Shifting sands and all that. Some unexpected stuff.
"I read a lot of garbage on the internet about Russias missiles and how they should be finished and whatnots.
So, let us get into numbers, and how we know.
The cruise, tactical, and strategic missiles of Russia, US, France, China and the UK are all known and publically available if you know where to look.
Why?
Well, it is simple. They are all official nuclear powers, and have all signed treaties to give up data on nuclear carriers and inspections. And yes, we have no reason to doubt the Russian figures on how many they had at the beginning of the war.
We are more surprised that they mostly seem to work...
From the yearly figures we can deduce the production numbers during peacetime, and we do not have any reason to believe that those numbers have gone up. They have most likely gone down.
So, when we state that Russia has 200ish left it is as correct as can possibly be stated from the 2021 number. On top of that they have produced new ones.
If we use the highest known number that is 2 missiles per week. Let us be fair to Russia and use their best case scenario.
This gives roughly 300ish missiles that they can lob towards Ukraine.
And since they are at war they are not forced to give out the numbers until the war is over.
It is unlikely that they will use all of them, but on the other hand Russia is desperate as heck.
Now, here is the problem for Russia.
That nuke-dummy missile. A few of the missiles will always be dummys and practice missiles.
Those are still counted since they can easily enough be converted into nuclear carriers, or into conventional tipped missiles.
I suspect that they are so deep into the bottom of the barrel that some Russian in the field decided to use one of the dummies since they had to fill upp the ordered number of launches.
And, that they did not have time to get a conventional tip, or did not have any left.
It is slightly worrying to be honest.
There is a minute risk that some numbnut will grab one that is nuclear tipped by accident to fill up the order sheet in the same way as with the dummy.
Obviously Russia will have a few (fifty or so) of them tipped with nukes. This is standard practice and nothing to untoward. It is just that Russians tend to make mistakes and are heavy into vodka...
The S-300s we know far less about. They do not count as nuclear carriers, so the numbers are a secret. And Russia using them for land-targets is kind of telling that they have more of those than the "good stuff".
The S-300s are less precise for land targets, and they carry a far smaller load, but getting one in the head is still terminally unnice.
Front stuff
Ukraine - Crimea 2022 was the rather smug news cabled out by Ukraine today.
They are clearly officially committed to the liberation of Crimea now.
On top of that I got a video sequence of my friend doing what I think is a force recon deep in East Kherson, show-casing her galumphing around with a mechanised company smoking Mobiks at high speed deep in the desert part.
Being a lightly armed Mobik on flat sandy ground is not a good spot to be when a mechanised unit is chasing you.
This got me thinking.
What is Surovikin up to?
He is far from an idiot, so why did he not try to hold the front on Eastern side of Dnipro?
Avoiding losses does not cut it.
Yes, he is building fortifications on the land spits to Crimea, but they are not good enough to be more than a temporary hinderance for Ukraine since they have the artillery advantage.
Problem with Crimea is that it is a huge logistics trap.
Ukraine will blow the Kersh Bridge again, that is clear. And any troops will be caught there with little or no supplies.
Surovikin knows this, so he did not send in the masses of troops I thought he would.
Instead it looks like he will sacrifice it.
It is far easier to hold and supply Donetsk.
This also explains him sending waves of Wagnerites over at Bakhmut (well, beyond killing them), and his hardline attempt to take ground over at Vuhledar, it also explain the fresh troops filtering into Luhansk, Donetsk, Melitopol, etcetera.
His goal is to try to be a stubborn b***r over at the Luhansk, and especially Donetsk "Republics".
Much easier to hold and supply really, land-trains straight into the area, exactly as Russians want it.
From a military standpoint it is a darn sight more bright than what previous commanders showed.
Now time for a detour, but I will pick this one up later.
Mobilisation 3.0
After the 318 000 Mobiks Russia spent time trying to grab youngsters in the autumn conspription scheme.
They only got around 80 000 of them instead of the usual 180 000.
The original plan was 500 000 Mobiks, and then 180 000 conspripts to bulk the number further.
This gave Russia 400 000 meat targets instead of the 680 000 that was the target.
So, they are now going into a second round of 500 000 meat targets. We will see how many they will get.
What will be even more interesting is what they will equip them with, sabers, axes, stones? I guess they will just be given orders to pick up rifles from other dead Russian meat targets.
This means that Russia is intending to be stubborn.
After all being stubborn is Russias only bargaining chip.
Back to Crimea
Dropping Crimea may be borderline genius from a military standpoint, but from a political standpoint it is beyond moronic.
We are talking about the spot where ordinary Russians love to vacate, to ordinary Russians it is Russian. It is the spot ordinary Russians work like donkeys to buy a vacation flat in.
Being there is having made "it" for ordinary Russians.
About a million ordinary Russians are about to lose their vacation homes.
It is Ukrainian due to a historic joke by Crushev, he handed it over to Ukraine as a pat on the cheek.
Why not after all, it was still within the Soviet Union.
Russians are not incredibly stupid, well at least those that I know.
They do not say that it was correct taking it, but they see it as correcting Crushevs joke.
And, in Crimea most locals actually wanted to become Russians again. The referendum here was not a sham one, well at least not that much.
The same Russians do know that the other regions do not want to be part of Russia, and that forcing them into Russia is wrong.
Also, they are not arsebothered about Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Zhaporizhzhia and Kherson.
Giving up Crimea to hold area that no ordinary Russian is arsebothered with may come with military sense, but politically it is an epic clusterfuck.
To Ivan Russkofsky losing Crimea is an unmitigated disaster costing him 100K€ in one fellow swoop, and to boot he sees it as losing a part of mother russia.
If anything can get Ivan out on the streets to belt some ass, it is losing Crimea and his partyflat.
Russia
More and more Russian civilians are being killed by Russian mines inside Russia.
The reason is that as a sign of Russian confidence they are laying down line after line after line of defence lines and minefields.
There's 100 000 mobiks happily working around the clock on this move of Russian confidence.
The Mobiks are very motivated, as long as they work hard at mining Mother Russia they are safe from the front.
This is not a local thing in the border oblasts of Bryansk, Oryol, Belgorod, Kursk, Voronezh, Rostov and Volgograd.
Nope, they are continuing all the way up towards Moscow in Tula, Smolensk, Kaluga and Ryazan.
Quietly in Moscow they are s***ing themselves so hard that they discover that their pants might be warm for a moment, but otherwise they are in a very cold place indeed.
500km is to the Muskovites a very short distance all of a sudden, and getting an unwanted visit by a bunch of angry Ukrainians are motivating them to mine the living beejezuz out of every field in the Oblasts and to hell with a few farmers that are blown up.
Right now all decissions are based on trying to play the stubborn chip, but they are really worried about seeing Zelenskyy ride down Kutuzovsky Prospect into the Red Square forcing a regime change.
I am certain that the stubborn chip will turn to mush as Crimea is liberated.
Then exactly 3 things remain.
-Coup
-Negotiating from a bad spot
-Being overly stubborn and Zelenskyy decides that he does not really want anything less than a complete regime change and a complete surrender following the occupation of Moscow
Currently my bet is one and two.
That would end the war at the 24th of December.
And if Russia really comes to the negotiating table there will be quite a bit of pressure on Zelenskyy to not be stubborn on things.
But, if the Russians can't for some reason negotiate, or are incredibly stupid stubborn, then Zelenskyy will get until end of summer to go for Moscow.
And do not for a second believe that Moscow have not been made aware of this, and they believed the message... hence Russians stepping on mines all the way to Moscow.
In other words, every day the pressure on Russia is mounting.
I might sound hard, but as long as Zelenskyy follows the script he will get weapons and his country back. Not following the script is not an option for him.
Same is true for Russia, it is dawning on them that they are truly not masters of their fate..
Nor is anyone else really, we just like to think that we are.
Bonus material
NovoRussyisk Naval Base was hit by Ukrainian sea drones. This is in the Rostov Oblast.
Russians no like that at all. Now they have run out of Black Sea to hide their fleet in.
We might very soon see them pack up and leave the Black Sea."
"I read a lot of garbage on the internet about Russias missiles and how they should be finished and whatnots.
So, let us get into numbers, and how we know.
The cruise, tactical, and strategic missiles of Russia, US, France, China and the UK are all known and publically available if you know where to look.
Why?
Well, it is simple. They are all official nuclear powers, and have all signed treaties to give up data on nuclear carriers and inspections. And yes, we have no reason to doubt the Russian figures on how many they had at the beginning of the war.
We are more surprised that they mostly seem to work...
From the yearly figures we can deduce the production numbers during peacetime, and we do not have any reason to believe that those numbers have gone up. They have most likely gone down.
So, when we state that Russia has 200ish left it is as correct as can possibly be stated from the 2021 number. On top of that they have produced new ones.
If we use the highest known number that is 2 missiles per week. Let us be fair to Russia and use their best case scenario.
This gives roughly 300ish missiles that they can lob towards Ukraine.
And since they are at war they are not forced to give out the numbers until the war is over.
It is unlikely that they will use all of them, but on the other hand Russia is desperate as heck.
Now, here is the problem for Russia.
That nuke-dummy missile. A few of the missiles will always be dummys and practice missiles.
Those are still counted since they can easily enough be converted into nuclear carriers, or into conventional tipped missiles.
I suspect that they are so deep into the bottom of the barrel that some Russian in the field decided to use one of the dummies since they had to fill upp the ordered number of launches.
And, that they did not have time to get a conventional tip, or did not have any left.
It is slightly worrying to be honest.
There is a minute risk that some numbnut will grab one that is nuclear tipped by accident to fill up the order sheet in the same way as with the dummy.
Obviously Russia will have a few (fifty or so) of them tipped with nukes. This is standard practice and nothing to untoward. It is just that Russians tend to make mistakes and are heavy into vodka...
The S-300s we know far less about. They do not count as nuclear carriers, so the numbers are a secret. And Russia using them for land-targets is kind of telling that they have more of those than the "good stuff".
The S-300s are less precise for land targets, and they carry a far smaller load, but getting one in the head is still terminally unnice.
Front stuff
Ukraine - Crimea 2022 was the rather smug news cabled out by Ukraine today.
They are clearly officially committed to the liberation of Crimea now.
On top of that I got a video sequence of my friend doing what I think is a force recon deep in East Kherson, show-casing her galumphing around with a mechanised company smoking Mobiks at high speed deep in the desert part.
Being a lightly armed Mobik on flat sandy ground is not a good spot to be when a mechanised unit is chasing you.
This got me thinking.
What is Surovikin up to?
He is far from an idiot, so why did he not try to hold the front on Eastern side of Dnipro?
Avoiding losses does not cut it.
Yes, he is building fortifications on the land spits to Crimea, but they are not good enough to be more than a temporary hinderance for Ukraine since they have the artillery advantage.
Problem with Crimea is that it is a huge logistics trap.
Ukraine will blow the Kersh Bridge again, that is clear. And any troops will be caught there with little or no supplies.
Surovikin knows this, so he did not send in the masses of troops I thought he would.
Instead it looks like he will sacrifice it.
It is far easier to hold and supply Donetsk.
This also explains him sending waves of Wagnerites over at Bakhmut (well, beyond killing them), and his hardline attempt to take ground over at Vuhledar, it also explain the fresh troops filtering into Luhansk, Donetsk, Melitopol, etcetera.
His goal is to try to be a stubborn b***r over at the Luhansk, and especially Donetsk "Republics".
Much easier to hold and supply really, land-trains straight into the area, exactly as Russians want it.
From a military standpoint it is a darn sight more bright than what previous commanders showed.
Now time for a detour, but I will pick this one up later.
Mobilisation 3.0
After the 318 000 Mobiks Russia spent time trying to grab youngsters in the autumn conspription scheme.
They only got around 80 000 of them instead of the usual 180 000.
The original plan was 500 000 Mobiks, and then 180 000 conspripts to bulk the number further.
This gave Russia 400 000 meat targets instead of the 680 000 that was the target.
So, they are now going into a second round of 500 000 meat targets. We will see how many they will get.
What will be even more interesting is what they will equip them with, sabers, axes, stones? I guess they will just be given orders to pick up rifles from other dead Russian meat targets.
This means that Russia is intending to be stubborn.
After all being stubborn is Russias only bargaining chip.
Back to Crimea
Dropping Crimea may be borderline genius from a military standpoint, but from a political standpoint it is beyond moronic.
We are talking about the spot where ordinary Russians love to vacate, to ordinary Russians it is Russian. It is the spot ordinary Russians work like donkeys to buy a vacation flat in.
Being there is having made "it" for ordinary Russians.
About a million ordinary Russians are about to lose their vacation homes.
It is Ukrainian due to a historic joke by Crushev, he handed it over to Ukraine as a pat on the cheek.
Why not after all, it was still within the Soviet Union.
Russians are not incredibly stupid, well at least those that I know.
They do not say that it was correct taking it, but they see it as correcting Crushevs joke.
And, in Crimea most locals actually wanted to become Russians again. The referendum here was not a sham one, well at least not that much.
The same Russians do know that the other regions do not want to be part of Russia, and that forcing them into Russia is wrong.
Also, they are not arsebothered about Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Zhaporizhzhia and Kherson.
Giving up Crimea to hold area that no ordinary Russian is arsebothered with may come with military sense, but politically it is an epic clusterfuck.
To Ivan Russkofsky losing Crimea is an unmitigated disaster costing him 100K€ in one fellow swoop, and to boot he sees it as losing a part of mother russia.
If anything can get Ivan out on the streets to belt some ass, it is losing Crimea and his partyflat.
Russia
More and more Russian civilians are being killed by Russian mines inside Russia.
The reason is that as a sign of Russian confidence they are laying down line after line after line of defence lines and minefields.
There's 100 000 mobiks happily working around the clock on this move of Russian confidence.
The Mobiks are very motivated, as long as they work hard at mining Mother Russia they are safe from the front.
This is not a local thing in the border oblasts of Bryansk, Oryol, Belgorod, Kursk, Voronezh, Rostov and Volgograd.
Nope, they are continuing all the way up towards Moscow in Tula, Smolensk, Kaluga and Ryazan.
Quietly in Moscow they are s***ing themselves so hard that they discover that their pants might be warm for a moment, but otherwise they are in a very cold place indeed.
500km is to the Muskovites a very short distance all of a sudden, and getting an unwanted visit by a bunch of angry Ukrainians are motivating them to mine the living beejezuz out of every field in the Oblasts and to hell with a few farmers that are blown up.
Right now all decissions are based on trying to play the stubborn chip, but they are really worried about seeing Zelenskyy ride down Kutuzovsky Prospect into the Red Square forcing a regime change.
I am certain that the stubborn chip will turn to mush as Crimea is liberated.
Then exactly 3 things remain.
-Coup
-Negotiating from a bad spot
-Being overly stubborn and Zelenskyy decides that he does not really want anything less than a complete regime change and a complete surrender following the occupation of Moscow
Currently my bet is one and two.
That would end the war at the 24th of December.
And if Russia really comes to the negotiating table there will be quite a bit of pressure on Zelenskyy to not be stubborn on things.
But, if the Russians can't for some reason negotiate, or are incredibly stupid stubborn, then Zelenskyy will get until end of summer to go for Moscow.
And do not for a second believe that Moscow have not been made aware of this, and they believed the message... hence Russians stepping on mines all the way to Moscow.
In other words, every day the pressure on Russia is mounting.
I might sound hard, but as long as Zelenskyy follows the script he will get weapons and his country back. Not following the script is not an option for him.
Same is true for Russia, it is dawning on them that they are truly not masters of their fate..
Nor is anyone else really, we just like to think that we are.
Bonus material
NovoRussyisk Naval Base was hit by Ukrainian sea drones. This is in the Rostov Oblast.
Russians no like that at all. Now they have run out of Black Sea to hide their fleet in.
We might very soon see them pack up and leave the Black Sea."
