Ukraine Blog 28 - Boomer Putin and the Tale of Two Armies
Dear family, friends and colleagues,
My Whatsapp
and Teams at work have exploded with request for my opinion with regards to
Putin’s speech. To jump straight into it: I saw a confused, weak boomer that’s
not sure of the action that needs to be taken.
As I
predicted: no word about a (partial) mobilization. However, I did expect at
least a proclamation of a partial victory, but not even that. The relevant
thing Putin told in his ten minute speech, is that Russia’s current war is a
sacred as the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet-Union. For the people in the
West: it’s hard to comprehend the importance of the Great Patriotic War. Yes,
we also fought Nazi’s, but for the Soviet-Union, it was really the single most
important event that shaped the Soviet-Union as a nation, made it went through
dark depths and its victory made it reach great heights. The Eastern Front in
the Great Patriotic War is still by far the single most intense war ever fought
on the planet. 27 million Soviet (so Russians AND Ukrainians) lost their lives.
The parade
itself still looked quite impressive to the untrained eye, but you can’t fool
me. Let me explain the tale of Russia’s two armies.
1. The first army is the army the
Russians want you to see. It consists of nice, freshly painted, brand new
vehicles, with good looking automated gun turrets and good looking explosive reactive
armor. They consist of the
a. T-14 Armata tank
b. T-15 Armata based heavy infantry
fighting vehicle
c. Kurganets-25 heavy
infantry fighting vehicle
d. Bumerang APC
e. BMPT Terminator, specialized
anti-armor system
f.
2S35
Koalitsiya Heavy Self-Propelled Artillery
The problem
with this equipment is that I have seen them in every victory day parade since
2015 and seven years later none of them have been taken into production. Of
both the Armata and Koalitsiya, less than 20 have been built. Which is sufficient
to present them as a “unit” in a parade, but you can’t field a maneuvering unit
with them. In addition, no Russian servicemen have been trained on these new
systems. This means that their only purpose is to serve as a showcase army. In
theory, the T-14 Armata is a super tank. There’s no crew in the turret, which is
a comfortable thought for the operators since Russian tanks are known for their
flying turrets when they are hit with anti-tank missiles that causes the
munitions in their autoloader systems to cook off. Armata’s armor, active protections
system and battlefield management systems should give it the opportunity to
withstand the most modern Armor-piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabot (APFSDS) rounds, HEAT and regular sabot rounds. Problem
is that the Russians deployed their second best tank in Ukraine, the T-90M.
Many components of the armor of Armata and its active protection system have
been put in the T-90M. The Ukrainians scored already three devastating confirmed
kills on the T-90M and as such I fear for the T-90M.
2. The second army that Russia has, is
the army you see fighting Ukraine. No new fancy vehicles in cool camouflage,
but old T-72B, some modernized T-72B3, T-80U, T-80BV(M) and some more modern
T-90 tanks. Paint is mostly the pale green
Russian army paint that we know from the nineties.
What was
really surprising, was the complete absence of the air force component. Supposedly
because of bad weather, but the weather in Moscow and across Russia was
excellent. I don’t think operational limits were the reason for the cancellation.
I think it has more to do with the fear of assassination. The vehicles on the
Red Square don’t carry live ammo, but dropping a fighter jet on the platform
where Putin sits, is a serious option that’s hard to stop. It’s known some other
dictatorships have cancelled air parades because of this threat.
Then there’s
always a thing to do during a parade when the Kremlin is in crisis. In the 70’s
and ‘80’s Western journalists always watched closely who was in the audience during
the Soviet parades. It was an indication which persons moved up in rang, but also
in case important persons were missing, it was an indication that a person was
likely purged. Sergey Shoigu was prominently present during the parade. The
most important absent big shot, was Valery Gerasimov, the chairman of the chief
of staff. There have been rumors he was wounded by an Ukrainian artillery
strike last week. His absence certainly makes that claim more credible.
Overall, my
impression of the parade was that it confirmed Russia’s weakness, most notably
its leader “the wonder of the East.” He looked weak, fragile and confused. A
far cry from the guy who once made pictures of riding a horse while shirtless.
And in his message he actually had nothing to say. However, I still think the
Russians will conduct a partial covert mobilization. In case they don’t do
that, it’s really a confirmation that the Russians don’t know what they are
doing. There are serious reports though that already the Russians have trouble
finding sufficient professional soldiers (that you need for training mobilized
civilians). The fact that Putin didn’t dare to touch topics like mobilization and
war, shows that he’s afraid. He’s a afraid of his own people. Now that NATO
also shows balls via the delivery of massive amounts of heavy weapons and Russia
is doing nothing to stop that from happening, rest assured that Putin is also (finally)
afraid of the West. So trust me, nuclear war is very unlikely right now.
On the
battlefields, the Ukrainians are absolutely routing the Russians north of Kharkiv,
taking one village after another. I think it’s likely Russia will abandon this
front pretty soon. The other place where the Ukrainians absolutely hammered the
Russians, was on the famous Snake Island. It turned out the sinking of the
Admiral Makarov wasn’t true (unfortunately) I was convinced something was hit
due to intense surveillance and distress calls. It’s a pity, but the Ukrainians
managed to destroy plenty of Russians and Russian equipment over there. Multiple
patrol boats, landing craft, air defense equipment even a landed helicopter
were targeted by Bayraktars.
The Russians
are still advancing around Luhansk and in the north of Donetsk. After 2,5
months of hard fighting, they finally took Popasna, a town smaller than the
town were I was raised. It took an insane amount of casualties and equipment to
finally take the town. The Ukrainians are now destroying dozens of vehicles a
day and hundreds of Russians. I think in the Donbass, the Russians will still
advance a bit till the end of May. By then all operational resources will have
been depleted. I think it’s plausible that Ukrainians will go more on the offensive
even before that moment arrives.
In the
meantime, the massive airbridge with heavy equipment for Ukraine to Poland
continues unabated. Dozens of heavy transport aircraft are landing every day at
Rzeszow. Only from Norway, seven C-17A Globemaster III heavy transport aircraft
arrived in Rzeszow.
(3) 360°Radar on Twitter: "🇺🇸7 x Boeing C-17A Globemaster III https://t.co/CRtObdXncE" / Twitter
We are starting
to see the scenario being played out in real that was originally projected to
happen on the lowlands of North-Germany during the Cold War: a frontal assault
from the east and a massive air bridge with reinforcements from other countries
to stop the invasion. This is what’s happening now. Only difference is that the
terrain (it’s really similar) moved 2000 kilometers east and the fight is outsourced
to the Ukrainians. I said it to many of you before. In ten years’ time we will
look back and realize that February 24th 2022 was the start of the
Third World War. Not many people realize it yet, because of the assumption that
the Third World War has to be nuclear (it absolutely doesn’t have to be), but
many of NATO’s global contingency plans from the Cold War in case of escalation
have been put in practice. We are looking at a mass mechanical and personal mobilization
unseen for many decades and all criteria for a global conflict are slowly ticked
off in the boxes. Paradox is that the one person who sees this as well and
agrees with me, is Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.
Best regards and "Slava Ukraini!"
Niels
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