Good times ahead for EU
What about poor old UK? I assume we're not invited to the party
We'll try to gatecrash, late on, drunk and unwelcome.
The end?
- Thread starter borolad259
- Start date
We'll try to gatecrash, late on, drunk and unwelcome.
As the game ain't going to plan.
This earlier.
"After the Snowstorm struck and everything was halted a rather lengthy boring period began.
The only thing that really happened was Bakhmut as per usual, and that the Russian attacks diminished in number and strength to about 20 percent of the previous months.
The latter is interesting, and I should have mentioned it.
The Punditerati is stating that this is due to Russian forces being degraded and worn out.
This is partially true, but I would not trust this.
It is equally likely that the Russians know that the offensive is coming, and is conserving strength and ammo.
The truth is probably somewhat halfway in between.
Anyway, vacation is over, and there has been a bewildering amount of weird attacks and other things that it is pretty clear that we have reached the point of no return of the offensive.
I would still wait for a week or two for the two big attacks, but the smaller ones are absolutely ramping up.
And there is quite a bit of deduce from todays news.
First I would though like to say this.
From now on, take the official comments and news from Ukrainian state news with a big pinch of salt.
Maskirovka is the word of the day, say one thing, and then do the opposite.
Potemkin-attacks will also happen, ie fake attacks.
Negotiations
Maybe a Maskirovka.
Zelenskyy stated that if the spring offensive is successful and the Ukrainian army reaches the 3 crossing into Crimea they would pause, and negotiate for Russia to leave it as part of a peace deal.
There is something off here, but I can't put my finger on it right now.
Anyway, I will return to this below, but not the "off" part.
Attack of the Tea Kettle
The Russian Defence Ministry burned yesterday.
Russia claims it was a tea kettle catching fire, but the black ominous smoke came out of the Incinerator Oven Complex, so either they burned a few corpses, or a lot of incriminating documents, or a combination thereof.
Chechnya
There have been a couple of attacks against army barracks in Chechnya.
The news is sketchy, just random clips of explosions and gunfire between groups of who knows who.
It could be Kadyrov on Russian Army as an attempt to break out of Russia.
It could be anti-Kadyrovs hitting Kadyrov to get rid of him...
Regardless, would be fun with a civil war there since it would be the beginning of something rather momentous I think.
Russian communications satelites
Russia today complained that Ukraine had broken international treaties by taking out a number of Russian coms satelites.
Initially I thought this was yet another Russian lie, but lo and behold. Sat coms are down significantly.
It will be interesting to see for how long, or if it is even permanent.
Taking out satelites is not an easy task, and to the best of my knowledge it is beyond Ukraines capacity by a longshot.
In fact, there are more nuclear powers in the world, than countries that reliably can take out not one, but several satelites.
I can't even name which countries that would be since that list is classified.
But, it sort of implies that someone said "sod it" and cheated big time.
Anyway, the implications for Russia is far reaching. They basically went blind right before an offensive. And if coms is out, it is a fair guess that also spy satelites took a nosedive.
The advantage given is not possible to exagerate... Russia is so deep in the fog of war that they are in The Great London Smog of 1952...
Belgorod
Last night Ukraine shelled Belgorod like no tomorrow, more than 20 separate attacks occured, many of them in populated areas.
Russian Telegram channels and Tiktok filled with videos of Russians crying and cursing in basements.
All targets was obviously military, but since Russia is hiding stuff next to civilian buildings the risk of killing civilians was large.
Ukraine obviously used western supplied artillery and missiles, and through both luck and skill nothing worse than cuts and scrapes from blow out windows happened.
But, the psychological impact was very large.
Over at the border in the direction towards Belgorod intense shelling of Russian positions and military vehicles rocked through the night and during the entire day as Ukraine methodically started to chew up the Russian positions and border defences.
Part of it was definitely to cut logistics and to take out supply dumps, but the relentless shelling of the border is either prepwork for an attack, or a Potemkin-attack.
I at this point in time think the latter.
Ukraine has a lot of forces in the vicinity, but not enough for a big attack into Russian soil.
I think this is mainly an attempt to pull forces in this direction, and to increase the confusion for the hapless blinded Russian generals.
Anyway, the brutality of the thing makes me hesitate, Ukraine has not done anything on this scale directly into Russia before.
Bakhmut
Zelenskyy stated that if the situation is becoming to hard they will withdraw from Bakhmut, and that they had abandoned part of the city.
Then Prigozhing jumped out of the woodworks and stated that Zelenskyy was full of it, and that they had not gained any ground, and that they was fighting Ukrainian forces exactly in places that Ukraine claims to have abandoned.
Who to believe?
Knowing that Ukraine has sent reinforcements that are sizeable makes me sort of favour Prigozhins claims even though my mouth turns sour at the notion.
So, Maskirovka aplenty.
At the Northern pincer the fighting is still ongoing, and this is forcing the Russian command to divert attention here too.
War is often about making generals confused and fatigued... then they make mistakes.
Avdiivka
Here Ukraine have started an attack on the Northern flank of the Northern pincer.
It is barely visible on the battle maps yet, but it seems like they are doing an encirclement of the troops located in the pincer part, and that Ukraine is doing steady progress.
Losing here would be painful for Russia, they would then have to give up on Avdiivka, and may have to flee rapidly or risk losing 2 000 - 5 000 soldiers.
If Ukraine then can punch away the southern pincer they have opened up the Northern lock to Donetsk, and at the same time made Vuhledar incredibly valuable as a strategic launching point.
From a tactical point this is currently the most interesting spot, and it does have longterm strategic implications for Ukraine if they succeed.
Zhaporizhzhia
Near the actual city of Zhaporizhzhia Ukraine has amassed 40 000 soldiers ready to move forward.
At the same time the frontline towards Polohyi and Robotyne are under constant shelling grinding away at the Russians.
This has now turned into a massive weakspot in the Russian defence lines.
Due to the fighting in Bakhmut and Avdiivka Russia can't move any troops from there.
The Northern troops inside Russia, the last Reserve they have is locked down by the hostilities towards Belgorod.
A lot of the reserve units that Surovikin had carefully put out here have been moved to Vuhledar and been completely squandered.
And the units Surovikin posted around Melitopol as a deeper reserve has been moved out to either Vuhledar (capoof) or to Crimea.
And the can't really move the troops from Kherson either, because of reasons...
Beyond the anemic frontline troops there are just scattered light units to take up the brunt of half an army coming there way any day.
And the Russian generals can't even say that they did not know that the Ukrainians would try this way.
Heck, Surovikin built an entire army here just for this specific reason.
I am starting to believe that he well and truly was Russias only half-decent general and that the rest are just a bunch of crack-head hens that are blind... or, that they want to lose.
Kherson
Same here, relentless methodical artillery work is now taking out position after position both at depth, and on the river banks all the way from Nova Kakhovka down to where the Kinburn Spit hits Kherson mainland.
Those concrete pillboxes that Russia put up at great cost is now mostly smoldering piles of aggregate.
The Russian artillery is disappearing at an alarming rate.
And there are numerous reports of clashes and skirmishes on the southern bank.
One thing is clear, Russia can't move a single soldier from this part to support Zhaporizhzhia.
China
Not much has really come out yet from the visit to China, except that it was a masterclass in how to not do Russian diplomacy.
But, the open takeaway is that China very strongly reinforced the message that Crimea is Ukraine, and that Russia will leave Crimea.
China then hooked on to Zelenskyys statement about negotiating Russia out of Crimea and Ukraine after Ukraine have won(!) the Spring Offensive and was at the gates of Crimea.
Xi promised that at that point China would put considerable pressure on Russia to go home, and offered to lead the talks.
Somehow this felt rehearsed and pre-agreed between Xi, von der Layen and Zelenskyy.
As Xi thundered out this, his normal demenour of a happy friendly panda was totally gone.
"Or else..." hung heavily in his demenour of a very ***ed of Panda on steroids.
He clearly want Russia humiliated, and peaceful trade to return.
I privately pondered the satelite thing at this juncture...
Hell-Class
For some reason Ukraine have divulged videos of brand new Hell-Class weapon that made even my knees go a bit weak...
Seeing hundreds of networked drones take off with bombs attached to fly off in perfect formations are a scary sight.
I recognized them, they are mavic built drones purposebuilt for the chinese army.
Nobody else has them.
Ukraine is using them to take out minefields in squares a 100 by 100 meters, and chunks of trenches. All in one go.
They would never have arrived like this without the go ahead of Xi.
How, and when the hell, he delivered them is up to anyone's guess.
Russia ******* on Xi was monumentally stupid."
This earlier.
"After the Snowstorm struck and everything was halted a rather lengthy boring period began.
The only thing that really happened was Bakhmut as per usual, and that the Russian attacks diminished in number and strength to about 20 percent of the previous months.
The latter is interesting, and I should have mentioned it.
The Punditerati is stating that this is due to Russian forces being degraded and worn out.
This is partially true, but I would not trust this.
It is equally likely that the Russians know that the offensive is coming, and is conserving strength and ammo.
The truth is probably somewhat halfway in between.
Anyway, vacation is over, and there has been a bewildering amount of weird attacks and other things that it is pretty clear that we have reached the point of no return of the offensive.
I would still wait for a week or two for the two big attacks, but the smaller ones are absolutely ramping up.
And there is quite a bit of deduce from todays news.
First I would though like to say this.
From now on, take the official comments and news from Ukrainian state news with a big pinch of salt.
Maskirovka is the word of the day, say one thing, and then do the opposite.
Potemkin-attacks will also happen, ie fake attacks.
Negotiations
Maybe a Maskirovka.
Zelenskyy stated that if the spring offensive is successful and the Ukrainian army reaches the 3 crossing into Crimea they would pause, and negotiate for Russia to leave it as part of a peace deal.
There is something off here, but I can't put my finger on it right now.
Anyway, I will return to this below, but not the "off" part.
Attack of the Tea Kettle
The Russian Defence Ministry burned yesterday.
Russia claims it was a tea kettle catching fire, but the black ominous smoke came out of the Incinerator Oven Complex, so either they burned a few corpses, or a lot of incriminating documents, or a combination thereof.
Chechnya
There have been a couple of attacks against army barracks in Chechnya.
The news is sketchy, just random clips of explosions and gunfire between groups of who knows who.
It could be Kadyrov on Russian Army as an attempt to break out of Russia.
It could be anti-Kadyrovs hitting Kadyrov to get rid of him...
Regardless, would be fun with a civil war there since it would be the beginning of something rather momentous I think.
Russian communications satelites
Russia today complained that Ukraine had broken international treaties by taking out a number of Russian coms satelites.
Initially I thought this was yet another Russian lie, but lo and behold. Sat coms are down significantly.
It will be interesting to see for how long, or if it is even permanent.
Taking out satelites is not an easy task, and to the best of my knowledge it is beyond Ukraines capacity by a longshot.
In fact, there are more nuclear powers in the world, than countries that reliably can take out not one, but several satelites.
I can't even name which countries that would be since that list is classified.
But, it sort of implies that someone said "sod it" and cheated big time.
Anyway, the implications for Russia is far reaching. They basically went blind right before an offensive. And if coms is out, it is a fair guess that also spy satelites took a nosedive.
The advantage given is not possible to exagerate... Russia is so deep in the fog of war that they are in The Great London Smog of 1952...
Belgorod
Last night Ukraine shelled Belgorod like no tomorrow, more than 20 separate attacks occured, many of them in populated areas.
Russian Telegram channels and Tiktok filled with videos of Russians crying and cursing in basements.
All targets was obviously military, but since Russia is hiding stuff next to civilian buildings the risk of killing civilians was large.
Ukraine obviously used western supplied artillery and missiles, and through both luck and skill nothing worse than cuts and scrapes from blow out windows happened.
But, the psychological impact was very large.
Over at the border in the direction towards Belgorod intense shelling of Russian positions and military vehicles rocked through the night and during the entire day as Ukraine methodically started to chew up the Russian positions and border defences.
Part of it was definitely to cut logistics and to take out supply dumps, but the relentless shelling of the border is either prepwork for an attack, or a Potemkin-attack.
I at this point in time think the latter.
Ukraine has a lot of forces in the vicinity, but not enough for a big attack into Russian soil.
I think this is mainly an attempt to pull forces in this direction, and to increase the confusion for the hapless blinded Russian generals.
Anyway, the brutality of the thing makes me hesitate, Ukraine has not done anything on this scale directly into Russia before.
Bakhmut
Zelenskyy stated that if the situation is becoming to hard they will withdraw from Bakhmut, and that they had abandoned part of the city.
Then Prigozhing jumped out of the woodworks and stated that Zelenskyy was full of it, and that they had not gained any ground, and that they was fighting Ukrainian forces exactly in places that Ukraine claims to have abandoned.
Who to believe?
Knowing that Ukraine has sent reinforcements that are sizeable makes me sort of favour Prigozhins claims even though my mouth turns sour at the notion.
So, Maskirovka aplenty.
At the Northern pincer the fighting is still ongoing, and this is forcing the Russian command to divert attention here too.
War is often about making generals confused and fatigued... then they make mistakes.
Avdiivka
Here Ukraine have started an attack on the Northern flank of the Northern pincer.
It is barely visible on the battle maps yet, but it seems like they are doing an encirclement of the troops located in the pincer part, and that Ukraine is doing steady progress.
Losing here would be painful for Russia, they would then have to give up on Avdiivka, and may have to flee rapidly or risk losing 2 000 - 5 000 soldiers.
If Ukraine then can punch away the southern pincer they have opened up the Northern lock to Donetsk, and at the same time made Vuhledar incredibly valuable as a strategic launching point.
From a tactical point this is currently the most interesting spot, and it does have longterm strategic implications for Ukraine if they succeed.
Zhaporizhzhia
Near the actual city of Zhaporizhzhia Ukraine has amassed 40 000 soldiers ready to move forward.
At the same time the frontline towards Polohyi and Robotyne are under constant shelling grinding away at the Russians.
This has now turned into a massive weakspot in the Russian defence lines.
Due to the fighting in Bakhmut and Avdiivka Russia can't move any troops from there.
The Northern troops inside Russia, the last Reserve they have is locked down by the hostilities towards Belgorod.
A lot of the reserve units that Surovikin had carefully put out here have been moved to Vuhledar and been completely squandered.
And the units Surovikin posted around Melitopol as a deeper reserve has been moved out to either Vuhledar (capoof) or to Crimea.
And the can't really move the troops from Kherson either, because of reasons...
Beyond the anemic frontline troops there are just scattered light units to take up the brunt of half an army coming there way any day.
And the Russian generals can't even say that they did not know that the Ukrainians would try this way.
Heck, Surovikin built an entire army here just for this specific reason.
I am starting to believe that he well and truly was Russias only half-decent general and that the rest are just a bunch of crack-head hens that are blind... or, that they want to lose.
Kherson
Same here, relentless methodical artillery work is now taking out position after position both at depth, and on the river banks all the way from Nova Kakhovka down to where the Kinburn Spit hits Kherson mainland.
Those concrete pillboxes that Russia put up at great cost is now mostly smoldering piles of aggregate.
The Russian artillery is disappearing at an alarming rate.
And there are numerous reports of clashes and skirmishes on the southern bank.
One thing is clear, Russia can't move a single soldier from this part to support Zhaporizhzhia.
China
Not much has really come out yet from the visit to China, except that it was a masterclass in how to not do Russian diplomacy.
But, the open takeaway is that China very strongly reinforced the message that Crimea is Ukraine, and that Russia will leave Crimea.
China then hooked on to Zelenskyys statement about negotiating Russia out of Crimea and Ukraine after Ukraine have won(!) the Spring Offensive and was at the gates of Crimea.
Xi promised that at that point China would put considerable pressure on Russia to go home, and offered to lead the talks.
Somehow this felt rehearsed and pre-agreed between Xi, von der Layen and Zelenskyy.
As Xi thundered out this, his normal demenour of a happy friendly panda was totally gone.
"Or else..." hung heavily in his demenour of a very ***ed of Panda on steroids.
He clearly want Russia humiliated, and peaceful trade to return.
I privately pondered the satelite thing at this juncture...
Hell-Class
For some reason Ukraine have divulged videos of brand new Hell-Class weapon that made even my knees go a bit weak...
Seeing hundreds of networked drones take off with bombs attached to fly off in perfect formations are a scary sight.
I recognized them, they are mavic built drones purposebuilt for the chinese army.
Nobody else has them.
Ukraine is using them to take out minefields in squares a 100 by 100 meters, and chunks of trenches. All in one go.
They would never have arrived like this without the go ahead of Xi.
How, and when the hell, he delivered them is up to anyone's guess.
Russia ******* on Xi was monumentally stupid."
The Ruthsayer
Well-known member
You mean in the same way that we were late and unwelcome in our political and military support of Ukraine?
Not exactly, no. Obviously it was a joke but, in all seriousness, although we are a market for China, we are tiny compared with the EU. We are also openly hostile towards China, politically.
Druss_The_Legend
Well-known member
From what I have read online there have been protests in Moscow about a proposed mosque being built, which has upset some on the Chechnya side. I'm not saying this is the whole reason but definitely seems to add to the tensions.
The woman who delivered the statue was already arrested and claims she didn't even know there were explosives in the statue.
I would say that is quite likely true as video of the incident shows that after handing him the statue, she sat down on a chair less than two metres away, at his invitation.
You wouldn't do that if you knew the object you were sitting so close to was about to explode with lethal force.
The video below (which stops immediately before the explosion) seems to show she was actually still talking to him when the explosion occurred.
The Ruthsayer
Well-known member
I accept that; but I was disappointed to see an intellectually lazy, Brexit related dig at the UK on this particular thread.
I'm not sure that any intellectual rigour is required to observe that, as we are no longer part of the EU, we are unlikely to be invited to the commercial negotiations between the EU and China. But, like you, I'm not interested in seeing Brexit debated here, or anywhere else for that matter.
A utube channel for you lot to follow.
A former military analyst.
A former military analyst.
red_harrington
Well-known member
It was a dig at Brexit, not the UK.
You don't have to be an intellectual to see that.
But yes, back to the topic at hand?
A recommendation from Mr.
As he put it, Dave here has saved him a whole load of typing.
"It is simply the best explanation of what will happen out there, and it saves me writing 4 separate longwinded musings to explain it...
I am lazy.
After this the concept of breaching should be clear, and I can drone on about where I think it will happen.
It would be slightly different in case of an amphibious assault in Kherson."
So, here we are. Dave here (and his poor daughter) are really hitting their straps now with their content.
As he put it, Dave here has saved him a whole load of typing.
"It is simply the best explanation of what will happen out there, and it saves me writing 4 separate longwinded musings to explain it...
I am lazy.
After this the concept of breaching should be clear, and I can drone on about where I think it will happen.
It would be slightly different in case of an amphibious assault in Kherson."
So, here we are. Dave here (and his poor daughter) are really hitting their straps now with their content.
Druss_The_Legend
Well-known member
Looking at the weather forecast in Eastern Ukraine, forecast showers until Friday then around 2 weeks of sunny weather getting up to about 17/18 degrees. Me personally looking at the weather I'm expecting the main push to start on the last few days of this month or the very beginning of next month. I'm expecting things to start ramp up in military and artillery in around 7-10 days time.
Tallywacker
Active member
I’m hoping it will be straight forward with the majority of Russian soldiers surrendering at the earliest opportunity. Thank you Borolad for the continued information in this thread.
Much of the prep work has been under way fro weeks now. Probing force recon. This week taking out radar. Someone mysterious taking out Russian comms satellites. I really wouldn't want to be one of those Russian conscripts. The prospects are appalling for them. Wagner and their greedy boss? I hope they get what's coming to them.
TeessideCleveland
Well-known member
Canadian news article has a different slant
theconversation.com
Bakhmut is increasingly a quagmire that works to Russia’s advantage
Bakhmut initially appeared to be a Ukrainian strategic victory as it depleted Russian armed forces. But that looming victory risks becoming a major defeat. Here’s how Russia has outplayed Ukraine.
theconversation.com
Ingleby_Flash
Well-known member
Maybe. Or maybe the point of Bakhmut to Ukr was not to lose and winning didn’t matter, just buy the time until spring - and the time has now been bought. Move on to what is next, the main event.Canadian news article has a different slant
Bakhmut is increasingly a quagmire that works to Russia’s advantage
Bakhmut initially appeared to be a Ukrainian strategic victory as it depleted Russian armed forces. But that looming victory risks becoming a major defeat. Here’s how Russia has outplayed Ukraine.
TeessideCleveland
Well-known member
I certainly hope so. Hope every inch of Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia are liberated. I also hope Konigsberg is handed under the control of someone else
Just posted the article to show that some are not convinced the dictator's army are getting booted as soon as other articles are predicting
Canadian news article has a different slant
Bakhmut is increasingly a quagmire that works to Russia’s advantage
Bakhmut initially appeared to be a Ukrainian strategic victory as it depleted Russian armed forces. But that looming victory risks becoming a major defeat. Here’s how Russia has outplayed Ukraine.
Simply at odds with everything we know. The withdrawal is a planned withdrawl, street by street, simply used to suck in and eliminate as many Russian forces as possible. Particularly Wagner.
This fella is Ukrainian but he tells it as it is, whether the news is good or bad.
The title is click bait obviously. But the substance isn't far off.
Druss_The_Legend
Well-known member
With them being mercenaries they aren't protected under the usual treaties and "niceties" of war, and with the atrocities that particular group have committed I'm not sure they will be getting any home comforts when captured.Wonder what the treatment of any captured Wagner fighters will be. Certain units in WWII were told to take no SS PoWs due to atrocities/war crimes committed. Will similar retributions are carried out