Should be some nice "inflation" release in the next couple weeks as crude oversupply continues to build and Putin wraps up pland for his victory parade on May 9th.
What are at odds of a beginning of withdrawal next week?
Anyone who was sane would be pulling the plug about now. But then anyone who was sane wouldn't have started this war with the forces the Russians had either.
The odds of a voluntary withdrawal at any point is very low. The odds of a forced withdrawal within the next month to two months is IMO very high. Ukraine is gaining strength every day. They have taken losses, but the bulk of their losses, while heartbreaking, don't have a major impact on their ability to fight.
Russia's losses have been crippling. They are making noises about mass conscription, which they might do, but that can't materially help the army in the field for 6 months unless they send completely untrained conscripts into the fight, and even then it's going to take at least two months to get them drafted, into some semblance of a uniform, and shipped to the front. Then they will just be cannon fodder, possibly more of a risk to the trained soldiers on the front than anything else.
By the end of May, Russia's situation in Ukraine is going to be getting tenuous. The Ukrainians are preparing to go on to the offensive and they are wearing down the Russian forces every day.
There is a story I first saw from Mark Hertling that the top commander of the entire Russian armed forces was wounded in an artillery attack in Izium
Thread by @MarkHertling on Thread Reader App
Unlike western and western trained militaries, Russia's military gives no initiative to anybody but top commanders. The loss of a senior officer is always a hit in any army, but it is especially serious in the Russian army because people are punished for taking initiative.
I've seen some news sources claiming the Russians are "preparing" to open up a front in Moldova. Two of the recent translations by Igor Sushko from WindOfChange (the FSB agent writing letters to a Russian dissident in France) that talk about the fever dream in the Russian government to pull off false flag attacks in Transnistria use that as an excuse to put those troops in the offensive. It's about as realistic as Russia invading and taking New York City.
The translations
Moldova: Transnistria false-flag terror attacks against civilians for May celebrations & coverup of embezzled military funds - 18th letter from the Wind of Change inside the FSB
Military planes masquerading as "humanitarian" & Transnistria false-flag terror attacks against civilians for May celebrations in Moldova by Putin - 19th letter from the Wind of Change inside the FSB
I have seen some news outlets running with this like it was a real plan. It is laughable from a military point of view. It would be great for Ukraine if the Russians did try to do it, it would shorten the war.
Moldova is a land locked country, to get there you have to pass through another country or through another county's air space. Those two countries are Ukraine and Romania which are both hostile to the Russians right now. The force in Transnistria is about 1500 troops. According to WindOfChange, the Russian military spent a lot of money stockpiling warehouses of weapons there, but in reality it was all a scam to steal money from the military budget. The warehouses are mostly empty.
This crazy plan for the false flag attacks would be to destroy these warehouses to cover up the theft, then fly in more weapons and troops on "humanitarian" flights that somehow are going to get permission to cross Romanian or Ukrainian air space. Somehow they are going to get the supplies up for the troops in Transnistria to go on the offensive and take Odesa.
The 1500 troops are not all combat troops. Quite a few are administrative. Maybe 500 to 750 would be combat capable. And maybe they could fly in another 500, if the planes weren't shot down. So they have around 1000 combat troops trying to take Odesa, which currently has a full brigade of regular troops, plus thousands of Territorial Defense Force troops. There is another brigade of troops stationed in the part of Ukraine south of Moldova that could probably respond to Russian aggression from Transnistria fairly quickly.
Some reports also talk about the forces around Kherson breaking out and linking up with the force from Moldova. Estimates are the force around Kherson is about 7000-15000 strong. In between them and Odesa are the equivalent of a couple of divisions of Ukrainian forces. The Ukrainians haven't been strong enough to break through the Russian defenses around Kherson, but if the Russians oblige by going on the offensive, the Ukrainians will be happy to shred them in the field.
The loss of the Moskva is also important here too. Russian anti-air assets in the south are badly weakened without the Moskva around and the Ukrainians would be able to fly ground attack missions on the Russians as they try to move. Especially on the forces coming from Moldova.
Putin is behaving like Hitler in the last year of the war. Hitler was known to be giving orders to divisions that had been destroyed trying to stem the flow of the enemies coming from east and west simultaneously. The Battle of the Bulge in the west was a crack pot idea that if the Germans could split the British and American forces somehow the alliance between the two countries would fall apart. (Hitler also rejoiced at the news Roosevelt had died in 1945 believing that that would break the alliance too.)
The Battle of the Bulge was a tough one for the western allies, but ultimately it was doomed to failure and it sped up the end of the war because the Germans lost a lot of troops between casualties and capture that could have been used for a most robust defense. The Russians could do some sort of insane offensive to try and "break" Ukraine, but they will fail.
At this point Ukraine is stronger then Russia. They have more troops, more working equipment (including some new stuff that is better than the Russian equipment), and supply is building up for the coming offensive. Ukraine hasn't made the switch over to the offense yet and we'll see how they do when they go on full offense, but they are now masters at defense. The Russians have been able to make very small gains in Donbas, but at huge losses per KM. The old Russian army with virtually inexhaustible manpower could afford to do that, but the current Russian army is more manpower constrained than most armies in the world and throwing more bodies into the fight just weakens the army and the entire country. Those people who are being chewed up in the attacks are the future of Russia's economy.
www.themoscowtimes.com
www.rferl.org
cepa.org
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