some more ukr/rus inside stuff ...

take it or leave it, up to you...

"What will Ukraine will do now they hold the western river bank of the Dnipro through Kherson during the winter?
This is a good question, I will try to answer it.
Weirdly enough I know more about what Russia will do, than what Ukraine will do.
For one, Ukrainians are very good at keeping quiet, whereas Russia is leaking like a sieve.
On top of that, it is rather impolite to spy on your ally.

I will here write as if the war would continue, something I see as more unlikely by the day. I will return to this later below.

Russia has built some fairly sturdy positions on the other side of the river, with predug artillery positions and pillboxes.
This has caused some glee on the western side since neither the predug positions and pillboxes are effective against Himars and 155mm precision artillery strikes.

I doubt that Ukraine will use anything fance like excalibur rounds or GMLRS rockets from Himars against these shore defences. Ordinary 155 rounds are good enough to demolish this, and there is nothing Russia can do about it since the 155mm artillery has longer range than what Russia has.

The pundits have written a lot about the withdrawal (running away) is a trap set for Ukraine and that Russian artillery will crush them. Nope, it is the other way around, range is king in artillery and the range is in Ukraines favour.

Also, Ukraine are the ones on the offensive, so Russia will need to hold more troops to defend than Ukraine need. Also, Ukraine have proven that they are far more adept at crossing rivers. And those riverine armoured boats are a factor that Surovikin is aware of.

What Ukraine will do is move away most troops and just hold a watchful eye on the beach and merrily bombard away anything Russian on the other side.

The Ukrainian troops will be moved to other fronts, and same will be done by the Russians to a lesser extent for the reasons mentioned above.

Next is that Ukraine will move in longrange units that can all of a sudden bombard things further towards Crimea and start blowing up anything that they do not like, like generals, ammunition depots, tanks, fuel... the works really.
Winter in Eastern Kherson would be "interesting" for the Russians.

Ukraine will use these troop to start cutting up the region East of the River Dnipro.
One cut will run towards Melitopol, and the other cut will start at Vuhledar (ongoing as I write) that will open a flank to Donetsk, threaten towards Mariupol, and will put stress on the defence lines towards Melitopol.
Luhansk will just continue to slowly evolve as Ukraine pushes the Russians out.
In a while Russia will be forced to "goodwill" out of Luhansk, this is why you do not see strong defence lines being built, and why the Russians are blowing up bridges as they go.

It would all just be a blooming big waste of hundreds of thousands of Russian lives.
It is now sinking in through the thick foreheads in Moscow (and other places).

Fallout
There are 3 things that I wrote about yesterday that is not yet getting enough attention in the media, nor among the Twitterati etcetera, they are to occupied with Kherson I guess.

Let us begin with everyone all of a sudden closing ranks and being onboard with leaving Kherson. Heck, even Prigozhin and Kadyrov smelled the farts in the wind and praised Surovikin (both of them) and Soyghurt (Kadyrov) for "saving the lives of our soldiers".
Not a single voice opposed, only a couple of small woes among the propagandists on TV, but that was quashed rapidly by Peskov. Telegram is ablase with angry war bloggers being mad though. Those do not count.

One voice is though missing. Not a single word from Putin, or a single word about his opinion. None.
Instead we got official notes on "facing the realities on the battlefield" and "the need for straightforward talks" with Ukraine, this from Zakharova who mysteriously sobered up from her 9 month long bender...
I will never forget when she drunk as a skunk in Omsk held a tirade about Ukraine stealing Borstj recipees from Russia.

Next thing is the Soyghurt talk with Surovikin that was not broadcast, but leaked all over, about prepairing to leave Ukraine in two stages.
Surovikin went to work and started building what looks to be some of the most formidable defencive lines in history, inside of Northern Crimea using every little lake, swamp, and other natural barrier.
After only 24 hours it is intimidating, this is not some Wagnerline with s***y dragons teath, here the bends in the trenches are meticulous, the artillery dugouts being covered, and I expect that a lot of good concrete will be poured in the next couple of weeks.
Here he means business.
The same beefing of lines seems to be going on at the 2014 border in Donetsk, but on a smaller scale.
And building has also started along the entire Russian pre-2013 border, this seems to be built to speck now.

My guess is that Russia will fight a bit, and if the initial round of talks seems to go well they will start falling back to the 2014 line.
And there they will try to haggle like madmen for Crimea.
If that fails they will fall back out of Donetsk and try to hold on to Crimea like madmen and hope that Ukraine will come back to the table later on.

And if everything fails in the talks, they hope to hold the line in Russia proper.
Russias confidence is not high though, as evidenced by the defences being built everywhere to a depth of 300km inside Russia proper.
You just do not build this many defences and defence lines if you expect to win, you build them if your confidence and army is broken and you know you might need a darn good last stand.

Surovikin is ready to do a Guderian, and valiantly and stubbornly fall back while praying that Russia has better luck at trying to negotiate than the Germans did.
Obviously Surovikin is not a great general, but he is by far the best Russia has, he has already proven to be quite skilled.

That brings me to number three.
To pull off a negotiated peace, and potentially getting away with Crimea (slim chance as it is), Lavrov will need to pollish his glasses and look like a sad horse for all he can muster.
The more pollishing, and the more sad horse looks, the better his form is.

And Lavrov behind his antics during the war, is perhaps the most skilled diplomat alive, full stop.
If anyone can get Russia out of the bear-trap it is him.

Problem is that he faces something extremely daunting this time, and an opponent who is quite likely to just punch him in the face as an opening remark.
The stage is set behind the scenes, no broadcastin, no big talk about it.
I am though amased that Media has not picked up on it yet.

G20 Summit 2022
On the 15th of November all hell breaks lose diplomatically.
This is when words will be turned into weapons, and weapons may be obsolete again.
Blinken will be the second for Kuleba, Xi will second for Lavrov, and Joko Vidodo will be the Umpire.

Blinken is good, but he is not Lavrov good, but Blinken has Biden as backup and tag-team. And Biden is not bad at all, he has extensive experience of Lavrov and have pushed Lavrov harder than most have done...

Joko Vidodo is not known to be a great diplomat, but he is the host, so he will do.
He is probably not happy about it, he wanted a nice talkey sort of affair.
And everyone thought it would be Erdögan, I guess the joke is on him.

Dmitri Kuleba is an unknown at this scale, but he has risen to the occation with the EU, Blinken and a shartload of other big ones. He has grown, and he is not a stupid man at all.
He knows that he has to do this or have a year more of war to force a capitulation.
He will have to give on something to get peace now, land will not be one of those.
My guess (and this is really a guess), is that Ukraine will have to give limited amnesty on war crimes to a set list of people.
My rationale is that you just can't get the current leadership to sign if they are going directly to Hague.
Remember that Lavrov have a very personal stake in his negotiations here. Same for Soyghurt and Peskov, heck even Surovikin might get one.
Prigozhin and Kadyrov? Bwahaha!
I might be wrong though.

Xi, hell knows what he wants. Ostensibly he is there for Russia, but Lavrov knows that Xi is all about what is in it for him, and that he will stab Russia in the back in an instant. I am not sure that Lavrov even wants him there, and he might push out Xi of the negotiations.
Xi has a language issue here. He does not understand the others, but the rest can speak either Russian or English and Xi will look like a floundering flounder on the table.
My guess, Lavrov will not let him in.

The room is set, the place is set, the time is set.
First round is one hour long and involves only the main characters.
After that it will be lower level, and then another meeting if things go well.
At least there should be a roadmap for further negotiations after the G20 Summit.
And, if a miracle happens both Zelenskyy and Lavrov are there to sign the papers.

The Troika
Note who is missing.
Lavrov is running the foreign part, and behaves like a top diplomat and a foreign minister again.
Soyghurt is for the first time in his life behaving as a military leader and the defence minister, I honestly did not think he could even pull it off.
Peskov is in full force running things internally acting both as the press secretary and the interior minister.
None of them have done that freely for years.
Why now?

The dealbreaker was that Lavrov calmly informed everyone that Putin would not attend the G20, and no reason was given.
Normally that would have been issued as a statement by Putins office and include a reason.

There is no chance in hell that Putin is fully in control, a slim chance he is partially in control, and a substantial chance that he is either demoted, incapacitated, or dead.
It is like he is quietly excised out of Russian politics.

I return to the Swan Lake.
I expect it to be beautiful."

Posted By: Tombs, Nov 10, 22:30:18