almost mythical superpower to fight so hard. Or at least a big part of it.
And finally, Ukrainians are very well versed in what is needed from their side, international politics in general, they are in fact quite savvy on the subject. They know what is needed, and the price that will come if those things are not delivered.

Timeline
It all began as the Counter-espionage service of Ukraine arrested 2 people and started investigations on 10 more at NABU. The suspicion is for espionage for Russia, and sabotage actions. Grave charges indeed.
And since it is wartime paranoia is rampant in Ukraine. And a fair bit of it in the highest leadership, Zelenzkyy included.
So, he asked for a law that would place the two anti-corruption agencies directly under the state prosecutors office, that is entirely controlled by Zelenzkyy. This means that both of those organisations that are there to make certain that he and other politicians are not corrupt, are no longer independent, and that he can stop any investigation.
The Verkhovna Hrada happily created such a law, and with a huge majority voted it in. How huge? First of all everyone in Zelenzkyy’s party voted for it. And all but 13 MPs from the opposition voted for it, and that was when the political trap slammed shut.
The 13 that opposed? They are all from what can best be named the “Anti-Corruption Party of Ukraine”. Anyway, the reason the opposition voted in favour is because they knew that this would be the end of Zelenzkyy.
At this point EU, and a lot of Presidents, MPs, and other organisations like IMF and ECB called and said, “If you sign that into law, there will be consequences, so don’t”. In the end he turned into stubborn Zelenzkyy and signed it.
Ukrainians know that there will be consequences, and they full well respect that, they know that it is up to them to fix the **** that Zelenzkyy created, and they know how to do it, Maidan.
It should here be noted that there is a curfew in place, and that public protests are banned under the wartime exception laws. Ukrainians don’t give a **** about that it is in their eyes their God- given right to protest to save democracy and their path to EU and the rest that is waiting for them.
So, around 10 000 Ukrainians started protesting yesterday. 3 000 in Maidan itself, and around 7 000 in other cities. Note, those 10 000 hit the street within 3 hours. And the police did jack **** against them, they knew that whatever they do it is just likely to make things much worse, and also that it is likely that they will be pounded to pulp.
And then Zelenzkyy went out and presented a gigantic horseradish about there being spies everywhere, and he needed more power to stop it. Talk about chucking fuel on the fire.

Consequences
The savvy Ukrainians knew what would happen. Today EU pointed out that if the law is not reversed, the ongoing membership process will be instantly frozen. This was stated out openly in public by EU. Then Germany followed along, then OECD, next came IMF and ECB. Heck, even the US State Department tagged along on the train.
Payments for the war will continue, but it is likely that EU will limit the civilian economy part of the payments that go to keeping the government running, and IMF/ECB will do the same. Just imagine what a blow that will be.
And no, EU can’t back down on this. That would give Carte Blanche to **** in Poland, Fico and Orbanus. Ukraine just broke against one of the core things it was told to not break. And the Ukrainians full well know this, and what is at stake.
During the day, wherever I went, Ukrainians came up to us in our EU uniforms, and told us to not worry, they’re going to fix things, and that they will do it fast. And we all know how they will do it.

Is this the end of the world?
No, not at all. The war will continue as before. Ukrainians knows how to multitask. The army will continue to fight, full well knowing that the population will deal with what needs to be dealt with.
Weapons will continue to flow, and EU and the rest will not do anything rash. They will wait and see how Ukrainians solve this problem, even in the halls of power in EU, they know the word Maidan.
Politically Zelenzkyy is dead now, there is no recuperating from something like this. Him staying in the Presidential palace is now up to him. His only chance to do so is to rescind the law, how that is done is his problem.
If he does not he will end up on his **** on the curb outside of the presidential palace. If he goes down that road he will be replaced on interim by the PM Yulia Svyrydenko, and she will be forced to hold the election.
And EU would be happy to pay the rather ridiculous cost of holding that during wartime. OSSE and OECD have already signed of on allowing a wartime interim election, and to safeguard its integrity.
Anyway, all will be well in the end, however this ends. That is the conclusion of TG, who I almost had to tie to her chair in the ops centre so she would run away and Maidan with the rest. And guess who is giving advice to Ursula? That same TG.
I agree with her, Ukrainians will fix this, and the best thing we all can do is to let them have at it and support their extracurricular democratic proclivities. It is after all their country, and they want the same things we all do, and they know how to do it.
So, who is the most likely winner of the potential election? Well, that would be Zaluzhnyy. Both me and TG has our misgivings about him as a military commander, but he is savvy and a good politician, and he is also 100 percent unbribable and uncorrupted.
If there is an election both me and TG will vote for him, since neither of us believe there would be a better candidate, the others are mostly blowhards. Well, unless Tetiana Chornovol would go for it, then we would vote for her.
She is the OG anti-corruption politician, something she was almost beaten to death over. She is also on top of that a personal friend of both of us. For a while she was one of TG’s protégé’s, and she’s pretty much an unstoppable force of nature.
And yes, both of us like the idea of a heavily armed female President, and so does Momsiee for one reason or
another. We shall see what happens in that regard if there is an election. And with the status of Momsie here in Ukraine, all it would take are a few pictures of handshakes between them and she would be in the running against even Zaluzhnyy.
Anyway, all will be well in the end. I do though hope that Zelenzkyy caves and rescinds the law. Less confusion overall, but the trust is gone, and so is his career.

In regards of other things
I had planned to write about something completely different in a day or two. But, for now I just want to say that you should look at the size of explosions near bridges and logistics hubs, and the lack of drones there.
Next, you should also be prepared for video clips of drones dropping barrel sized bombs on top of somewhat morose Russians.
So many new toys, so many things that are not necessarily fired by Ukrainians against Russians. It is now time for my second nightshift in a row in our new field headquarters. Anyway, time to do what is needed to do. Russia will not like it, but who gives a flying eff?"

Post script (Z backing down)
 
Looks like it didn’t really work out well for him

 
Oh, ok then....

"About one year ago Russia made a strategic mistake based upon a doctrinal flaw. The doctrinal flaw is based upon the idea that you can terror bomb a population into submission. And you can ask the Londoners how that went for historical context.
This doctrine pushed Russia into spending their armament money at an ever-increasing rate towards missile and Shaheed production. And with missiles needing highly specialised components, time needed to produce them, and their almost insane cost at 1.5 to 10 million USD, Russia couldn’t produce enough of them by a longshot.
So, they invest big into production of Shaheed drones. A typical Shaheed carries an explosive device weighing 15kg, that is casing and explosives combined. Whereas a typical Russian missile is carrying 300 to 500 kg in its explosive device. And that is a significant difference.
Anyway, the amount of time, energy and money spent on increasing Shaheed production was almost ludicrous. It left Russia without the means to produce new heavy equipment, ranging from tanks to artillery systems and IFVs.
Instead they relied on refurbishing their huge stockpile of Soviet leftovers, and that sustained them for almost 3.5 years of warfare. As you know they reached a crux point in November where they could no longer refurbish enough to keep the numbers of heavy equipment up sufficiently from refurbishing old stuff, and their fielded systems slowly started to drop.

Donkeyfication
This is a word that I never suspected to use in a million years, but it is now in the common vernacular of Western and Ukrainian military commands. It implies both the devolvement in military technology, and the numbers of said technology, that you end up in a situation where your ad hoc solutions run all the way down to battle donkeys to survive on the battlefield.
The usage of donkeys is obviously just on the contact lines, but it is emblematic of the entire Russian war machine, with the exception of the drone terror bombings of large cities.
We see it in that Russian artillery have gone from almost peer-class artillery systems with fairly long range, going all the way down to fairly short-ranged under-calibre WWII systems. Their tanks have gone from somewhat fast and sleek T-72s and T-90s down to 50s designs that are so inferior that they have to slap on huge cages of extra protection.
Turning them into slow lumbering behemoths that can’t swing their turrets, and the crews see nothing. Instead they are easy pray for drone-swarms and precision artillery strikes. Only advantage is that it takes more than one drone now to take those out.
They are the donkey equivalent of heavy equipment. And even their numbers have dwindled now to a degree that truly makes the war difficult for Russia.

Death per Square Kilometre
Since November the number of dead Russians per taken square kilometre has quadrupled. This has had two effects, one is that the number of taken square kilometres have dropped, and the other is that the rate of progress has dropped, if not even stopped entirely in many sectors.
It also means that Russia has to an ever-increasing rate rely on soldiers to do the job manually without any support of heavy equipment. There’s now rarely any artillery barrages shaping the battlefield before an attempted advancement.
And when the soldiers rush forward, there’s either very little armour, or none, used to support them. But, so far Russia still has soldiers, so it is still working out for them.
If you listen to the Punderati Russia can draw upon untold millions of soldiers for their war. Some of them even claim that Russia can withstand the current loss rate of half a million soldiers per year indefinitely.
Bless their little hearts, but they are not particularly good at mathematics, and they have obviously never heard about the obscure statistical field of demographics.
Russia has for the last 2.5 years fielded an army in Ukraine of roughly 700 000 soldiers. This has dipped somewhat at times down towards 640 000, and before large offensive increased to 740 000 soldiers. But the average is 700K soldiers.
This was to be expected and is totally within the demographics capacity of Russia over that timeframe. The question very few is asking is, “how long can Russia sustain those numbers?”. And it is in that context things become interesting.
We know that Russia has already cannibalized vital parts of their male population in the form of farmers and firefighters, just to name a few groups, and sent those to the front. Obviously this is hurting Russia, and it will be interesting to see how they will manage this winter with food, and they are not faring well with their gigantic forest fires.
Now they are cannibalizing their future and sending workers from closed down mines and factories to the front. But that is also not an endless commodity of serf’s.
So, how many more can they send? Things will start to become interesting near the 2 million mark. At that point the only available pool of men will be the power control apparatus itself. Then they will have to send police officers, the FSB/GRU, and after that the core units of the RozGvardia that is defending Putin.
My guess is that the police officers will be toast. After all they only keep control over the sheep, sorry serf’s, of Russia. In other words the general population. And those can be controlled by FSB troops mostly, but the crime rate in Russia will explode.
No, it is when they start going for the FSB/GRU people that things will break. They will flat out refuse to go, because of all Russians they are the ones that truly understand that going is a one way ticket to hell.
That is the moment that they will revolt and attack their Tzar. Question is more if Putin is stupid enough to even attempt that, he was in the KGB, he knows that he would not have taken it sitting down himself.
And the same goes for the RozGvardia, they will just walk in and shot him dead if he told them to go and fight in Ukraine, they also know that it is a one way ticket to hell.
This means that on this single metric, Russia can at this point continue for 18 more months, and after that they are done. And that would put us in January of 2027. Note, I do not think that the war will continue for that long.

Unsupported Lines
The contact lines between Russia and Ukraine are sparsely populated, especially on the Ukrainian side. Russia has about a 5:1 ratio of soldiers on the contact lines to Ukraine. And many, up to and including, Ukrainian soldiers on the contact line, does not understand this.
Ukraine has roughly 40 000 soldiers on the entire contact line on all fronts in Ukraine. That is a very slim number indeed. There’s though a very good reason for that, and that is to keep down the numbers of dead and wounded, and that is very important in this war for Ukraine.
Behind the contact line, a couple of kilometres back, is a secondary line of soldiers. And behind those are rapid reinforcement groups in armoured personnel carriers ready to jump up and plug gaps. At the same distance you have the drone operators and the 120mm mortars, ready to rain fire on advancing Russians.
The next line over is constantly moving artillery ready to open fire within minutes on top of the advancing Russians if needed, and behind those are the long range rocket artillery, and even further behind that is the air force ready to perform strike missions.
This is good Western standard practice on how to do it. Yes, you may be over-run at times in limited places, but in general you are able to hold off limited offensives and general meat- waviness.
It will keep down your loss rate to a minimum and still gives ample opportunity to slowly grind down the advancing forces. And if a bigger offensive happens, you have troops at hand to rush in with heavy equipment to deal with it and plug the holes after a few days.
Russia on the other side crams them up 5 times more densely. There are two reasons for it, one is that they are staging soldiers for meatwaves at the contact line, the other is that behind their contact line there is another equally highly staffed line of soldiers, filling the same staging purpose.
Behind those you have encampments of infantry waiting for their turn to move up to the secondary line to wait for their turn to go to the contact line for their turn to meat-wave.
What we do not see here is a lot of heavy equipment. Nor is there a lot of artillery, those are pulled up, fire for a bit, and are then pulled back again to safer distances. And what remains of their armour is kept well back, and is to far away to be used to rush in to defend the contact line if that is threatened.
A Russian soldier only has their rifles, and their numbers, to protect them. There is no heavy backup to rely on for them. And at every moment the contact line and secondary line is pummelled with drones, artillery and aerial bombardment.
And with them being so dense, the rate of them being killed and wounded is high.
Casualty Ratio
If we now take all of this and put it together we get an interesting casualty number needed for victory. That number is 1:5.
If the number is lower than 1:5 Russia will win the war, and if it is higher Ukraine will win the war. And the higher it is, the better for Ukraine.
In the first year up to and including the failed Ukrainian Offensive near Tokmak, the casualty ratio was 1:3.5. This meant that a Ukrainian loss was inevitable unless they could improve the ratio considerably.
Unlike Zaluzhnyy, Syrskyi was very amenable to the idea of switching over to a completely defensive strategy of grinding Russia for as long as it would take. And that shifted the number to around 1:5 almost immediately.
During the first year of Syrskyi our goal was mainly to hold the Ukrainian combat power up to the same standard that it was as the year began. Over time this meant that the technological level would improve.
The next year we could slowly improve the combat power and greatly improve the technological level. This meant that while Russia was slowly moving towards donkeyfication, Ukraine moved up the ladder.
And as that happened the ratio slowly but steadily climbed upwards until it was routinely 1:8. And now if we look across the entire war, we have achieved that crucial 1:5 victory ratio.
The obvious problem with this was that it made all offensives impossible. Because in a traditional offensive you will not be able to sustain that 1:5 ratio, and your offensive however successful would turn quite pyrrhic.
Kursk you say? Nope, that did not have a worse number than 1:5, the reason for this is that there were almost no troops in the way as TG galumphed into Russia. That is the reason she picked that area to placate Zelenzkyy’s urges for an offensive.
All other options would have come with a worse than 1:5 outcome, in some cases way worse.

Conditions for Offensive
You rarely win a war of attrition without at least some offensive actions. Not even the Great War of 1914-1918 was won by attrition alone. It was the late offensive that utilised the brand new tanks and the increased combat power provided by US Soldiers, that created a few breakthroughs that convinced the Germans to give up.
There are many similarities between WWI and this war. Trench warfare, attritional warfare, power of economy, and so on and on. Up to and including starvation really. All that we are missing really are a pandemic and a couple of big breakthroughs.
So what are the needed conditions for a Ukrainian offensive and a successful breakthrough of the Russian lines?
-Air dominance of the contact lines.
-Technical superiority.
-Superiority in combat power.
-Donkeyfication of the Russian Army.
Let us begin with air dominance. To achieve this Ukraine needed to whittle down the Russian air defence so much that they could fly combat missions over the contact line in safety. They also needed more aircraft capable enough to ensure that Russian fighter aircraft could not hold the line.
Ukraine has at this point over-achieved in this regard. They now have air superiority across their own territory and the contact lines. They can at any point of the frontline fly strike missions without opposition.
Furthermore they now have air dominance into the depth of the Russian lines, being able to increasingly perform deep strike missions into their deep rear. In other words, they are on the cusp of increasing their sphere of air superiority. In other words, the air war is creeping further and further into what Russia considers their territory, and also into Russia itself.
Next is technical superiority. And this is not limited to simple things. Preferably Ukraine should be able to perform drone only breakthroughs and be able to take ground without involving infantry soldiers storming positions.
And obviously it also includes everything from Satellites down to smart munitions used on the contact line. As with everything else, there will never be enough gear to achieve something like this fully, but Ukraine needed to be close to this.
Let us just say that Ukraine is close now, and you will soon see what I mean.
Ukraine have now achieved superiority in combat power. In part this was achieved due to EU building factories, and in part it was achieved through donkeyfication of Russia.
In an ideal world Ukraine would need a 5:1 ratio of combat power over Russia to achieve a swift victory, but alas we are not there yet, and it is debatable if we ever will achieve that. But, every small step along the ladder upwards is a big improvement bringing the offensive closer.
I will not go into the achieved and ongoing donkeyfication, you are already familiar with Julius the Russian donkey and his exploits. In other words, Ukraine has either achieved the 4 most necessary steps, or they are slowly improving things until each step has gotten far enough.

Offensives
With the Russian summer offensive now being completely stalled out in all directions Ukraine now has the initiative. And that means that they can if they so chose perform a summer offensive of their own.
Let us look towards Pokrovsk. Russia up to a couple of weeks ago was moving forward North and South of Pokrovsk, and the Punderati though that they were slowly encircling Pokrovsk. Sadly for Russia they advanced below the heights of the plateau, so it was not as good as they hoped for.
And then they ran out of what little equipment they had, and even more crucially, they ran out of Russians to steamroll onwards with. And then Ukraine happened.
Note here that I did not write Ukrainians happened, and that I wrote Ukraine happened. Using their technological superiority Ukraine achieved a rapid world first in the North of Pokrovsk, and then rapidly repeated it to the South.
Imagine being Russians from the great blue yonder of Russia, indoor plumbing is a great unknown, and you have 2 TV-channels, and if you go to a town you might find yourself having a working cell-phone.
And out of the morning mist roars an armada of aerial drones, ranging from small FPV drones blowing up your friends, big drones spanning 4.5 meters in width drops barrel sized bombs on your bunkers, and even worse, tracked drones roll forward firing machine guns and rockets.
You attempt to fire upon them, but you die before you hit anything. And no soldiers came that your friends could fire upon, before they either died, or had to haul out white (soiled) underwear to signal their surrender to their brand new drone-overlords.
In the last week Russia has lost a total of 5.6 square kilometres at the tips of their advancements. And not a single Ukrainian soldier died or was wounded.
The sight of long lines of Russians being shepherded away into captivity by both on the ground drones and aerial drones was quite terrifying. And more importantly, 14 donkeys were saved by the drones from Russian usage.
I think you see the point here I was talking about made manifest.
You also see other signs of an offensive, but in a totally different direction. I can’t obviously talk to much about it, I’m holding myself strictly to a 5-day delay, and I will only write about what Ukraine has made public in a few videos.
I have already written about the ongoing offensive in the Orikhiv direction, and that Ukrainian troops are moving along the old dam along the roads taking strongpoints towards Enerhodar and Kherson.
I have also written that strong units are deep inside the rear behind Enerhodar performing both shaping operations, sabotage missions and force recon missions.
And now I can tell you that Kinburn Spit has been derussified through a combination of artillery, naval units, drone warfare, and marines landing. A bridgehead has been established, and drone forces are involved in incredibly hard and bloody fights with Russian forces rushing in to try to stop the advance and attempt to force Ukraine out again.
Note my usage of the phrase “drone forces” in conjunction with the word “bloody”. Except for a very limited number of marines, Ukraine is relying on remote operated and AI-drone forces. The blood is almost exclusively Russian.
Next thing of note, they used white phosphorous in accordance with the laws of warfare, there are no civilians there.
Next things of note, AFU has released the customary video with snippets of the attack that happened 7 days ago. In it there’s a wiry moustachioed man. Say hello to S****y, aka. Thor's hubby. He’s on paid leave to lead the attack that he was partially involved in planning together with TG back in the day.
TG herself, also on paid leave… me? Struggling to not go there and be a nuisance too.

Personal
I spent my week being a nuisance to poor Meyers together with 3 other EU Generals, and 4 more from various member states.
There is nothing more infuriating than having top brass camping out looking over your shoulder while you try to work your Command, so we moved on yesterday to be out of her hair. Anyway, she has done a tremendous job, so we were truly just in her way.
A brand-new Patriot Battery has arrived, staffed by the Bundeswehr, since there’s not enough Ukrainian crews to do it. There’s also been an influx of PAC-3 missiles for them, and there’s also a somewhat larger amount of Aster-30 missiles for the SAMP/T Battery.
It was in the nick of time, since Russia attempted to hit Kyiv with 4 ballistic missiles last night. There’s a very nice video out there of one of them exploding high up in the sky.
There’s also new weaponry arriving of types and classes that I can’t talk about. It is end-stage weaponry that not even the Ukrainians are allowed to have peak’s of yet, and they are manned by European soldiers.
A couple of them have now been fired in anger against Russia. Yes, we have crossed that particular red line now. Note that the discussion is ongoing if we should man such weapons in the press, I nicked the Swedish way of having the discussion after the fact.
Now for something sad. The weird and wonderful Privoz Market. A UNESCO world heritage site. In it you could find anything and everything that you truly didn’t know that you needed.
Everything from Khachapuri’s to pickles, via bathrobes there. Need odd screws and bolts? Privoz. If it existed, someone there had it, up to and including ammo for my Tokarev. Oh, and I once bought a fully functioning old school soviet Geiger-counter there.
It was that sort of place. And Russia bombed it. The entire entrance building has burned down, and only the further away half is now open.
Obviously the Odesitka’s will rebuild their beloved market, but I fear that the charm will diminish or go away. I fear that the wet market part will be replaced by soy-latte chain stores, sellers of pâté, and that consultants will move in demanding their avocado on toast.
I do hope that the soul of the place will remain, but I fear that it will not happen. I fear that I will never again have a babushka wave a fish under my nose again screaming that it is fresh… "
 
Briief news

Russia just tried droning Odesa, but it seems that all were shot down.

Plus

"Extremely Sad Russia Noises. Kondrativka in Sumy has been liberated, huge Russian losses there. The 30th Motorized Regiment is totally annihilated. And to top it off, Russia is being pushed out of Oleksiivka in Donetsk, negating the Russians entire progress South of Pokrovsk. So many sad tears in Russia"
 
Is the General going to be observing the upcoming manoeuvres in Georgia?

Interesting combo of NATO, plus Georgia, Moldova, Armenia with at least Japan as an observer plus special guest participation invite to Ukraine

Would be strange not to have the EU involved.
 
Is the General going to be observing the upcoming manoeuvres in Georgia?

Interesting combo of NATO, plus Georgia, Moldova, Armenia with at least Japan as an observer plus special guest participation invite to Ukraine

Would be strange not to have the EU involved.

Not as far as I know. Not caught up with him today though.
 
Fair enough, he's probably having a moment to reflect on Momsie not quite being the all powerful individual he thought she may be. That US trade agreement is terrible.

Dunno, he didn't seem to think it was bad. But I think he is somewhere on the front at the moment, so not in a chatty place.
 
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