SpectralTransition - Views and Updates on the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

Dear friends, family and colleagues, Over the past week everything was about dirty bombs, nukes and Armageddon. A lot of you approached me in utter fear. Rest assured, there’s not going to be a bomb, not even a dirty bomb. Actually, the nuclear vocabulary is not directed at us, it’s not even directed to the Russian population: it’s directed towards a couple of key competing players within the Kremlin. Let’s all sit down and relax: Let me do the job of translating Kremlin speak to normal speak. So today you will find a surprisingly low amount of links in the blog. This is because what you will read today is almost entirely based on me observing the Kremlin for over more than 20 years. The whole fuzz about the supposed dirty bomb to be dropped by Ukraine started last week. First of all, we need to understand two things: 1.        What’s a dirty bomb? This simply is a conventional explosive device that has radioactive materials attached to it. It produce...

 Dear friends, family and colleagues, After Ukraine’s stunning battlefield victories in September and early October, we are now in the phase where Ukraine is consolidating in the newly liberated areas. Services are restored and the Ukrainian army is looking for small Russian leftover pockets of resistance. In addition, the second batch of 10.000 Ukrainian soldiers who received NATO style combined arms training is now returning to Ukraine. That means that Ukraine now has more than 20.000 NATO trained maneuvering forces available. During the Kharkiv offensive we saw what the first 10.000 were capable of. And the Russians, well they are struggling to keep their mobilized forces (Mobiks) under control. The most important area to have a look at right now, is the Kherson region. The Ukrainian military imposed a strict regime of operational silence here. This is respected by most of the Ukrainian loving community on the internet. Some important Twitter and Telegram channels seem to kn...

 Dear Friends, Family and Colleagues, What a day to wake up! Ukraine just delivered a very beautiful birthday gift to Vladimir Putin by destroying the Kerch bridge. It’s still not clear how the Ukrainians did it, either by ATACMS missile or an attached explosive device on the fuel train that was also on fire on the bridge. It really doesn’t matter, both scenario’s belong in a James Bond movies. Hitting a fuel train that’s making a bridge collapse with a long range missile is really hard to do as is smuggling charges on a fuel train. The Russians already had a couple of very hard defeats to swallow, but destroying Putin’s most important prestige project during his presidency the day after his birthday is the first time he’s really deeply humiliated out in the open. But the attack on the bridge is not what we need to talk about today. Putin’s deep humiliation by destroying the Kerch bridge and the Ukrainian battlefield victories of the past weeks are a bridge (“bridge” got it?) t...

Dear friends, family and colleagues, I will jump straight to it: if you want to know what the curriculum of West Point will look like for the next 50 years, Ukraine just showed it. We are going back to a good old fashioned battlefield update. What we have been seeing (and what we will be seeing) over the past couple of days is a complete rout and disintegration of the Russian army. Things are already dramatic, but I can assure you: this is only the start! Currently I’m following the Ukrainian advances and it’s hard to keep up. The Ukrainian army is so fast that they have to take particular things into account. Let’s talk about that later. What Ukraine is currently doing is pushing hard on two separate fronts that are simultaneously disintegrating fast. And we finally start to recognize a pattern. Let me take you to the Ukrainian playbook (forget the Russian one). When Ukraine decides to conquer a particular front it essentially executes the following steps. I have seen it now in ...