SpectralTransition - Views and Updates on the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

Dear friends, family and colleagues, During last week, the Ukrainian side baffled me with two main surprises. One of them was also on the mainstream media, the Saki airbase attack. However, the event that was even more astonishing, kept under the radar… well, it literally did. And it did so for good reason. So let’s dive into it, what made me fall from my chair? The event that surprised me the most during the war didn’t came totally unannounced. Already I noticed two weeks ago that the losses in Russian anti-aircraft batteries increased to around 135 on the Russian losses chart of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense after remaining steady at around 110 for about two months.                          (1) Flash on Twitter: "⚡️The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has posted a summary of the combat losses of the Russian troops as of July 15. About 38,000 Russian soldiers were liquidated. https://t.co/TcGAx6sgc7"...

 Dear friends, family and colleagues, Yes! You read it well. I moved my geographical attention to THAT other part of the world. And I moved it because of a reason: It’s linked to the war that our blue yellow European brothers are fighting in Ukraine. However, it’s not related in the way you think it is. First of all: I’m very aware of the quote I made in Ukraine Blog 02: “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! “ The problem is: the tables have turned and they have turned dramatically. Let’s have a look at why the tables have been turned. 1.        China (the People's Republic of or “PRC”) has been touted as the new 21 st century superpower. Those of you who have known me over the years know that I NEVER EVER bought into this narrative. I was never convinced that China has the potential nor th...

Dear friends, family and colleague’s, Yes, you read it right in the title. Russia has lost the war and now of course it’s up to me to explain why. For the past months, I have been doing weekly updates, but pretty soon, we are going back to daily updates. While for the Western media, the front seems static, what’s happening on the fronts is far from static. As I wrote before after the fall of Severodonetsk and Lysychans'k the Russian advance came to an absolute standstill. Last week, the Russians made for the first time in three weeks a small advance when they captured the Vuhlehirsʹka powerplant and the nearby village of Novoluhanske. They managed to do this by launching daily mass infantry assaults that led to massive Russian losses. Most interestingly, the forces performing the attack were the troops of the Wagner mercenary company. Please don’t buy the narrative that this is an independent company. This is just a rebranded Russian army component created by Russia to deploy f...

Dear friends, family and colleagues, At the time of the last blog over a week ago, Russia made the last advances of their disastrous adventure in Ukraine. The Russian advance is now completely stalled and what’s going on right now is nothing less than a relentless Operation Desert Storm like strategic campaign of strikes to prepare the battlefield for what’s next. But there’re bigger things at play here. Let’s take a look at all the different components. First of all, Russia’s advance has completely stalled. Russia has taken all of Luhansk oblast, except literally one place, called Bilohorivka. This is the same Bilhorivaka (there are many more) known for the disastrous Russian river crossings. The Russians are still trying to advance, but in small groups and during each of their attempts they suffer horrific casualties. Ukrainian counter artillery and the Ukrainian fortifications are simply too strong. The Ukrainian HIMARS strikes resulted in the number Russian shells fired droppin...

 Dear friends, family and colleagues, It was a bit quiet from my side for the past 1.5 weeks. In part because of being busy on other stuff and enjoying the summer, in part because of heavy battlefield analysis. It took me a while to link all the events together and to determine what the plan is for Ukraine. And what a plan it is. Let’s dive into it. Since the HIMARS arrived three weeks ago, Ukraine has executed something that can only be described as a relentless campaign of tactical and limited strategic strikes deep into Russian occupied territory. They did it with just four to eight HIMARS systems and as I predicted, the effect has been devastating. The targets chosen by the Ukrainians (well, I think it’s actually the Americans) have a particular sequence. 1.        In the first set of strikes, the command and control positions were heavily targeted, resulting in lots and lots of senior officers killed. In addition, a lot of logistical vehicle...

Dear friends, family and colleagues, The HIMARS have a arrived and the Ukrainians did not wait a second more to put them into action. The Russian Telegram channels I follow are absolutely going berserk with reports of a large amount of high precision tactical strikes all across the Donbass region that Russia occupied since 2014. The amount of updates was so big that I had to mute them on my phone. The HIMARS truly is a superweapon. The Russians don’t have anything that even comes close to it in terms of capabilities. The Ukrainians are hitting exactly hitting the targets that I expected them to strike. Ammunition depots, vehicle motor pools and Command & Control sites (C2). Around Izium, the HIMARS rockets took out an entire regional C2 unit. Around Izium Russian troops have been stuck for weeks. This won’t help them. (5) 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker on Twitter: "#Ukraine: A Ukrainian precision strike (likely to be HIMARS) hit an Russian 20th CAA base at a former school ...