Ukraine Blog 02 - More Russian Losses and Future Implications

 Good morning everyone,

We are at day four of Russia’s invasion and it’s safe to say: where Friday was a bad day for the Russians, yesterday was absolutely disastrous. In addition to the problems the Russians face that I described in my first update, the Russians are now facing many more problems.

1.       In both US invasions of Iraq, when the Americans went in, they mobilized all aspects of their army. First were the Apache helicopters, then the tanks and fighting vehicles and those were followed by a whole array of different supply and maintenance units. Sure, they also faced some logistical challenges, but overall in both invasions, the American war effort was like an oiled machine. The Russians are showing none of that. Their spearhead units are only at most 150 kilometers in Ukrainian territory and they already face massive logistical problems. Many vehicles that are abandoned because they are out of fuel. Soldiers that have to loot shops, because they don’t have food. This is even made worse by relentless Bayraktar drone strikes that are striking the supply columns that make it through in the middle. I’m not talking about a couple of vehicles taken out here: I’m talking about “Highway of Death” (google it) scenes here. There’s now a massive risk for the Russian army, that the spearhead units will be cut-off and will ultimately die or need to surrender to the Ukrainian army. In that case, the propaganda victory for Ukraine will be complete. What is shocking is that the Russian military seems to have absolutely no clue on how to perform major theater warfare. This is especially bad considering how afraid George W. Bush and Barack Obama were of the Russian army. They both led years of weak appeasement policies towards Russia driven by fear for a paper tiger.

 

2.       I get a lot of questions like “but Niels there are many Russians in Ukraine, don’t they support the invasion?” Short answer NO! Long answer: There are actually two categories:

-          Russian speaking Ukrainians

-          Ethnic Russians

What was shown during the past three days is that both groups utterly despise the invasion and most of all Putin. And what’s so hard to get here? I mean there’s an invasion army that starts to destroy the home that you have lived in all your life. And you’re supposed to be happy about that because you’re Russian and can now live under Putin? Ethnic Russians in the south have been on the frontlines of self-defense units, making Molotov cocktails and organizing resistance units, quite often with a Ukrainian logo with still a small Russian flag in it. Remember: this is not about how evil Russians are, it’s about what a shithole Putin is. If Putin hoped to occupy Ukraine and get support from Russian there: He just lost support of the last remaining part of the population in Ukraine.

3.       There are a lot of messages like “ohh, the Russian are in Kharkiv, the Russians are in Mariupol.” Guys, there’s a difference in driving a column through the city (that most of the time get shot by anti-tank weapons) and occupying a city or town. So far I can confirm that only that for only one larger town (Melitopol) it’s fair to say that it’s occupied, meaning the Russian took over all government buildings, installed a military rule there and there doesn’t seem to be active resistance. In all other cases, the Russian need to withdraw or leave their equipment and dead soldiers behind after having spent only a small amount of time within a city. On the southern front they now seem to head towards Mariupol, bypassing all cities in between. And that’s where the challenge comes. Conquering a city is one thing: occupying it is a whole different deal. It’s clear now Ukrainian resistance will be fierce and strongly organized even after a victory (which is almost impossible now). The Russian simply don’t have enough troops for that. Even in case their troops would have high morale and are well organized, it would still be impossible.

4.       Want to know how bad the situation is for the Russians: there’s absolutely no footage of Russian operations in Ukraine on television. Like nothing! This is a huge contrast to the Crimea invasion, Georgia 2008 and Syria, where the Russian public was bombarded with footage of successful operations and cheering women and kids. This already starts to raise serious eyebrows among the Russian population.

Then on the Ukraine/Western situation.

1.       The Ukrainians seem to have full battlefield coverage. What I mentioned yesterday that I suspected that American surveillance planes are providing state of the art intelligence was confirmed by at least some sources. Overall, the Western intelligence is of excellent quality and very reliable. I would like to go even further: It’s very likely the West has a mole in the Kremlin on a very high position close to Putin. The detail of information that they seem to have is staggering and you simply can’t get it by just have spy planes listening at the Russian at the border. In case that’s true, it will play a significant role in planning a coup to depose Putin. This is increasingly likely. The elite is already making statement like “the boss has lost it.” Tomorrow will be a financial massacre when the cut-offs from SWIFT will come into place. The Rubble and currency investments will just evaporate. Tomorrow will be like mayhem in the financial world. This is where sanctions really help: huge battlefield losses + sanctions will be a disastrous combo for Putin.

2.       The Germans are finally sending real weapons and actually a lot of them. The Netherlands are also sending 400 Panzerfausts. These will be decisive for an Ukrainian victory. It means that the Ukrainians will have an almost never-ending supply of anti-armor weapons. Russian stocks of armor DO have limits. People often ridicule Western deliveries of Western anti-tanks weapons, but they are of crucial importance. Western anti-tank weapons are of superior quality compared to Russian and Chinese ones. They peel open even the best Russian tanks like a tin can.

 

I’m even comfortable discussing topics for the future now. In case Russia gets defeated in Ukraine, this will almost one hundred percent result in coup. Losing thousands of soldiers (hard to verify, but I hear reports it has already reached 6000 Russian deaths after three days! which seem entirely plausible when looking at the footage so far). When Putin is deposed, you essentially cut of the head of the snake for a lot of problems in the world.

1.       The resistance in Syria will energize again. The only reason that Assad is still in power, is Putin.

2.       Venezuela and Nicaragua will be in serious trouble, because their lifeline of support will dry up.

3.       Lukashenko: Putin is literally his last lifeline. Once Putin goes, Luka goes as well.

4.       Dodik in Bosnia will lose his most important guarantor of the actions he has taken so far.

5.       And many more areas

The most important one will be Taiwan: even when Russian miraculously regains the initiative and conquers Ukraine in one week from now, a Chinese invasion of Taiwan will be off the table! And I’m saying this with confidence. China is observing this with great interest. Ukraine has a very favorable location and geography for an invasion. Taiwan is an absolute nightmare. I would say: the last country in the world you want to invade. As opposed to Russia, the Chinese army has absolutely NO modern combat experience in neither guerrilla warfare nor major theater warfare. Their last military action was in 1979 against Vietnam and went disastrous. I think it’s very clear for the Chinese right now that they simply can’t execute an invasion. Russia had it easy with a land invasion: the Chinese will have to perform a very complex amphibious operation in very hard terrain. Taiwan actually has the most modern American weapons and given what I have seen in Ukraine, they will absolutely annihilate any Chinese invasion force.

All in all, these days are dark, but in case Ukraine succeeds, the horizon looks very nice. Rarely the world was dependent on such an at first sight insignificant nation.

Best regards and Slava Ukraini!

Niels