The end?

I am trying to add an update from our man but, for some reason, the board is not having any of it and I keep getting an error code.
 
In the bleak midwinter. Guess which word prevented the posting of this earlier.

"During winter you need good equipment and logistics to survive.
I have extensive training and experience in this, so I will not bore you with details.
Let me just state that I participated in the aptly named N0rthwind exercise.
It set the current world record of s***y conditions. Four died, 70+ was wounded so bad that they needed amputations, and one artillery howitzer exploded due to becoming fragile.
It was at one point -53.6 Celsius.

1) Training on how to survive in cold and harsh conditions. The best are bviously Sweden and Finland. Both countries have minus 50 celsius as the temperature where we stop holding exercises. This was the result of N0rthwind, we got a temperature that was officially to cold to do war.

2) Let this sink in, now understand why I giggle when people say that winter will slow Ukraine down.

3) It will not, winter is your friend in manoeuvre warfare, mud is the enemy.

4) Good gear to keep you warm and dry. And many many socks. Socks are important in cold weather, you must change into new clean and dry socks at a minimum of once per day, preferably twice.

5) Enough socks and you are invincible.

Food, you will burn through 4-7 times as many calories at minus 20C compared to 20 plus.
In the Swedish army the daily summer field rations are 5000 calories per day, winter are 7000-9000 and you are supposed to scarf down two of them.
Enough food served enough times per day and your body will adapt in 5 to 14 days and produce brown fat that is insulating, and increase metabolic burnrate.
Ie, your body will keep you warm even when an unprepaired body would not.
More things will break, and more time will be needed on fixing your gear. Plan for it.
If you have more of 1 - 4 you will win against any odds. See the Finnish Winter War and the Continuation War.
The Swedish official military doctrine is to hold in summer, and to break them during winter. And it was always Russia that was the enemy, we are just too nice to say it out loud (until now).

Ukraine has 1 - 5 in ample amounts. They have had 8 years to prepare together with Canadian, Finnish and Swedish military advisors that have been in Ukraine.
Ukraine is well prepared, well trained, well socked, well fed... Russia is not prepared at all, which in and of itself is just ridiculous.
Yes, some of them are Russian hunter/gatherers from out in nowhere Russia. But they lack sock and food, the rest they have.
For the main bulk of mobiks and soldiers things are much bleeker.
They have summer gear, and only one set of it so they can't change if they get wet. Socks, the original soldiers had 5 pairs when they came to Ukraine, now they get two pairs of feet wrappings. This is why they have stolen socks since the beginning of the war.

Food, well they do not get any and have to scavange for it themselves.
Try to scavange 10 000 calories plus per day when tens of thousands of soldiers are doing the same thing around you, good luck with that.
I suspect that quite a few by now are eating their fallen comrades, and no I am not joking.
It is the only option for them to survive except to surrender for a warm Ukrainian meal.

This leads me to a leaked Russian report on casualties. It is a study over percentages of fatalities.
Up until two weeks ago the bulk of it was in descending order, Lack of medical treatment, Died during treatment, Killed in Action.
This is normal for almost all armies, but the difference in proportion is staggering. Four soldiers died per every directly killed in Action.
This probably means that the Russian figures are much higher than the Ukrainian body count method suggests.

This changed two weeks ago.
Now 52 percent die of "Fell asleep and did not wake up", which is a wonderful eufemism for hypothermia (or being eaten alive in your sleep by your friends).
This is an enormous number.

The Swedish army was counting on a figure of 1 percent fatalities during wartime. The Finns had 2.6 during the Winter War, but with less developed gear and training, so I think the Swedish number should hold. And that Ukraine would end up at 1 - 2.6 percent.
Now ponder 52 percent and the effect on the outcome of the war. This was exactly why Russia lost the Winter War.
And they are not only dying inside Ukraine, there are many who freeze to death in Russia in their baracks and in tent cities as they get mobilised.
Self inflicted auto-massacre will become the term on what Russia is doing to themselves this winter.

Yesterday as I was falling asleep I was pondering how far Russia have fallen from the times of the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union landed on Venus.
Russia can't even produce socks."
 
Last edited:
borolad259 said:
.


Almost certainly. I think that's Uppity again. Too many people in close proximity.
Click to expand...
Firstly, fascinating, informative and compelling updates, @borolad259 as always. Huge thanks.
But… one thing puzzles me: why go to the trouble of running a number of top-rate “doubles” if they then so obviously act in a way in which Putin won’t and doesn’t? Surely, they would be schooled in, say, making sure nobody gets in close proximity. The “double” bit is the one thing I can’t get me head around!
 
Red_is_best said:
Firstly, fascinating, informative and compelling updates, @borolad259 as always. Huge thanks.
But… one thing puzzles me: why go to the trouble of running a number of top-rate “doubles” if they then so obviously act in a way in which Putin won’t and doesn’t? Surely, they would be schooled in, say, making sure nobody gets in close proximity. The “double” bit is the one thing I can’t get me head around!
Click to expand...
I agree with everything posted here.

The same has often occurred to me.

Riveting posts but often laden with assumptions.
 
I know. It seemed too far fetched for me at first. But the guy we're talking about is a rationalist. Yeah, he ruminates and forms opinions, but when he tells me that something is factual, I kind of have to go with it. I wouldn't be in business with him otherwise.

The doubles are there precisely for public presentations like this and have been for a while. The "Putin" was paranoid. To get near him you have to be vetted, double vetted, scanned, geiger counted, searched etc. This even applies to heads of state. This is Russia, he had good reason to be paranoid as quite a lot of interested parties really were out to get him.

The double in this photo has been seen a lot recently. He has to my mind, a more bulbous nose. But the feature that the intelligence services' AI programmes identify him by is his ears and their relative position on his head. That can't be faked.

But, you know, I totally get how implausible this all is.

Fact of the matter is, the man himself is sick. Very sick. This fella is too healthy. No discoloration to the skin. Leg muscles not atrophed etc. Basically, too healthy.
 
borolad259 said:
I know. It seemed too far fetched for me at first. But the guy we're talking about is a rationalist. Yeah, he ruminates and forms opinions, but when he tells me that something is factual, I kind of have to go with it. I wouldn't be in business with him otherwise.

The doubles are there precisely for public presentations like this and have been for a while. The "Putin" was paranoid. To get near him you have to be vetted, double vetted, scanned, geiger counted, searched etc. This even applies to heads of state. This is Russia, he had good reason to be paranoid as quite a lot of interested parties really were out to get him.

The double in this photo has been seen a lot recently. He has to my mind, a more bulbous nose. But the feature that the intelligence services' AI programmes identify him by is his ears and their relative position on his head. That can't be faked.

But, you know, I totally get how implausible this all is.

Fact of the matter is, the man himself is sick. Very sick. This fella is too healthy. No discoloration to the skin. Leg muscles not atrophed etc. Basically, too healthy.
Click to expand...
Why do you think the U S keep saying 'Russia are still a force to be reckoned with ' and 'there will be a lull over the Winter ' - to induce complacency, or are they overestimating Russian ability and underestimating Ukrainian ability?
 
1st Monday of the month he's always "in a meeting". I'd forgotten. Weird arcane folks with minutes taken on typewriters. ANyway.

"There is quite a bit to cover, because things did not go Russias way today. No... not at all.

First of all, during the night two Russian strategic heavy bomber bases was attacked by Ukraine. That in and of itself is not particularly uncommon.
But, when the first one is the Engels-2 strategic bomber command base in the Saratov Oblast next to Volga it is something else. A "Something" hit a tanker truck and destroyed it together with a TU-95 bomber getting prepaired for a missile launch.
And the second one was no less spectacular, it was the Dyagilevo Heavy Bomber Base. There two other "Something" hit two Tupolev TU-95s being prepared for a missile strike.

These attacks had one immediate effect.
Russia had to launch their missile strike against Ukraine prior to being really ready for it.
This made the effort less well timed since the air force had to take off to early, so the ship volley and the air volley was out of sync.
It also dropped the number of missiles that could be launched for obvious reasons, such as terminal existence failure.

Ukraine had this time around gotten a couple of more Western air defence systems in place, and placed them better so that more of the electricity network was protected. It was a bit of a Coventry move, but it played out well in the end. This means that Ukraine pushed up the number of "kills" quite a bit to above 80 percent and that the electric network survived fairly intact, the parts taken out is expected to be fixed within 72 hours.

The second effect is ringing like Hunga Tonga Hunga Haapai across Russkie Mir and quite frankly the western side too.
Remember that the Ukrainians claimed to be working on a 1000km range cruise missile with a 75kg warhead?
Ukraine decided to testfire those straight into two heavily defended strategic bomber bases roughly 460km inside the Russian borders, and they worked like no tomorrow.

So, not only did Ukraine dictate when and how the Russians had to strike, they also disturbed it quite a lot.
Russia also now know that they might be pushed back quite far, and that their air defence is no match for the new Ukrainian missile. It is likely that Russia was cought off guard, but still the local air defence and the radars that cover all of Russia did not help to stop them.

When even the West get a tad nervous about their overly smart ally, it is safe to bet that many trouser insides was filled with brown goo on the Russian side of things.
The West had the Ukrainians turn over blueprints and other engineering documentation, and it is speed read at a prodigious rate right now.
On the Russian side there is shock, awe, fear, cold sweats...

All of a sudden every single base within 1000km (presumably) are at risk, every bridge, every depot, every railway hub, Kersh Bridge (that today was filled with a "Putin" driving on it), Sochii, Kremlin... are all at risk from the new Ukrainian missile that they can't stop.
Moscow just became a Target. Half of Russia has now lit up with defence radar systems hauled out of storage, air defence units are brough to Moscow from all across Russia.
After all, in Russia only Moscow counts.
Now Moscow is well and truly a target that can be reached.
Fear.
Deap primal fear.

This might have been the last Russian big missile attack. They have enough to do one or two more.
But, I think Russia got the message that was sent. Prepare an attack and we will attack you first, and ours will do more damage.
Ukraine sent a big warning here.
On the other hand, Russians are fairly stupid and thickheaded, so they might try again.

This attack had a longer pause than expected, probably due to it taking more and more time to scrounge up a big enough barrage.
It probably means that the next one would be even further delayed compared to this one and the previous.

There is also the fairly obvious chance that Ukraine will decide that a couple of other Russian things like bases and the Kersh Bridge should disappear.
It is now entirely up to Ukraine when and where to strike.
I do though suspect that Ukraine can produce just one or two of these buggers per week, but it is still enough to change the metrics further into Ukraines favour.

Kersh and the Putin
A Putin last week declared that a Putin would go to visit the frontlines, so while the strikes was ongoing a Putin drove alone across the Kersh Bridge together with his guard vehicles.
All ordinary traffic was stopped.
Even during ordinary war times this would have been a body double, but the real one is still in Sochii, we know that for a fact.
What we do not know is as per usual if he is alive or not, all we know is that he is glowing in the dark.

We have a theory.
It is that the Russians have planned for a Putin to be killed in Ukraine, dying a heroes death at the frontline.
By telegraphing this, and making it into a televised stunt, it has forced all intelligence services to follow the Putins movements in Ukraine.
Obviously Ukraine knows exactly where he is and when, and could take him out at their own leasure.
And, if Ukraine does not take the invite out of spite towards all things Russkie Plotskie, they can easily create an accidental attack on TV blowing him up with an artillery strike or a bomb.
It has been suggested quite strongly that it might be an idea to not blow him up, Ukraine was not impressed by this idea.
They already have the medal minted for whomever blows him up or drags him to court, that has been around for 3 months, so it is not a new idea.

The dude is dying already, or is now dead.
He is Schrödinger's Putin right now, so killing him in a Hero Fashion is believed to be the plan.
In this narrative the Russian leadership thinks this will cement Russia behind a total mobilisation to swamp Ukraine forcing concessions.
Problem is that according to even blooming Rosstat Putin is down to a support of 23 percent among the ordinary Russkies.
So, obviously Ivan Russkovsky will just shrug his shoulders, say "Idiot", and pour a rather humongous vodka to celebrete the demise of the idiot in question.

Anyway, long live every Putin, may they all be deaded in pieces."
 
TeessideCleveland said:
Why do you think the U S keep saying 'Russia are still a force to be reckoned with ' and 'there will be a lull over the Winter ' - to induce complacency, or are they overestimating Russian ability and underestimating Ukrainian ability?
Click to expand...

My guess is they come to pretty much the same conclusions and if they were made to put their nickel down they would most likely be in accord with the ISW.

However they are not pudits, they are not forced to put their nickel down. They are a responsible State Department in the government that carries the most weight in the world and the most important military in the world. They should be wary of speculating. One thing we know is Russia is very secretive. They also lie and boast. The US may know the amount of equipment Russia claims it has on paper, but knowing just how much extra was supposedly stockpiled or produced in secret, how much was a big boast, how much of what was produced is lost to corruption, how much has been left to rot etc, is impossible.

So a responsible USA is not speculating, or at least it is careful and qualifies any speculation. Eg 'Russia on paper should have xxx, but we think that the reason they are using older stuff is suggests they may not have as much. We've seen mechanical issues which suggest maybe a lot of the stockpiled equipment is not in working order. It may be able to be brought up to working order, it may not.'

Then there are things which are very difficult to judge. Routs often happen very quickly, when a tipping point is reached. What that tipping point is, you can't know. A small well led, well trained, motivated, well equipped and provisioned force can destroy much larger poorly led, poorly trained, poorly motivated and poorly equipped one.

One of the most important variables is the determination and morale of those at the front line. That is impossible to actually know. Analysts can look at events and say it appears Ukraine are motivated and determined, because they didn't roll over, are fighting for their country, are getting well fed, equipped and are winning right now. Similarly they can look at the state of the Russian prisoners and enemy dead and conclude there are low morale issues. Predicting that this state of affairs is going to continue is perilous though.

When you think back to WW2 and North Africa, when France fell and Italy declared war on us in mid 1940, we advanced from Egypt in to Libya with a small force. The Italians land a large force which invaded Egypt. The allies struck back and even with a much smaller force we pushed back the Italians all the way to Benghazi and took huge numbers of prisoners. The Itaian forces were at the point of near collapse when Rommel arrived in Feb 41. Then they pushed the Allies all the way back to Egypt, winning every battle, until Rommel's supply line became too stretched. Allied morale went from being sky high to being shot. Then the arrival of Alexander and Montgomery, who had proved themselves elsewhere, restored confidence in the leadership and their mastering of the logistics and build up of numbers and equipment led to victory after victory and the eventual routing of the Afrika Korps.

It was similar in the Far East/Burma/India until Slim and Imphal/Kohima.

It is not impossible that Russia will find leaders tempered in the heat of battle, who rise to the fore out of necessity. It is not impossible that they develop new tactics, it is not impossible that they solve some of their problems. It looks unlikely right now, but who knows what assistance China decides to give. China has the sort of industrial might the USA could provide for the Soviets and British Empire in WW2.
 
On percentages.

"Even though people died yesterday, and critical infrastructure was hit, yesterday was a resounding victory for Ukraine over Russia in the missile strike warfare. The first of hopefully many such events.

The victory in the missile warfare was multi-facetted and multi-vectored.
It was a tactical, strategical, political and psychological victory that shook Russia to the core.
I will now go through the various facetts of the victory.

First of all, by launching the two deep strikes Ukraine forced Russia to attack before they where ready. This set the stage for later in the day. As I mentioned yesterday this broke up the attack into two separate waves.
The deep strikes also limited the weight of the Russian attack.
They had scheduled and loaded 20 heavy bombers, 3 was destroyed in the attack, and 3 more was held back for repairs and checks. On average each plane carries 5 missiles, and out of 100 airborne missiles only 70 was launched.
The naval strikes was cancelled due to the ships not being in position, further removing about 30 missiles.
Beside the temporary tactical win this means that Russia are down at least 3 heavy bombers, and will be permanently limited in missile strike capacity.
So, it was both a tactical and strategic longterm victory.

Ukraine set a world record that is almost unbelievable.
Prior to the war we guesstimated that modern air defence would have an 80 percent hit rate against singular missile targets in wartime conditions.
Unofficially the number of intercepts was set as low as 20 percent for large barrages of missiles like what Russia has sent towards Ukraine.
The reason there is so little missile air defence systems around the world is that they where mostly seen as point defence against rogue missiles, and only as a psychological cushion for the population against big air attacks or missile barrage strikes.
Turns out that the West and the military industrial complex is far better than even our hyperbole and their claims.
Yesterday Ukraine achieved 85.7 percent hit rate against a barrage. 60 out of 70 missiles was taken down, and the ones not shot down was against secondary targets that was less well defended.
Against singular objects IRIS-T is still holding at 100 percent kill rate.
Expect this new world record to put fire under the arses of all western governments to procure ginormous arrays of air defence systems, both against ordinary missiles and nukes.
After all, the **** really works, and will produce a real tangible result on the survivability of even a full on nuclear war.
This new world record was obviously a tactical win, but the strategic ramifications are that Ukraine is getting very close to making Russian missile strikes impotent. I would sort of argue that they already are that from a military standpoint where you always acknowledge the risk of losses to life and equipment.
And Russia knows this was a major loss of capability into the future.
In Russian military circles this was the heaviest blow, they knew they would lose planes, and they had already counted on it. But having an entire class of weapons neutered? That was a blow to them, they also believed in the 80/20 rule. Except that for Russia it is not 80/20, it is more like 20/1... Let me explain.

SAAB and Raytheon went through the blueprints and even the missiles at the Ukrainian missile factory over night and today.
What they found is quite interesting.
Ukraine has built something that is 1.5 times more effective than the original Tomahawk Cruise Missile. Even a Block 1 Tomahawk would have overpowered Russia, but upping from that one is significant.
It means that Ukrainian weapons manufacturing is getting well into the big league.
They cobbled this together in 4 years, the first 3 was spent on making a one to one equivalent, and in the last 9 months they upgraded it with newfound western knowledge to a 1.5.
Just to explain, the current leader of the cruise missile pack is the RBS-15 Gungnir, it is a 3.
That is fully autonomous AI, aka Hell Class Weapon.
And no, this is not my nomenclature, it is used all over now for almost invincible weapon systems based on AI.
But, Gungnirs aside, out of all public knowledge cruise missiles Ukraine right now has the number 5 ranking bad boy.
There are 4 western in front, and 5 behind. After that you theoretically have a chinese cruise missile, and after that comes the Russian junk piles.
In short, Russia has nothing that can take it down in any reliable way. Any hit would be a lucky shot.
In the Russian military fanboy Telegram channels they are shaking and s***ing themselves aplenty today.
Same with the political elite.
The military is far more stoic, they knew that it was just a question of time before Ukraine built something that could hit them in the ass, or the west gave them something like that.
So, they had factored this in.
And Russia knows that realistically Ukraine will only be able to lob around 100 of them per year, and they can take that on the chin.
They are though a bit shook up that it was so good that their much vaunted S-400 couldn't even get a lock on them due to stealth capability.
Taking out a few planes was both a tactical and strategic win, politically it was a win, and it was a psychological win that will reverberate for weeks around Russia since they have to adapt to knowing that Ukraine can at any time hit anything in Moscow, and they can't any longer hit Kyiv reliably.

At the same time Ukraine used more mundane stuff and hit other airfields and bases around Ukraine, making yesterday a win in targets, number killed, equipment value... all metrics went to Ukraine.
And this on a Russian barrage day.
As battle victories go this was up there with Kyiv Goodwill, Kharkiv Repositioning, and the Kherson Tactical Manouvre. Yes, I am using the Russian names for the battle losses ironically.

Counterfire
To produce a knockout blow Ukraine need more tanks, more artillery and more airforce.
I often allude to this, and so do most pundits.

But, there is another very specific equipment set that could produce the same result.
And that is artillery counter-fire radar systems.
Obviously Ukraine had a few old Soviet ones, and they have received a few modern western ones.

So, let me explain why this would make a very large difference if Ukraine received many more.
The western artillery is much more precise, and have longer reach, compared to the Russian systems.
This means that theoretically, one western howitzer could sit out of reach and pick off every single Russian artillery piece over a of 10km of frontline.
Well, at least if each one had a conter-fire radar.
In this example we are using the 155mm standard shell, with a base-bleed you get 20km of pick-your-russkie at the frontline.
A Bonus would give 30km, and Excaliber rounds would give a 40km stretch. For the latter you would need 2 radars, and it would become exorbitantly expensive.
But, you get the gist.
With 100 radars you could empy the entire frontline of Russian artillery within a week.
Obviously you would not have blown up every piece of artillery, even Russia would in the end pull them back.
But, Russia without massive artillery would just be Russia in the form of a bunch of drunk dudes in fake Adidas pants.
I hope Ukraine will get more of these radars.
Even a few would shorten the war considerably, and we already know that Ukraine are really good at this with the few they already have.

Peace
Russia has gotten a new offer to mull over.
-All land returned to Ukraine
-War reparations to Ukraine
-War criminals to Hague or EU Court, with the final agreeing negotiation team being excempt from participation.
This has obvious psychologic ramification on the will to negotiate and make peace on the Russian leaders, whoever now they are
-Nuclear Weapons Assymetry, Russia will no longer be on pair with NATO
in return for
-Security Guarantees for Russia that the NATO-country of Ukraine will not attack Russia
-Security Guarantees for Russia that NATO will not attack Russia
-Lifting of sanctions on a sliding scale that will be agreed upon, against tangible targets towards democracy and freedom of speach and press, and fulfilment of reparations and judicial accountability

Someone in Russia answered, believed to be from upon high among the Siloviki: We will not sign the treaty with Ukraine, but we would sign with NATO after negotiations.
It was not Naryshkin, so most likely Patrushev feeling downbeaten, and he would really like that immunity (something that Naryshkin does not need).

You really need to understand Russia and the Russian psyche for this mindwarp.
They attacked a lesser state and got asswhopped.
But, if they can sign that treaty with NATO, it means that they lost against all of the combined power of NATO and not to Ukraine. Much easier to sell that to Ivan Russkofsky in Blyatograd.
It is also diplomatically much better for Russia to have a treaty with NATO since it would then be up to NATO to keep Ukraine on a leash, both as a partner and a member state.
Obviously that would pish of Ukraine mightily.
So, somewhere along the line they will also sign the document by necessity, but they might end up on the second line of signatures or some such nonsense... and it might be that Ukraine and Russia are in two separate Rooms with Stoltenberg carrying papers in between.
Diplomacy may seem silly, but these things most often do matter a lot.
What matters is that Russia all of a sudden seems "softer" on the negotiations part.
But, expect them to bargain like a used horse salesman in Miami on a sunny friday afternoon in need of a big sale to please the boss so he can buy cocaine and a Rolex to show off to his mistress.
My bet is that they will go for all they are worth to keep that Sevastopol base".
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top