relatively good article on what’s going on in Moscow’s circles of power …
tl;dr … resignation, rather than some sort of resistance, rather dire outlook concerning excalations
In terms of the mobilization, Russians COULD do much (primarily in terms of defensive operations) with 300k more soldiers. I guess it remains to be seen how they’ll end up using them in actual practice, and what kind of training they’ll receive.
Enough to overload a lot of killbot counters…
Thanks for this, great read.
News is reporting the US will buy $3 billion’ worth of arms from South Korea and give them to Ukraine. It would make sense if it’s 155mm shells and 227mm rockets since that’s what America is running low in.
Shades of Stalingrad in reverse, albeit an order of magnitude plus smaller, 91,000 prisoners instead of 3,500.
On 22 January, Rokossovsky once again offered Paulus a chance to surrender. Paulus requested that he be granted permission to accept the terms. He told Hitler that he was no longer able to command his men, who were without ammunition or food.[153] Hitler rejected it on a point of honour. He telegraphed the 6th Army later that day, claiming that it had made a historic contribution to the greatest struggle in German history and that it should stand fast “to the last soldier and the last bullet.”
this is not just any nutcase guy …
Member of the Presidium of the Coordination Council, Head of the National Anti-Crisis Management, ex Minister, Ambassador
not sure how certain that is … but best to keep an open eye and see if signals continue to build in the north over the next few weeks…
What kind of naval capacity is actually necessary to lower IEDs from a boat? FWIW, Russian vessels visit that area at least once a week. It could be almost anybody with access to explosives, a boat, and a GPS.
Sounds like this guy is in fantasy land. I don’t think the entire Belarus armed forces has more than around 40k soldiers.
If I were Lukashenko, I’d be seriously worried that mobilized soldiers would take ME out, the Belarusians because Lukashenko is not popular and/or the Russians because Belarus is another part of the historical Russian lands.
My favorite piece of trivia today:
More Russians have fled to Finland, Georgia, and Kazakhstan (194,000-200,000) than we’re massed at the Ukrainian border in February (190,000).
My thoughts exactly. The Donbas militias are veteran troops who have been fighting Ukraine on and off for the last 8 years. They probably know what they are doing and have a pretty good idea what works and what doesn’t. If they get officially incorporated into the top down Russian military structure of corruption and incompetence, they will no longer have the ability to act on their own intiative and will basically reduce to being another set of cogs in an largely ineffective machine.
To be fair I don’t think that Kedikat was speaking of “have to” as a moral imperative, but as a political necessity. In other words Putin is painting himself into a corner.
I saw the votes, 99.999 voted YES! the other .0001 voted dead.
I’m not sure that’s true. The Donbas militias weren’t engaged in a full-fledged war, to my knowledge; I believe it was a steady, ongoing, low-level conflict, more guerilla warfare. (I may be completely wrong about that.)
There’s a different level of strategy and tactics involved in a full-scale war. Just because they were good at insurgency doesn’t mean they’ll be good line troops.
I think Ukraine still has a navy, but I’m not sure of its capacity.
According to this article from May, The Royal Navy agreed, before the war, to transfer ships to the Ukrainian Navy
Even if they do have a small rump navy, it would be based in the Black Sea, likely out of Odessa. Such a navy wouldn’t be able to operate in the Baltic.
Certainly not without being spotted and commented on at it moved up there.
I still bet that they were better than the status quo for the Russian military. As for their being better of guerilla tactics than all out war, that is sort of my point. They would probably more effective as a continuing guerilla force than incorporated into the regular Russian army.
Turkey will not let any belligerent ships pass through the straits.
Why does everybody think a navy was necessary to damage those pipelines?