Will Putin Invade Ukraine?

[Hydra009]

Russian milblogger posts are something else!



I fear I must translate the translation, but they're saying:
1) The Ukrainians have superior manpower
2) The Ukrainians have superior organization (not sure exactly what they mean about that, likely communications/coordination)
3) The Ukrainians have the right tools for the job (minus the F-16s and ATACMS, of course)
4) Russian forces lack the proper equipment

That's quite a damning assessment, especially coming from a Z-ombie!

This is about the Ukrainian advance across the Dniper river.  The Russian thinking is that this territory must be retaken soon, before it becomes an even greater threat.  Yet they openly express doubt in the Russian military to effectively handle this threat (which seems to flow logically from #1-4)

[Hydra009]

Ukrainian forces advance towards Robotyne

This front is a tough nut to crack, filled with extensive trenches, minefields, and still heavily garrisoned.  What's more, there are other defensive lines behind it.  This is very difficult fighting, yet they are making steady progress.  They've even started repairing that group of armored vehicles lost to Russian bombardment, which indicates that they've progressed enough that this area of previously intense fighting is now relatively safe and secure.

The Russians say they are repelling Ukrainian attacks successfully, yet they always seem to be repelling attacks further and further south and there is no further news for these "successfully" defended areas.  Very curious.

Another curious thing is that Russia claims low casualties, yet their mobile crematoria are hard at work near Melitopol, burning a lot like they did during the height of the battle for Bakhmut.  They apparently don't record deaths in order to avoid having to pay death benefits.  Putin's yacht appreciates it.

In more reliable news, along the southern front, the Ukrainians claim to have destroyed a Ka-52 helicopter today and also inflicted 3 companies worth of casualties (90 to 450, probably 200-300ish) over the last 24 hours.



With those sorts of losses recorded every day (usually something like 500-600 troops, around 10 tanks, 20-30ish artillery), it's just a matter of time until Russia starts running out and its positions further weaken.

[Hydra009]

Zed-Head arrested at Italian airport

Source is in italian, but here's a crude translation:

Ukraine, arrested Rovereto-based foreign fighter Alessandro Bertolini. He was fighting in Donbass with the pro-Russians.

Twenty-nine-year-old Alessandro Bertolini, who revealed political sympathies for Forza Nuova to Rai, is now in jail in Busto Arsizio

He did not have time to set foot on Italian soil, and was immediately arrested by the Carabinieri Ros as soon as he landed at Malpensa airport. So it went for Alessandro Bertolini, the Rovereto-based foreign fighter under investigation by the Anti-Mafia and Anti-Terrorism District Directorate of Genoa, who has been a fugitive for years along with other pro-Russian Italians engaged in fighting in Donbass. The 29-year-old was questioned but used the right of non-answer. Defended by lawyer Massimiliano Luigi Scialla, he is now in jail in Busto Arsizio (Varese), while his case will be followed by the Genoa court. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for next September.

Note that he had sympathies with Forza Nuova, an Italian Neo-Nazi organization.  Strange that such an ardent nazi would be fighting for Putin...

[Hydra009]

Chechen commander dies in Ukraine

I saw this on telegram a while ago, but I had to wait for the news channels to pick it up.  Plus, you would not believe how hard it is to search for this guy on google.  The last name is a famous Olympic athlete and the first name is an equally infamous Putin chef.

The Russians wasted no time with suspiciously over-the-top praise as if the dude was some sort of saint or something.  From the outside, he's just another body who got swept up in Putin's failing war of aggression and got killed pointlessly.  He was definitely just another body to Putin.

he volunteered for the front to protect the inhabitants of Donbass.

[Hydra009]

Ukraine again blew up multiple grad mrls with a single artillery strike.  Both caught fire, fired missiles randomly, then exploded.  It was quite dramatic.  If I had a nickel for every time this had happened on film, I'd have four or five nickels.

Russia is minus 770 troops, 32 artillery, and 6 mrls over the past 24 hours.  When the Ukrainians said they were focusing on counter-battery fire, they weren't joking!

[Hydra009]

No details yet, but the southern and eastern battles appear to favor Ukrainian forces.

There is a slight delay on specifics so as to not give intel to the enemy, so it's not like I can give completely up-to-date information, but Russian telegram channels are panicky about Bakhmut and plead for emergency reinforcements.

Also, along the southern front, the Russians' first line of defense is either collapsing or has already collapsed.  I remain cautiously optimistic.

I'll post details later as they appear.

Edit - south of Bakhmut, the Ukrainians advanced up to 1.5km, past a Russian fortification.  This is only possible if that fortification had fallen to the Ukrainians.  Encouraging news.

[Hydra009]

[Hydra009]

According to Russian milbloggers, Russian forces have left Klishchiivka (small town just SSW of Bakhmut)

This corroborates with Ukrainian sources reporting partial success at Klishchiivka, who are in the process of securing the ceded ground.

This puts Bakhmut under Ukrainian fire control (enemy forces cannot move freely there without incuring great risk)

Bakhmut is slipping from their fingers.

[Hydra009]

Russia to send more convicts and chechens to make up for loss of Wagner

Wagner was kind of a mixed bag of poor-quality convicts and a much smaller core of highly trained (by Russian standards) and equipped (by Russian standards) soldiers.  Their methods were incredibly brutal and sacrifical, but they did advance, albeit on the bodies of their comrades.

You can't just grab some tik-tokers and convicts and hand them a rifle and expect them to perform half as well.

The Chechens who were previously deployed to Ukraine shot laughable propaganda videos of them shooting up abandoned buildings or trees or the ground and pretending that they were war heroes.  Those videos got considerably less PG over time as they were interrupted by sniper fire or explosions.  Suffice it to say that it was not a good look.

[Hydra009]

Man, my feed has really been blowing up today!

Lots and lots of footage of Ukrainian artillery strikes.  One of them was a Death Star-like explosion of a Russian ammo depot near Makiivka.  Apparently, it was a newly-arrived stockpile intended to help the Russians push back the Ukrainian advance along the eastern front.  Suffice it to say those plans are cancelled.  Quite a few health insurance plans likely got cancelled as well.

Quite a lot of short videos of Russian vehicles going pop as well.  One was the very formidable T-90 tank that could easily be mistaken for a zippo lighter requesting freebird.  No repairing or salvaging that one, I'm afraid.  It's only useful for growing sunflowers now.

The Ukrainians also appear to be hard at work clearing trenches along the eastern front, likely near Klishchiivka, moping up the stragglers who continue to fight but taking prisoners when possible.

[Hydra009]

"I believe you have something that belongs to me"

According to Fontanka, the motorcade was parked near Shpalernaya Street, 25. The back door of the BMW opened, Yevgeny Prigozhin got out and, after walking just a few metres, opened the massive doors with the sign 'Reception' to the right of them.

Prigozhin was returned two Saiga rifles, an Austrian Steyr Mannlicher rifle, an AR semi-automatic rifle and several other rifles and pistols.

Soon he got out, and the people accompanying him took out their rifles and put them in the car. The motorcade left.

This was in St Petersburg, btw.

That's a helluva power play.  This guy fell out of a window and onto a velvety soft mattress.

According to ISW, the power struggle between Putin and Prigozhin (and maybe Lukashenko) is far from over.  There's a chance that he may pay Moscow a visit again.

[ferdmonger]

Can't we just go back to the good old days when a tiny pellet filled with conch shell poison took care of the problem?

[Hydra009]

Russians mysteriously die in occupied Mariupol

According to an unnamed Russian officer, who is now located in Mariupol, eight soldiers were found murdered in different parts of the city over the past two weeks: six of them were stabbed, two shot in the back of the head.

According to the officer, the facts of deaths are carefully concealed so that panic does not begin among the Russian units.

I mean, you could literally see this coming...

[Hydra009]

In other indications that things are going according to plan for Russia, they're deploying even more reserve units to Ukraine

The report said that the defense around Bakhmut is mostly composed of elite airborne regiments that are normally stationed in western Russia as a rapid reaction force in case of tensions with NATO.

This puts the lie to the claim that Russia is threatened by NATO and worried about NATO invasion, because if that were so, deploying in western Russia would be top priority.  Especially because of certain PMC activity there...

The 5th Combined Arms Army and Naval Infantry that are holding the front around Velyka Novosilka in Donetsk Oblast are routinely based 7,000 km away near the Chinese border to balance out Beijing's military power in the area, the report added.

Now this is ballsy.  Like Russia, China clearly has territorial ambitions and already provocatively renamed Russian border towns by their old Chinese names.  Leaving that border poorly guarded is just asking for trouble.  But I guess Putin is willing to risk it by going all in and betting everything on Ukraine.

So far, this gamble has been going poorly.  Even though about 97% of Russian forces are in Ukraine, Russia has already taken so many combat losses that its combat strength has been halved.

[Hydra009]

Ukraine now fields more tanks than Russia

This is based on confirmed Russian tank losses, which by definition is very conservative and less than actual losses.  Though of course, Ukraine needs more armor in order to win more comfortably and timely, and also to reduce losses.

Russia still has more (but not better) artillery and mrls.  It also retains a superior airforce.

But production is much less than consumption - Russia is burning through its stockpiles at a prodigious rate:

"Last year it fired 10 million artillery shells but at best can produce 1 million shells a year. It has lost 2,500 tanks and at best can produce 200 tanks a year," he said at the British Parliament.

Every year of war wipes out over a decade of production.