“The Russian military may only be able to sustain the fight in Ukraine for another 14 days, the Daily Mail is reporting.
The newspaper, attributing the information of U.K. defense sources, said that after two weeks the Russian forces may struggle to hold the ground they captured in Ukraine.
The sources maintain the Russian army is on the run. And the sources claim the resistance in Ukraine should be greater than the invading force within 14 days.
“Soon the number of downed helicopters of Russia will reach hundreds of units, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. “They have already lost 80 warplanes. Hundreds of tanks and thousands of other units of equipment. In 19 days, the Russian army has lost more in Ukraine than in two bloody and years-long wars in Chechnya.””
Comment: There is something in the air that tells me this estimate is correct. The Russian Army is like a brick wall rotten at the base. When it starts to fall it will fall apart quickly. pl
that all appears to be true..at..What are the Potential Scenarios Left For Russia..Chinese Intervention..?? Equipment,,Manpower,,?? Or Will China or North Korea Start Sometime New..Invasions of Taiwan….Other Military Actions..
My deepest Concern is that Kyev Will Be Destroyed With Vengance Within This Next Week,,The West Has been Cheering On ..The Last Gladiator..In The Arena..And The Bear Is Wounded..And Angry..But Not Dead…I Believe The Middle East Will Be the Final Arena. For .World Domination Of All Oil and Gas..
How Are Americas Strategic Reserves..How Prepared Is Americas Civil Defense Systems…How Capable Are Americans To Survive..With out Food or Gas and Oil
Which Can be Cut Off in Very Quick Order…
We are A Disunited Nation..With Weak Leadership..That Poked The Bear
Once too Often..IMO With TRAGIC Results….
JT
“ What are the Potential Scenarios Left For Russia..Chinese Intervention..?? ”
The real WMD. Saudi Arabia will start selling oil in Yen. This will decimate the petrodollar and end our dominance as a superpower.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/saudi-arabia-considers-accepting-yuan-instead-of-dollars-for-chinese-oil-sales-11647351541
Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi both tried to boarse oil in Euros. Both ended up taking a dirt nap. The USD is backed by US firepower.
https://mobile.twitter.com/HayesBrown/status/1067083637684883457
https://mobile.twitter.com/m_suchkov/status/1065740555727134720
“The real WMD. Saudi Arabia will start selling oil in Yen. This will decimate the petrodollar and end our dominance as a superpower.”
The petrodollar canard keeps getting recycled decade after decade to demonstrate how little knowledge of money and monetary affairs people have. It shows that the level of ignorance on these matters remains astoundingly high.
Anyone can sell any product in any currency and then convert that currency to another currency. Just like there is a market for crude oil, there is a forex market which happens to be the largest market with daily trading volume that surpasses the annual trading volume of most products.
Here’s Hugh Hendry, well known macro hedge fund manager now living the good life in St. Barts:
https://twitter.com/hendry_hugh/status/1503756871152422919
Russia Has has 12,400 Tanks..The Largest Tank Force in The World..They Have Deloyed 1200 To Ukraine..Most Entering Kyev are Older T-64 or T -74
Tanks..
Russians latest Tank is the T-14..With All Laser Systems and Are Sealed Against Nuclear Attack..They Have 20 of Them In Reserve Near Ukraine for Use..
Ukraine Uses The T64 and T-72 Main Battle Tank..Russia claims to Have Destroyed 65 Of Them..
OT..regarding Currencies…White House and MSM Sites Report..3/9/22
White House Fact Sheet..”President Biden to Sign Executive Order
Ensuring Responsible Development of Digital Assets..” Directed at The Treasury Department..And The U.S. Central Bank..For Digital Currency..
or CBDC..
Tomorrow In KYEV may be A Very BAD Situation..The Worse Yet..Perhaps.
JT
I believe Russia Will Win The War in Ukraine and wrap it up Soon..And Move on To The Next Phase of Their Global Objectives..
Every thing We Read is Disinformation..IMO,,Propoganda,,
And many Media sources Area Doing Thier Bidding ..
Russia has The Marx Brothers For Support..
Hillary and Bill Marx…Barack Marx..and Joe Marx…
“Kick in the door and the whole rotten edifice will collapse” I seem to recall reading that as a quote from someone long ago. .
Yup. And that guy had at his disposal a mighty Wehrmacht many times the size of the Ukrainian Army — not to mention much better. I think The Daily Mail is indulging in some wishful thinking here.
What worries me is that this all seems eerily similar to the MSM narrative on Syria ten years ago: ‘Any day now the evil Bashar Assad régime is going to collapse because all the Syrians hate him and he only has Alawites fighting for him.’ Meanwhile, the Syrian Arab Army kept holding the line quite competently against the Jihadists. And what happened next? Why, a series of false-flags involving WMDs! And then, naturally, the MSM began calling for a US attack on Syria.
Beware …
This prediction could be correct, but how will it affect the final outcome?
Let’s assume that Putin starts losing bigtime. Do you really think he will toss his political career on the burnpile and call it quits?
No, he will double down., just like anyone would.
So, if this scenario plays out the way the Daily Mail imagines, then Putin will be cornered with no option but massive escalation.
I wonder if out esteemed leaders ever thought of that?
“no option but massive escalation”
Or he could start to negotiate for the best deal his current strength would enable. Not all that good a deal, probably, but he still has a lot of bargaining power based on his ability to bring this to an end. The logic of “no option” would always result in giving in to threats if they get drastic enough. The basic premise he is putting forth is something along the lines of “I’m insane. Don’t push me.” That’s all he has left. He has demonstrated that without nukes Russia is a second or third tier regional power. The war was supposed to prove first tier status. Even if he wins it now, that hope is gone.
I worry about Putin being backed into a corner as well. I can see all of Europe’s LNG terminal’s getting nuked.
But – I don’t think Putin cares about his political career, I think he cares about how he will be remembered. Will he be a Peter the Great or a Nicholas II?
one doesn’t need uranium to cause an industrial accident at an LNG terminal.
Ukraines fleeing is approaching 3M. Until they start returning Russia is winning. Ugly winning but winning is winning.
If they find jobs and set up home in the EU, many will not return regardless of who ends up in charge.
Many people fleeing are specifically women with children, and older people. All this judging from the pictures, but I don’t have the statistics.
Not sure, but pretty certain these people aren’t the most likely ones to get attached to job markets.
That it is mainly women with children and the old that are fleeing is down to fighting age men being forbidden to leave the country.
Sadly some of those women will end up in one of the oldest of job markets, trafficked across Europe.
These praise the Lord for their luck. Now they will stay in Europe, find jobs or get welfare, have their kids educated, have access to better health care, get a refugies documents and travel free… And I am surprised only 3 million left
A small problem with your optimistic view, money and facilities, due to the numbers involved especially when added to the very large quantity of refugees from Africa and the ME.
Europe is heading into a recession, there is no surplus money available. There is no spare capacity in housing, schools and healthcare either.
This is an absolute nightmare for both the countries and the refugees.
Millions of eastern Ukrainians fled to Russia over the last 8 years – some of them are perhaps going to return I would expect.
“In 2014, President Francois Hollande and Chancellor Angela Merkel put the people of Kiev at the same table as those of Donbass and negotiated the Minsk agreements. France, Germany and Russia are the guarantors. Kiev has always refused to implement them even though it signed them.” – Why?
https://www.voltairenet.org/article216075.html
Russia’s 1 year conscripts terms expire on 1 Apr. Presumably they will be “stop lossed” or forced to become contract soldiers. Nothing improves an Army’s morale more than impressing men into it.
Anyone who followed the British press coverage of Syria will recognize the similarities to todays headlines.
They have a long tradition of war propaganda. As example this article on the British press in WW1:
“ It is undeniable that newspapers began by demonising the German enemy. They published fabricated stories of German barbarism, which were accepted as fact. Although Belgian and French citizens were executed as reprisals by the German army in the early months of the war, many unverifiable stories – later dubbed “atrocity propaganda” – were wholly untrue. ”
“ Even the bloodiest defeat in British history, at the Somme in 1916 – in which Allied troop calsualties numbered 600,000 – went largely unreported. The battle’s disastrous first day was reported as a victory. The Daily Mail’s William Beach Thomas later admitted he was “deeply ashamed” of what he had written, adding: “The vulgarity of enormous headlines and the enormity of one’s own name did not lessen the shame.”
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jul/27/first-world-war-state-press-reporting
Report on TV just Now..Russia is Blowing up The 3 and 4 G Tower in
Eukraine Needed To Send Encrypted Messages They Are Now Transmitting in The Open..Monitored By Ukraine….Why..??
JT
Reported Russian troops blew it up by Mistake..
JT
Or the Russians are doing the ones pushing on that wall, like they did in Syria, waiting for Ukraine to run out of supplies.
There is an assumption that Russia wanted a lightning strike, to capture Kyiv within 5 days but how do we know this? From a strategic point of view, the only thing they had to do was sever Ukraine’s east / west roads to Poland to prevent resupply. This only requires fire control. Russia already controls Ukraine’s coast.
Anyway, we will know 14 days from now.
I just read Russia has only ten days left to maintain its attack. Russian propaganda says they are on the verge of winning. Whatever the outcome this war the Russian economy will be set back years, and who knows how it will change the Russian public’s attitude to its government. I can’t see him winning.
Say what you will about western propaganda, but the russian propaganda and ‘infosphere’ is beyond a joke: Lavrov doesn’t even admit Russia attacking Ukraine.
One of the big pro-russian english sites, “the Saker” claimed russian armed forces had big chunks of ukrainian armed forces encircled weeks ago, to the level of whole eastern ukraine being encircled and cut off. And in one of the latest posts he tried to spin the war in Ukraine as civil war. The saker stuff is too thick for sane people to read.
Yves Smith of nakedcapitalism (who has lost all credibility at this point for being such a tankie) keeps citing Saker but outright refuses anything bellingcat (bellingcat allegedly western psyop) and they remove comments and shadow ban people criticizing their pro-russian stance, even if the criticism is mild and level-headed.
I’m a little pessimistic Ukraine is doing as well as they look like, because the information war is so heavily dominated by western and ukrainian sources. At the same time pictures of destroyed columns can’t all be ‘western psyops’, you just can’t make these up. Also the russian offensive has clearly stalled, I don’t think there is any logical explanation why currently the most advanced locations held by russians would have been designated objectives. Only circle Kyiv partially as a strategic objective? No one does this.
Naturally hoping for Ukraine to win (being a finn myself), but I’m a little worried what will happen if Russia loses face here and they don’t have some sort of coup happen in Moscow. Russia might escalate further and concentrate more on terror attacks against cities. I think the only thing holding back russians further escalation are the economic effects of sanctions and how much Russia can withstand them, but this side is complete black box to me. I saw a clip of people fighting over packs of sugar somewhere in Russia, if that has any meaning, might not.
Here is a question I’d be curious to see someone like TTG address-
If we ran a game re-enacting 1990-2022, or 2008-2022, or 2013-22, wherever you determine the endpoints- If TTG or someone with his thinking was running the Kremlin, what would you have done as the Russian leader to secure a better outcome than where we are today? What are some suggestions for what should Putin have done starting Jan 1 2014? I don’t want to put words in his mouth at all- but my guess would be that TTG regards the reunification with Crimea as not legimate (I have no idea if he has commented on that, if that guess is incorrect I apologize).
Perhaps this could be a starting point of a useful debate. Personally, with how utterly unreasonable, irrational, and downright nasty the US side has been for decades- I am very uncertain how Putin could have avoided the ****storm we are currently in. But I am open to arguments otherwise.
If that is the case there is certainly no need for a US sanctioned no fly zone.
Sun Tze stated in his ‘The Art of War’ to always give your opponent a ‘Golden Bridge’. Let’s hope Russia exhausts its self and who ever does the talking/negotiations, instead of fighting to end this war, comes up with a ‘Golden Bridge’. A compromise is when neither side gets all they want. It can’t happen soon enough.
So its true that I am a deeply cynical man. I dont believe what I read generally. Call me a Missourian in that respect. When I see that headline, I see two possibilities. Its true, which would mean the RF is much weaker than we suspected, or the Russian websites are right, and the Ukrainian military is caught in a “Cauldron” in the East.
I am starting to think all the conditions are in place for a false flag CW attack. Too many people are discussing it. The argument will be that the RF was losing and became desperate so resorted to CW. Similarly only losing parties try to run false flags. So if Ukraine was winning why would they do this?
If I am right (a pretty big if) this will be used to argue for a bigger NATO involvement.
To be honest we have seen this playbook since before the Iraq invasion (WMD) and in Syria (CW, Barrel bombs etc). Every time Biden or a Polish PM discusses the risk of CW use by the Russians, we incentivize a false flag incident. People in the West will cheer all the way to WW3
Hiroshima was 15 kilotons. The Davy Crocket recoilless rifle had a warhead of only 51 pounds but bad fallout. It released 0.02 kilotons. The modern nuclear weapon can be ‘dialed back,’ like adjusting the pressure plate on a landmine. The tactical nuclear weapons that could be used in a “Crazy Ivan” event could release 0.3 or 1.5 kilotons of nuclear energy. They could be used in the Right Bank West to leave the Zapotinsky and the Poles a little bonus fallout reminder as well. The NATO camp at Yavoriv is some twelve miles from the Polish frontier is a perfect target for the second round. The American trainers here are on record as stating that their mission was to train the Ukrainian forces in ‘anti-terrorism warfare’ against the Orthodox Left Bank separatists. That’s just what the Nazis said. We hear on Ukrainian TV– they are “a useless people.’ “One point five million must be killed.” This entire Yavrovsky training center or an identifiable large formation or railroad center could get the Taras Bulba Borovets- Mikola Lebed treatment with one tactical nuclear weapon. Borovets and others took out entire villages in the west, men, women, children, and with special attention to churches. This has not been forgotten. This time around, give the Roman Catholics something to remember. Give America and NATO yet another little warning. It would still be piccolo. Not the main event.
The Russians will do it. A weapon is a weapon. It is to be used. It’s time. Americans have lost their minds.
Separate topic.
I don’t understand how giving Ukraine Polish mig-29’s would be ‘major escalation that could drag NATO into war’ as long as it is a one time delivery.
I don’t see this as an escalation unless we let Ukrainian pilots use air bases in Poland. To me it looks like we don’t want to write the check to give Poland brand new F15’s to replace their mig-29′.
————–
If we let Ukrainian pilots use Polish airfields (or try to impose a no fly zone), that would be a big deal because then Russia might bomb those NATO air fields. Hate Russia all you want but that is a logical move. But a one time delivery, eh.
Corruption in the Russian military appears to be endemic. Mismanagement of funds. Stealing rations, meds, fuel, weapons, etc to sell on the black market or to the Russian mafiya. Moonlighting jobs taking precedence over official duty.
Reportedly the previous MoD, Anatoliy Serdyukov, tried reform. His attempts to control finances ran into a brick wall of disobedience from the senior generals. But it was the opposition of the oligarchs, all friends of Putin, that sealed his fate. He was dismissed. Shoigu replaced him, and saw the futility of going against the oligarchs, so he “went along to get along”. He did some good by focusing on and implementing military exercises. But you have to wonder how valid the training was in those exercises? I’m guessing it was good for the General Staff & perhaps for individual non-contract regular soldiers but not for intermediate and lower level unit commanders and their staffs.
You also have to wonder that happened to all those Russian hi-tech gains that RT and Sputnik have been crowing about for years? C4ISRnet has an article on that at:
https://www.c4isrnet.com/opinion/2022/03/11/why-has-russias-emerging-tech-had-so-little-impact-on-its-invasion-of-ukraine/
IMHO much of that hi-tech gear turned out to be marketing hype or vaporware. Or sometimes it got stuck in a development purgatory never entering into full-scale production. Because much of that development ended up as a honeypot for the oligarchs. Why go to full scale production, where you actually have to hire people to cut steel, when you can milk the system for millions with ghost engineers in a never ending cyclic R&D effort?
March 29. I am marking the date. I think you are wrong. I predict that Russia will have secured Kiev and Odessa by that day and Zelensky will be begging for a deal (if he is still breathing).
I dont know. It seems to me that its pointless, dangerous, and likely to cause enormous civilian damage. They would be better of encircling those towns and shutting down what can go in and out.
Why take Ukraine? It will be impossible to keep it and it will use ridiculously large resources.
It begs several questions.
Will Russia escalate to bring the war to end sooner? Could they hit a Ukrainian city with a tactical nuke, for example?
Or might China bail them out and allow Russia to carry on? The implications of this could be dangerous too.
And given the manner in which Russia has invaded Ukraine, should we be asking whether we even need NATO to deter her aggression?
It’s very hard for me to believe anything from British news sources after the Skirpal hoax, the Steele dossier, or those White Helmet videos from Syria( but they did win an Oscar!). Who else here remembers Colin Powell’s performance at the UN in the run-up to the Iraq war?
It’s been less than a month and commentators here think Russia is toast. Based on the same BS fed to us from the Mighty Wurlitzer.
Here’s a 9 minute video from someone who lives in Kharkov.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRJ4umS7dJA&t=520s
I find him credible as to what’s happening on the ground in Ukraine.
KMD – You are as divorced from reality as Putin.
With all the problems Russians are having and poor performance of some units, I think logistically, time is not Ukraine’s ally.
Their best hope is NATO involvement. Maybe prompted by some kind of an event, taking Odessa, western and part of central Ukraine.
zmajcek
IMO time is wearing down the Russians and they should settle for half a loaf.
According to various invasion maps, half a loaf is more or less what they are aiming for. Unfortunately for them, the loaf is fighting back hard.
I’m curios for opinions on this reporter’s take:
How You Know The Russian Military Operation In Ukraine Is Almost Over
https://briancates.substack.com/p/how-you-know-the-russian-military?s=w
Senior officers doing lower level soldiers work.
Ukraine is over. The CIA color revolution was kinda fun but now it is over. Russia ran up inside it and dismantled it. Not pretty but it is over for a LONG LONG time. 3M refugees ain’t going back and even if they did go back go back to what? The Davos crew destroyed most industries before the war. It was barely hanging on regardless…meh. There is nothing left now. I know this is very difficult for people to accept but Russia has the space, buffer…whatever you want to call it but Ukraine is OVER.
I don’t know, but it seems to me that the biggest bulk of the Ukrainian army is trapped in the east and will sooner or later surrender. The Russians pretty much control the Black Sea coast, or soon will. I’m not sure they have any intention of turning Kiev into a Stalingrad where they fight house to house, absorbing huge casualties while destroying a big city.
It seems to me the Russians can just stay exactly where they are and squeeze the Ukrainian government until it accepts all of Russia’s terms. As in; no NATO, demilitarization, recognizing Crimea and the Donbas regions as Russian/”independent” states, etc. And I think the Russians can just stay right where they are for a lot more than 14 days.
And if Ukraine somehow stands firm and refuses Russian demands…well, they can just keep the all the territory they’ve taken so far, call it an “independent” state, and leave the rest of landlocked Ukraine as an economically nonviable region that the EU/US can support if they feel like it, or absorb several million more refugees if that’s their thing.
The last option, storming Kiev and trying to set up a new government, would be the worst option for Russia. I doubt they’ll do that, but then again, just because an idea is stupid doesn’t mean someone won’t try it.
… And maintain the bulk of their force there for a good long time, constantly repulsing attacks from Ukraine getting better and more lethal weapons. Ukraine will be well funded by the west to keep at it. OTOH Russia will keep bleeding both treasure and blood.
What you suggest IMO is an untenable position for Russia. They will have to compromise and have to accept that Ukraine will be in the western sphere of influence and be heavily armed.
Mick Ryan, retired Australian Army major general has some ideas on the Russian debacle in Ukraine. On ABC Australia he suggests:
1] too many yes men in the Kremlin;
2] over-investment in Navy and AF and under-investment in the Ground Forces; and 3] he suspects major Russian training exercises being run off of predictable step-by-step scripts instead of allowing ‘free play’ by commanders and staffs. (Seems to me we had some similar problems with that in the past. I think, or hope, that has been corrected at the Ft Irwin NTC and at 29 Palms by giving unit commanders and staff more leeway in the way they react to scenarios.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-15/russia-ukraine-military-weakness-putin-kept-in-the-dark/100908978
Very interesting topic.
So Russia is failing and Putin is desperate, and the Russian Armed forces have stalled.
I’ll be back in 14 days to see how it has matured.
Cheers
From Kherson Airport.
Why create such a juicy target if it’s in range of MLRS?
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/44780/ukraine-strikes-back-barrage-leaves-russian-occupied-kherson-airbase-in-flames
This very inaccurate rendition of “facts” will age beautifully, in less than 14 days.
This is a direct quote from the Daily Mail article: “It comes as footage emerged of Russian troops launching more devastating strikes on the port city of Kharkiv, with explosions lighting up the night sky.”
Kharkiv is a “port city?!” To me, that throws doubts over the rest of the analysis. That’s basic geography error. Is Liz Truss the source, perchance?
Kharkiv river. It ain’t the Mississippi but it still has barge traffic.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10619493/Putin-says-Wests-attempt-global-dominance-coming-end.html
The intensity of the propaganda on all sides is something! One thing about this conflict is the dearth of factual information.
Where is the predicted “collapse”?
Well, it is fourteen days later. Where is the collapse?