Der Zeitgeist

At Engels and Ryazan, on the same night?

Hmmmm....

I hope they don't waste their time and resources going for the Russian power grid. More useful to try and smuggle a mortar team or some drones to Saratov...

I'm not following this in every detail, but AFAIK, Nammo in Norway was seen a secondary source for ammunition, but they may have some problems producing the FAPDS rounds that the Gepard is apparently most effective with. Now the German government is putting some additional pressure on Switzerland, I guess we'll have to see how that goes.

There's very little detailed information, other than they're apparently working well against drones and the Ukrainians are urgently asking for more ammo. A few days ago, there was a video from Odessa that apparently shows some Gepard fire in the night sky.

Zelensky: 30% of Ukraine's power plants destroyed in one week.

The way I see it: Russia thinks it now found a way to pull an "Allied Force" on Ukraine, so to speak. If you look at Russian channels, all they speak about the last few days is the Ukrainian power grid, and which parts of it they already managed to take out. I guess the plan is simple: Turn off the lights and heat in Ukraine so they have to sue for peace during the winter. Will it work? I guess it comes down to how robust the Ukrainian energy and heating grid is, if the Ukrainians (and the West) can manage to improve air defenses further, and how many cruise missiles Russia still has to keep up their air campaign.

The Russian story is that this truck (the one that was x-rayed) wasn't the one that eventually exploded on the bridge, but the one that was used to bring the explosives to Russia.

I hope these things work alright. There's been so much hype around IRIS-T for months now.

The domestic nationalist critics calling for total war are probably going to shut up for a week or so. That's the most important effect for Putin, anything else is secondary.

The bridge has gravel below the tracks. It's easy to compare with older images.

By bribing a few key people.

All of the above, plus massive support in training their newly mobilized soldiers.

Since everyone seems to be going crazy about nukes these days, this article by Timothy Snyder about how the war might actually end is especially worth reading: https://snyder.substack.com/p/how-does-the-russo-ukrainian-war TLDR: It's probably not by nuclear war, but by a gradual shift in Russian perceptions about the war led both by setbacks on the battlefield and political crisis at home.

I'm always amazed about how well the Google AI translation seems to handle this typical "Bundeswehr speech". I mean, for normal people, this kind of talk with its weird expressions and sentence structure is barely comprehensible in German.

Michael Weiss has some interesting points about the NY Times article and what the reasoning of the US might be of leaking that info now (it's an entire thread):

Whoa....

I still remember "Daily Kos" from the early 2000s, when it was one of the biggest Anti-Bush & Anti-War sites. Now they're doing detailed frontline reports on the counteroffensives against the Russians. What fascinating times we live in.

One thing I've always asked myself: What is the current situation on the Ukrainian border crossings with Belarus and Russia, where the counteroffensives pushed right up to the border? Are the crossing points operational in some way, or is this just a front line now?

What I always find fascinating about these kind of pictures of the Ukrainian military is the quiet professionalism that they seem to emit. That was something noticeable from the first hours of the war. Whatever the situation, they always seem to know exactly what they're doing. In a few years, these guys will be training us, not the other way around.

Like I said earlier, this wasn't about NS 1 or 2, but about presenting a threat to the other pipelines that are actually important now.

Just a few points about the pipeline sabotage and Germany's behaviour re: supplying modern MBTs & IFVs: It's pretty obvious that the SPD in the German government and especially chancellor Scholz have pretty serious reservations on the whole Leopard & Marder issue. The public line was not wanting to diminish the capabilities of the Bundeswehr even further and also a risk of unwanted escalation vs. Russia. Publicly, this escalation risk was often framed in terms of not wanting to risk World War 3 or provoking nuclear weapons use. Personally, I also think that there's a hidden agenda in Germany's and also other NATO countries' policy in that they want to prevent Ukraine becoming so powerful that it would lead to a rapid military collapse of Russia with a risk of nuclear use once Ukrainian tanks start rolling into Crimea. I think what we see today in the Baltic Sea is simply Russia demonstrating that they still have the capability of switching off large parts of the natural gas supply to Europe. NS 1&2 might have been meant as demonstration, one that doesn't have any immediate effects on energy markets (because the pipelines didn't supply gas at the moment) but that presents a clear show of Russian capabilities. Logically, the next target on the list would then be the natural gas infrastructure in the North Sea from Norway to Western Europe, especially the crucial node at the Draupner-E distribution platform, which would cut off about 25% of current supply and completely tank European energy markets and industrial production. Seen like that, I wouldn't expect Germany's position on MBT or IFV shipments to change massively, not after today's demonstration.

Photo from the Samarkand summit. Note who's missing on the picture.