This was from earlier but I have had to remove some sections because they revealed too much sensitive operational info about the Kreminna operation.
It is sort of paraphrased to give the general gist. Actually the China stuff is probably the most dignificant shift.
It's a long one.
"
Before I get to Kreminna I need to talk about Soledar.
Wagner almost encircled Soledar after creating offensive bulges to the North and South, this enabled them to do an offensive against Soledar that had limited success.
Part of the City/Town was taken by the Wagnerites after heavy losses.
Russia claimed to have taken the City and sent out images with Prigozhin in the mines under Soledar.
But, as per usual things are not true in Russian claims.
Prigozhin was in another mine (gypsum mine in Bakhmut'ske), and only half of the City was in Russian hands.
Regardless, the situation was dire for Ukraine to say the least, being caught in a pocket is not a nice spot to be in.
It became so bad that Ukraine was about to pull out of Soledar.
To be able to do the retreat Ukraine amassed a force of high precission artillery and sent in reinforcements into the pocket to enable an orderly retreat.
And then they started to fire upon troop concentrations and Russian artillery, this caught Wagner with their pants down to say the least.
Or, the pants was up, but filled with brown goo...
Whatever, yesterday was highly successful for Ukraine, and it is now all up in the air if they will continue the counterattack, or pull out. I guess continue since the Russian bulges are less bulgy now, and the Russians are being pushed back.
We will see.
Kreminna
Putin ordered Kreminna to be a fight to the last man standing, and sent in large resources to hold the City.
This has now become the point where Russia will either make or break.
Well trained units have been sent there, new and good equipment, loads of supplies, food and ammunition... the works.
To be able to do it the final reserves of Russia has now been deployed. Units that was supposed to go to Belarus has been diverted.
And we have now gotten the question answered that we all have been wondering about.
Where are the T-90M tanks?
All over Ukraine we have seen older tanks during the invasion, but steadfastly Russia has held back their T-90Ms.
Their latest and best if we do not count the hilariously failed T-14 Armatas.
Well, Kreminna was the point that they entered the fray.
About half have been sent there already, with the other half now on the way rapidly to Kreminna.
And they are run by competent Russians, not the usual riffraff.
This has obviously made our favourite colonel extremely grumpy.
The attack on Kreminna is coming from two directions.
The southern attack is going through the forrest and is mainly an infantry deal supported by an artillery brigade.
It is slowly gaining ground and liberating a village about every third day.
There are now one light infantry brigade and a mechanized infantry brigade here that is pushing.
Up north is where Tank Girl is pushing forward.
She has a mechanized brigade, her own tank brigade and no less than two artillery brigades with western high precission stuff.
She intended to barge down the P-66 highway, but the ground is now so frozen that she could disperse into the fields.
It was from getgo a slow affair due to the enormous amounts of mines.
She have had to use artillery fire to blow paths through the mine fields, but in the end she came up to the large Russian fortifications after running over the Russian dragon's teeth. Due to the low quality she just ran over them and they crashed to pieces.
At that point she started firing into the fortifications at point blank range.
It was at that point the T-90Ms came barging into the fray, and it all devolved into a manouvre warfare melée in the mine fields.
Seems like nobody had told the Russian tankers about the mine fields, or where they were.
She is holding, even advancing a bit so far.
But, it is now clear that she can't break through at this point in time.
Especially since around 100 more T-90Ms are coming to Kreminna in support of the first 100. This is all that Russia has left.
When they arrive it is pretty certain that she will be pushed backwards, something that I know she religiously hates.
Her T72s are not good enough to win a 1:1 fight against T-90Ms, regardless of her being the far superior commander.
But there is another way. Drop back and allow the artillery to get to work.
Belarus
Putins obsession with Kreminna has basically killed the Belarus offensive for now.
There's only 18 000 - 25 000 Russian soldiers in Belarus instead of the needed 200 000.
There's not nearly enough equipment, the T-90Ms that was supposed to go there ended up in Kreminna.
Still, anything not directly diverted by Putin himself is still going to Belarus.
My take is that Russia is by now so braindead that they will attack in 12 days from Belarus with about 50 000 soldiers and with a large lack of heavy equipment.
The original plan was 200 000 well trained soldiers with 200 T-90Ms and new artillery, and with 500 000 Mobiks following a month later.
Obviously this was always a figment of Russias fevered fantasies.
The 200 000 soldiers have been constantly hollowed out to hold the lines during the winter and are mostly gone.
I do not see Russia rounding up 500 000 Mobiks any time soon, even though they have started the attempt.
Campniks are now back in force, creating quite a number of Russicles inside of Russia.
At the same time the Russians finally closed their border for fleeing Russian males.
The grand Second Attack of Kyiv will at best get a few kilometres into Ukraine against well prepared Ukrainians inside massively fortified positions behind mahoosive mine fields.
Surovikin
Replacing Surovikin with Lapin and Gerasimov was the final nail in the coffin in regards of military brain capacity in Russia.
Whatever you might say about Surovikin, but he was fairly bright and knew what he was doing.
Lapin is a moroon and Gerasimov has never led any troops anywhere and to boot he is on so much depression medication that he is seeing green smurfs after his soon died.
Let me here remind that Gerasimov has twice been put inside mental asylums in the last 10 months due to depression...
The Ukrainian Spring Offensive
Ukraine will attack in Luhansk and in Zhaporizhzhia, but that will not happen until the pledged new heavy mechanised equipment arrives.
This will be more artillery, about 1000 IFVs (Marder's, Bradley's and ATX-30s), and about 500 new tanks.
This will be delivered across the next 6 months spread out over the spring offensive, the summer offensive and in time for the autumn offensive.
The tanks was cleared about a month ago, but due to German politics the home audience needed to be softened up first.
I know that Ukraine will receive limited amounts of Challenger IIs and Leqlerq's. And quite a hefty bunch of Leopard IIs from Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Poland and so on. We are here talking about 300 tanks...
After that the Abram's will come trundling in towards the summer.
This will be a game changer.
Ukraine's current stock has problems with the Russian T-90Ms, even though Ukraine has the numerical advantage.
The Western tanks has a 5:1 advantage against the T-90Ms, in other words, for each taken out the Russians will lose 5 of theirs. Substantially more if it is older Russian gear.
Anything below a T-72 and a Leopard II just gets dented by the hitting shell and can continue to fight.
Obviously Russia knows about the oncoming storm, at least Surovikin did, and that is why we are seeing these Russian offensives now. Russia is not ready, but they need to try to get in some limited victories prior to the oncoming storm (Dr Who reference).
China
The Chinese are good at math, and they have seen what the collective west was willing, and able, to do against Russia.
Seeing the collective west using their proverbial pinky finger tip beating the living bejeezus out of Russia made China think.
And they recognized the clear risk that they would end up on the same dungpile as Russia just as a western afterthought.
On top of that they have basically lost a war against India, even if it is not talked about a lot in the west.
Chinese self-confidence is not high right now.
At the same time the Party is in really dire straits domestically.
Xi giving in to the protestors did not help, the economy is in shambles, and due to lack of real vaccinations the chinese are dying as flies from Corona.
So, the protests have if anything grown.
China needs a big win to show for the angry population, something that instills hope of a better future for them, and a better economy.
This has left China with 3 options:
-Occupy Eastern Russia
-Attack Taiwan
-Get a political win that gives hope to the common man in China
Tall orders to say the least. Attacking Taiwan has been scrapped since that would end up as a loss for China and send them straight to the dungheap.
Occupying Eastern Russia would not give a lot really for China in the short run, and if Russia breaks up they would get things for free anyway.
So, politics it was.
After looking at the US they found that to be a hard target, and also the US is not China's biggest market.
The EU is China's largest trading partner, and it has been turning the screws on China hard lately, and to China Europe has always been the most important thing.
So, the entire brain power of the chinese political world turned into how to get back on good terms with the EU.
A plan was hatched, a plan involving large amounts of humble pie (not to be told in China), but that could give back hope for the common chinese man.
After having dealt with China for many years I have learned how to read the signs in China.
If a Chinese comes with a gift as negotiations start it is a sign of being serious.
If a Chinese comes with documents to be transformed into a draft contract, it is a serious chinese.
Putin for instance got no gift and not a single paper to show for his "Limitless Partnership" a year ago.
Un-publicised and covertly, China asked to meet the foreign minister of the EU.
No flashy showy things outwards.
With them they came with big gifts.
Publically they stated that Russia had lost, and that Russia had deceived them.
Secondly, they have arranged a large shipment of kalashnikov ammunition, artillery shells for the old Soviet 152mm, and GRAD-rockets for Ukraine via Pakistan. China sends 159 containers filled to the brim to Pakistan, who in turn send the same amount to Ukraine. 159 is a chinese number of peace and prosperity.
And they have a package of several hundred pages with suggestions for green deals, climate deals, trade deals, assurance of Taiwan as autonomous part/non-aggression treaty, promise to push Russia to the wall for a peace treaty, promise to if needed help securing Russian nukes, more ammo and gear for Ukraine, etcetera...
They call it the Friendship and Trade Deal.
They also promise to Euro for Euro pay the same as Europe for rebuilding Ukraine.
In short, they are prepared to make huge concessions and pay out their nostrils for a reset to friendlier times with Europe.
What do they ask for?
Not being put on the dungheap... and a deal that the Party can show to the chinese population as evidence that the future will become brighter again in regards of the economy.
I am cautiously optimistic since there are gifts and papers."
As an update on this today, China have halved their purchases of oil and Gas from Russia in just 48 hours. Another signal from them, both to the the West and to Putin.
. There's obviously some conjecture at points, but that is clearly stated for the most part. The Surovikin removal was literally days ahead of elsewhere. Keep em coming 
