Political strategic level
The European Commission wants to present a plan to the members of the European Union that would not only ensure the supply of ammunition to Ukraine as part of its defence against a Russian invasion, but also replenish the EU's own stocks.
The first part of the plan provides for an immediate increase in the supply of ammunition to Ukraine, in particular 155 mm artillery projectiles. To this end, the EU's foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, will shortly propose an additional €1 billion package of support for the supply of these munitions.
The second part of the proposal is a joint purchase of 155 mm ammunition by the European Defence Agency to fill the EU's stockpile gaps and to secure long-term supplies to Ukraine.
The third is aimed at securing a long-term increase in the EU's ammunition production capacity in the light of the evolving security situation.
The financial envelope for the European Peace Facility has already been increased three times to €500 million and in December it was decided to increase it to €2 billion. This plan means that the EU is coming to the end of the so-called 'peace period', the situation is fundamentally changing and EU countries must take this into account by acquiring more ammunition. EU Member States and Ukraine should pool their needs to "deliver a massive order and send a clear demand signal to the industry", the EC document says.
The EC also expects the joint order to result in significantly lower prices than before. Already 25 of the 27 EU countries and Norway have expressed their interest in taking part in the seven-year project.
The EC is only an organiser, identifying gaps in production capacity and assisting with the procurement. The real responsibility for production lies with industry and EU governments.
The EU has turned a blind eye and seen that the war in Ukraine is a war in Europe. If the EC succeeds in 'switching on' the EU governments and screwing up the machinery of the world's most powerful economic entity for the purpose of ending the war, it will mean the end of Russia. A screwed-up defence industry in the EU is an insurmountable nut to crack for Mordor, whose economy is already slightly smaller than that of, for example, Italy. The owners of the macaque brain in the Kremlin understand this.
Moscow is already reacting to these moves by the EC, as it has today reported on the main lie channels the German Government's position that Russia should take the first step towards peace in Ukraine. Yesterday in Berlin, during a joint press conference with Latvian Prime Minister Kriszjanis Karinis, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that it was "clear" to him that Russia had attacked Ukraine and that Russia was the country that "has to do something" in order to achieve peace. He would like to see a withdrawal of Russian forces as a first step. Scholz stated that attention should now turn to what he described as "the state of security policy on NATO's eastern flank".
"In the event of an attack, we will together defend every inch of Alliance territory", Scholz said. He assured that the West would continue "to support Ukraine as much as necessary".
Such messages have rarely appeared on the Kremlin's main channels in the history of the war with Ukraine since 2014. It is possible that the negotiations with China on the supply of arms via Belarus are not moving and that Kremlin figures with some brains left in their heads are tempted to explain to the Führer's junta that Kyiv will not be captured and that the big question is whether it will be possible to hold on to the seized territories until the summer. That is why we need to look for a way out, because the mobilised and other Drisks, who will be hungry and will not find a way to get a foothold in Ukraine, may turn towards Red Square.
The first glimpses through the heavy clouds of war smoke.
US Secretary of State Blinken has stated that the President's administration sees "no evidence" that the Russian President is ready for serious peace talks on the war with Ukraine. "On the contrary, all the evidence points to the contrary", Blinken said. "The real question is whether Russia will reach a point where it is truly ready to end its aggression", he added.
The US and its European allies insist that their main goal is to increase military aid to Ukraine so that it can regain its territory and be in a better position if substantive negotiations eventually break out.
The situation at the moment is such that, even if Putin wanted peace, no one would believe him. Modern Russia, if you can call this world disaster by that name, has shown its true face and values: territorial conquests, marauding, looting, the rape of children and their mothers, mass murder and hundreds of settlements wiped off the map. What is there to talk about with savage barbarians? The West seems to have realised that the only way to educate barbarians is to bring them to their knees on peas, before they are beaten with sticks.
Yesterday, the Finnish Parliament approved the government's proposal for Finland to join NATO by 184 votes to 7. So far, 28 of the 30 allies have ratified Finland's and Sweden's application to join the military alliance. Only Hungary and Turkey have not yet done so.
Hungarian President Katalin Novák has previously said that she hopes the legislators will ratify Sweden and Finland's accession to NATO "as soon as possible".
We congratulate our northern sister on her firm decision to become a member of the NATO family, and we thank the chickenhawks in the Kremlin for that.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg says that the war in Ukraine "should be brought to the negotiating table, and then the Ukrainians should decide what the terms of the negotiations are and what is acceptable to them. Our task is to stand by Ukraine because we know that what happens at the negotiating table is inseparable from what happens on the battlefield. If we want a peaceful solution for Ukraine, the best way to achieve it is through military support. Ukraine will then decide for itself what terms are acceptable to it".
Meanwhile, Mr Blinken changed his tone and welcomed the statement issued by the Chinese Foreign Ministry "on the settlement of the situation in Ukraine". "As regards the proposals that China has made... There are some positive elements in them, particularly things that China itself has said many times in the past are very similar to the proposals for Ukraine itself", the US Secretary of State said.
This is yet another signal that the non-public communication between the US and China on the supply of arms to Russia is likely to have ended, at least for the time being, with a rational decision by China to refrain from escalating the war. If the big men of the big powers are finding points of contact, it seems to us that they are on the very right track. It would also be a very good thing if, in the meantime, until the brains of the 'world powers' finally kick in and they agree on what to do, the people of Ukraine were not killed.
Putin is preparing to meet the Xi-China delegation in Moscow. The formal reason is the involvement of the Russian branch of the Chinese construction company China Railway Construction Corporation Limited (CRCC) in the construction of the Moscow Metro. The two dictators will meet on the metro, but they will not talk about passenger flows and the quality of transport. The Führer and the Gensek will certainly talk about the war in Ukraine. Putin will pray about arms supplies and production, giving the necessary figures, Jinping will listen, calculating the possible losses in his head.
It is up to Xi to decide whether the war in Ukraine will continue. What we are saying is that Xi Jinping can go down in the history books with his uniform bleached for ever if he does not continue with his plans to occupy Taiwan, but demands that the Kremlin withdraw its troops from Ukraine immediately. And he will announce this publicly to the whole world.
A video is being circulated on CNN and other channels in which Russian soldiers say that they are disappointed with their country's army and want to join the Wagner military group. They say that the Russian army is short of ammunition, that no one is helping them and that the commanders do not care about their lives. As if Wagner's master, Prigozhin, who covered the suburbs of Bakhmut with prisoners' flesh, cared about them in the least.
We are clear that this is a successful move by Moscow to show that Wagner is an independent military formation. We repeat again and again until we get it right - Wagner is a Kremlin-funded, Kremlin-formed and Kremlin-maintained army unit that is almost no different from any other unit. The only difference is that it is made up of some prisoners. Both the Russian army and the Wagner units are financed from the same budget line and are armed from the same arms depots.
The "confrontation" between Prigozhin and Putin is being demonstrated because the Kremlin is thus seeking to "write off" major war crimes to the account of the "private army". In this case, the Putin junta (including Prigozhin) would have a trump card: we did not commit the crimes, this is an army that is not under our control, ask them, judge them. It is high time that Wagner was named as an integral part of the Russian army.
Operational level
No major changes.
The Ukrainian leadership has not taken a decision on the withdrawal of troops from the town of Bakhmut, where massacres continue and both sides are suffering heavy casualties. "If we see that the threat to our personnel and operational environment is greater than the need to hold the territory, we withdraw troops, but we do it in an organised way, without panic," says Serhiy Cherevaty, spokesperson for the Eastern Force Group.
According to sources, Russia has currently mobilised between 300,000 and 400,000 so-called troops for the war with Ukraine, with up to 600,000 in reserve, around 1,800 tanks, up to 4,000 armoured vehicles and around 3,000 artillery systems. The quantities of live meat are between 1.5 and 2 times higher than they were before the invasion of 24 February, and the quantities of military equipment are about one third higher.
Russia's losses in the war with Ukraine exceed its total losses in all armed conflicts since the end of the Second World War. Some estimates put Russia's total losses in Ukraine in terms of dead and wounded at between 200 000 and 250 000. This figure includes Russian troops, mercenaries from various military formations, including Wagner, as well as so-called DNR and LNR fighters.
The Soviet Union lost around 14,000 to 16,000 troops in Afghanistan, while Russian losses in Chechnya ranged from 12,000 to 25,000. Between 2014 and 24 February, the invasion of Donbass resulted in the deaths of around 6-7 thousand Russian soldiers.
Ukraine estimates Russian combat losses since the beginning of the invasion at around 148 130 men, 3 381 tanks, 2 380 artillery systems and 6 615 armoured vehicles.
Unfortunately, despite these Russian losses, which may have been increased to some extent, the thirst for blood and revenge in Mordor's ranks continues unabated.
"According to the New York Times, during the three weeks of fighting near Vuhledar, the Ukrainian armed forces destroyed at least 130 Russian tanks and armoured vehicles. This is the largest tank battle between Ukraine and Russia in three weeks, and the Russians made the same mistake that cost Moscow hundreds of tanks at the beginning of the war. As at Kyiv, they pushed in a column in one direction until it was surrounded and destroyed.
US retired Lieutenant General K. Kellogg argues that the Kremlin's aggression against Ukraine was made possible by the lack of reaction by the West and the US to the 2014 occupation of Crimea. Even now, however, the fact that the West is helping Ukraine "gradually and intermittently" gives Putin hope that he will beat the clock and thus prevail. As Kellogg pointed out, the West's indecision and piecemeal measures will not lead to victory; they "allow the war to go on but not to end". "If we don't show leadership now, we risk getting bogged down in another never-ending war", the General believes.
According to Kellogg, the Ukrainian army needs to be given all the weapons it needs to make Putin realise that his army in Ukraine can be destroyed. If Putin realises that he will completely lose his army in Ukraine, he will withdraw his troops, the General believes. That is why he believes the West needs a clear plan.
There is some truth in what the general says, but Russia should have been stopped not in 2014, but in 1994, when Russia started the First Chechen War. Only then, the war was thought to be localised, so the Kremlin's marauders were allowed to carry out the genocide of the Chechen people and the destruction of towns. In 2014, it was thought that Putin would be satiated by the 'bite' of Crimea, but it was only when the Crimean hordes moved west that the long hangover of Europe's existential survival began. Unfortunately, the Westerner today is as primitive as the Easterner who cannot see beyond his nose. As long as the war does not directly threaten his life, the rape of his wife and children, it is assumed that the war is somewhere out there, very far away, and will not come to him. It is only when there is a real threat of losing his luxuriously furnished villa that the fear of losing his furniture makes him cringe.
Meanwhile, Dara Massicot, an expert at the RAND Corporation, a private think-tank, points out that the Kremlin is far from exhausted and has plenty of reserves. Russia has millions of people in reserve, he says, and to replenish ammunition the government will force military factories to work around the clock. "The Kremlin has not yet fully activated the military institutions to mobilise more people and additional equipment from the reserves," Massicot says. While the forces of prisoner "musicians" are dwindling, they are being used as cannon fodder. The aim is to hold their positions until the army reserves arrive.
Ukrainians joke that Russia has been invaded by UFOs in recent days. Some of them have come dangerously close to the capital Moscow and Führer Putin. Russian officials and the media have described the drones that have appeared over Russian cities as "unidentified foreign objects", which has alarmed the Mordor defence headquarters.
Mikhail Podoliak, an adviser to Ukraine's President, tweeted that there was a growing "sense of panic and collapse" in Russia, "manifested by increasing domestic attacks on infrastructure by unidentified flying objects".
Kyiv is reportedly preparing to launch more attacks using its growing fleet of domestically produced unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which is driving top pro-Kremlin figures to despair.
The Russians are installing anti-tank barriers and other engineering obstacles in the Belgorod region and in the occupied Crimea, indicating that they are in a panic about a Ukrainian offensive.
Tactical level
The Russian occupiers continue to advance towards Kupyansk, Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Shakhtarsk. Last day, Ukrainian troops repelled more than 170 attacks by the enemy.
In total, Russian terrorists carried out 14 missile strikes against civilian targets in Kharkiv, Poltava and Donetsk. Civilians were injured, public facilities and private houses were damaged. The terrorists carried out 21 air strikes, including 2 with Shahed-136 unmanned aerial vehicles. The aircraft were shot down. The enemy fired 58 rounds of rocket-propelled grenades.
Russian terrorists hit and almost completely destroyed a multi-storey building in Zaporizhzhya. According to initial estimates, two people were killed and rescuers are still working under the rubble.
The threat level of missile strikes by the Russian occupiers is very high throughout Ukraine.
Over the past day, Ukrainian aviation has struck 16 air strikes on the occupiers' concentrations of personnel and military equipment, and the air defence forces shot down an enemy Orlan-10 unmanned aerial vehicle. Rocket and artillery units struck an enemy meat and equipment depot, 2 ammunition depots and 3 other important enemy installations.
Today, the Information Resistance Group is celebrating its 9th year of establishment. This date coincides with the Russian invasion of Crimea. Congratulations to our colleagues who have been actively involved in the information war between Russia and Ukraine since the first day of the military aggression. Those who control information win its battles, defeat the enemy's minds and set the hearts of the defenders on fire.
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