Ukraine: The Clock is Ticking

hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground this is the ukrainian war intelligence update for sunday the 23rd of january 2022 as always this is being recorded the day prior on the 22nd of january starting with the european geopolitical update one of the major bits of information that has come out over the past 24 hours has been the united states evacuating their embassy in kiev nbc staff have been given the notice to start evacuating this is not a very rushed evacuation this is more of a more deliberate evacuation and due to the united states history recent history with evacuations failures this is most likely a preemptive evacuation to get all as many non-combatants out of the way as possible so that they don't face a political defeat yet again something also that was interesting that actually happened quite a while ago but is becoming more relevant with the the times is russia passing legislation or rather guidance regarding mass graves so this is something that would that happened back in december actually on december 20th this was uh finally approved and this is uh you can actually read it yourself if you speak russian for those of you who don't this is coming from the russian civil defense and the translated title is the urgent burial of corpses in wartime and peace time the general regulations for this so this is something that's kind of interesting because this is something that you would expect from cold war russia right like that they very much love their psyops right so you would expect moscow to pass something like this or put forth regulations regarding mass graves of civilians and things like that as a scare tactic right that's what you'd normally think this of well they actually haven't been they did this very quietly so me personally i'm kind of on the fence as to the psyop value of this because no western media has picked this up very few people have have actually followed you know what the duma does and and what regulations are passed by various uh you know government agencies within russia and this was quietly done only a couple of places i've seen actually have have actually figured this out and read the documents it's only a 20-page document but since it's in russian most people you know can't read it but in any case i think it's very interesting that it's more i think that it's it's less of a psyop and more of a logistical constraint right this is a logistical attempt to realize that hey russia saw at least in the conflict that has happened already in ukraine they saw a lot of casualties you also have to remember russia is dealing with the chechen war grazing places like that in which they have a lot of experience with conflicts and fighting in civilian urbanized areas and they've seen a lot of casualties so they're starting to you know cross their tees and dot their eyes when it comes to logistics of so many casualties coming out because of this so again this might be a cold war era psyop that the russians just love doing or this could be a legitimate uh logistical problem that the russians are trying to solve before they get into this conflict and uh they're trying to you know get this and get their uh stuff in order uh in any case this is becoming more relevant because this document and this guidance fault comes into effect on february the first so is this cut this is coming up and i thought hey even though this happened a while ago this is still relevant also within russia there is a massive massive naval exercise underway in the north sea this is interesting because once again the north sea is kind of russia's you know home plate when it comes to their naval forces and they've got a lot of their experimental stuff up there that's really the home fleet is where where russia keeps theirs in north sea it's interesting because this time of year it's extremely cold usually you're not going to have a whole lot of activity coming out of the north fleet north fleet this time of year but again russia trying to pull out all the stops to either politically pressure or military militarily position for as much as they possibly can and i i did want to mention that this exercise the declared areas for this exercise a lot of those areas fall within norway's economic exclusion zone so norway's territorial waters russia's conducting exercises in something that doesn't happen very often they've done this in the past or they've you know they've declared uh they've dropped no tams uh for these specific areas and uh kind of overlapped norway a little bit when relations are not so great but they've done it again so again worth mentioning another russian move over the past 24 hours is russia decla or demanding actually a return to the 1997 nato borders essentially what russia has demanded is something quite outlandish wherever you're at on the spectrum of of this this incident here russia has um essentially wants romania and bulgaria to be kicked out of nato and for nato's armies to be pulled out of romania which is this is an outlandish and utterly ridiculous uh uh demand that would that would be very akin to the united states demanding that brics break up as a as a economic partnership that just doesn't work right so to me this sounds like uh russia demanding something that they know without a shadow of a doubt that nato is not going to do just so that russia can seem like the reasonable one in this which is what russia has been trying to do the entire time and you know we've got a lot of political stuff going on here in the united states and people are picking sides on this kind of thing and and uh talking about you know the military-industrial complex versus the uh historical agreements we've had with ukraine and i you know whatever but i think that's probably going to complicate things a little bit more because russia declaring or demanding uh things that are impossible also kind of interesting is germany doubling down with their lack of support for ukraine not only are they refusing to give ukraine weapons themselves but they are also trying to prevent estonia from giving aid to ukraine so this is kind of another little diplomatic spat over some howitzers that estonia is trying to give to ukraine howitzers which were oh man the history of this goes back a long ways and it's ridiculous it's utterly ridiculous uh howitzers that were stored in the former east germany and then they were sold to like some other european nation and now estonia has them and now germany says that since they were stored here we still own them it's such a ridiculous thing that germany is trying to prevent another independent nation from sending their own weapons to another independent nation but again i guess we'll see how that works out to me i just i'm reading this you know as an as an american i can't help but think this is very interesting and speaking of interesting uh the great russian fleet the flotilla that is heading presumably to the black sea i've got just a little bit more information on that so this is the minsk this is actually an archival photo i tried to get as much of a beam on shot as i possibly could but i wanted to show you that uh like last time i mentioned that it would be kind of a sucky journey if these vessels these landing craft these amphibious landing craft were loaded with soldiers and i think they are because based on this archival photo we can do a little bit of hip pocket imagery analysis so for all you imagery analysts out there take a chill pill because i'm working with powerpoint here and that is that you can you can take a look and do some very basic analysis and see that you know the average human being is six feet tall right and there's a guy standing on the deck we can cross-reference this with a guy who's obviously standing up straight six feet there on that part of that leaning up against that stanchion there and what we can do is we can do a little bit of magic here and start measuring things we can also confirm this six feet height based on the number which which size we know and we can determine that based on what we can see in this image is as least distorted as we can get it that the minsk has 16 ish feet of freeboard when unburdened meaning from the from the deck of the ship down to the water line is about 16 feet now of course this will vary in c state and change based on a lot of different stuff but my point is this this is an image of the minsk as it that was taken as it was transiting through the baltic straits and again this is the this is the other side of the ship uh but it is again as close to a beam shot as we could find straight on uh perpendicular to the side and of course the sea c-state's more turbulent which excuse the results a little bit but um since this is a rough approximation we can enhance right and bring it in and we can do the same overlay that same graphic and see that uh the minsk as she was transiting through the baltic straits has about 12-ish feet of bree of freeboard so you can see quite obviously she's riding low and it's even more apparent with the quarter lev which is riding a little bit lower again the sea state's a little throwing things off a little bit but we can see that these ships have something on board they might have a full complement we don't know i'm sure some someone out there in the ocean world has figured out which units are on board already but we're still tracking that down in any case i wanted to show that hey these these ships have got some teeth on board so i guess we'll have to see where they go next moving to the overall uh sit temp for the ukrainian theater i wanted to show that we have kind of a lot of updates regarding the forces that we had templated for the last slide really the the biggest updates i want to show you on this particular slide are the s 400 battalions uh that we mentioned last time uh turns out they're not uh they're not battalions they're they're actually uh divisions so quite a lot more uh sam capability within uh belarus right now and our assessment is that these s 400s are not so much there for ukraine obviously the one situated to the south kind of is but the other one to the west the other division out west in belarus it's kind of spread around the countryside that's really as a message for nato it's not going to be as effective where it's positioned and you know granted these will provide a lot of help for maintaining that top level air cover for ukraine which is going to force the aircraft ukrainian air force to fly a little lower uh and thus right into the jaws of the sa-7 traps right that have been used by russian forces in ukraine for a while now so that's a common tactic and the s-400s would be great in that role so that makes sense as to why they're there also we have seen an increase in activity around the 20th guards army stationed in they've honestly been there for a long time but we're seeing a lot of cargo moving through this area to support units and various subordinate units of the 20th guards army as of the past 24 hours likewise further south down in viliuki we've seen the third motorized full division have a lot of activity around their little footprint area for over the past couple of days they've been fully established now for a while for a few weeks but we're starting to see a lot more activity with them we'll come back to them in just a minute so let's jump to the fronts for the northeastern front like i mentioned we have the third motorized rifle division hanging out around vilyuki we'll talk about them in just a second what i wanted to mention here are the units stationed slightly to the east of korsk which are the 138th motor rifle division and the 25th motor rifle division they moved into this area sometime between a couple of days ago and a couple of weeks ago don't know when they got there but that's where they're at we've got pictures of them circulating on social media and also up in razny that is the 90th guards tank division we don't know if the whole division is there but we know that at least three btgs from that division are located in that area moving to the eastern front the third motorized raffle division is more or less fully established in the village area with the 752nd motorized raffled regiment and the 237th tank regiment hanging out in salote also they have spread out slightly further east the 252nd motorized rifle regiment and the 99th special artillery regiment and bogoshar moving down south to rostov the eighth combined arms army headquarters has seen a lot of activity lately mostly moving around the 150th motorized rifle division which is stationed there those are forces that are permanently stationed in rostov that's a massive army complex for the russians obviously uh considering that's a good access point to really the rest of europe for them hanging out to the east almost off the slide is the 20th separate motor rifle division which is stationed in volgograd now those guys have been there for a while uh the only reason i wanted to mention this is because this unit used to be a brigade but it was upgraded to a division last month so they're most likely preparing for some kind of action either reinforcing or whatever they're doing but you don't reinforce the unit and upgrade its strength without having a plan for that and then the further down south we have in krasnodar the 47th missile brigade and the 238th artillery brigade uh these guys have been stationed there again for a long time just wanted to put them on the map because they will most likely be major players if and when this thing kicks off also before we moved on i wanted to kind of update this graphic by showing what the front line actually looks like now the front line is not really a border if you go and you search on google or any other mapping service you'll you'll see the map the line that we have drawn as well this solid red line that's like the the furthest most point of russian controlled territory however using this this uh dashed line as a reference you can see that fighting is occurring in between the dashed line and the solid line so this is a very wide uh front as you can see there's a lot of fighting that has been taking place in this this zone this sort of very much militarized zone i should say it that way moving down south to the southern front we have seen a little bit of activity on the crimean peninsula not so much but uh we did want to add in the units that we do know are there because they're they're normally stationed there which is the 810th naval infantry brigade the 126 separate coastal defense brigade and the eighth artillery regiment which are hanging out around sevestopol and maybe a little bit to the east as well and then circling back around to the biela russian border the northwestern front has seen a little bit of activity mostly units moving closer and closer to the borders so in the town of belarus we mentioned last time this btg that we were able to geo locate this is not a btg anymore this is actually a brigade now specifically the 38th motor rifle brigade so we'll give them the 38th flashing there and designate them as such also in the gomel region we have a bella russian unit which is the 38th guards air assault brigade they're one of the more specialized and elite units within the beale ocean military so i just wanted to template them on the slide because we know that they're there and that's pretty much it i did want them to show though where these units are in belarus because this is the graphic that the uh mod of belarus has put forward showing where their exercises are taking place now let me flip back and forth and you can see that this is where belarus says they're conducting military exercises and with the exception of the airborne units which we don't know where they're at this is where we have units templated in belarus so as you can see none of these units here on the eastern side of belarus down near the border with ukraine none of these guys are supposed to be there even according to belarus's own graphic so i think that's kind of interesting and shows that this claim of an exercise is is all a sham right it's all just a ploy to get uh forces closer to the border without nato doing anything now jumping back to our overall map here i want to talk a little bit about theories of maneuver and to do that i have to talk a little bit of politics um and that is the minor incursion uh scandal that has occurred within the american white house over the past couple of days so um biden himself has made a lot of gaffes a lot of misquotes and he's said a lot of offensive stuff even before uh taking office so he has a very long history of political gaffes right and he's said some pretty bad stuff over the years but i think that this seemingly innocuous statement that he made when he was talking about that a minor incursion is a different story right that's a different story when it comes to ukraine so ukraine an invasion is bad but in a minor incursion that's a different story right that kind of attitude whatever the wording of the actual quote is is irrelevant that attitude that was conveyed uh is a game changer so even though the white house came back immediately and did damage control on this on this gaff right saying that biden misspoke and that their policy regarding ukraine hasn't changed and you know blah blah blah right i still think this is a really big deal because the world is watching and even though the leaders of other countries in europe do not have any respect for biden's cognitive abilities and they know that he's prone to misspeaking the music stops when this minor incursion quote dropped because that simple misstep which i personally think was 100 intentional but either way this has given putin permission to invade i don't know how much more clear the united states can can make it that the u.s political leadership is perfectly supportive of this invasion as long as russia doesn't go too far and upset our friends to the west and all of this political stuff as annoying as it is to talk about when we're trying to count tanks this is important some pretty smart dude once said that war is a continuation of politics by other means and this situation could not be a more perfect example of that so when it comes to russia's overall tactics it's really hard to say what's going to happen because what russia can do will differ from what they will do so on the eastern front we might see a minor incursion right a straight-up invasion to the east uh because there's been fighting there in the past it's relatively uh abandoned from a civilian perspective area it's really just a front line it has been a front line for a very long time for many many years now people in the area understand and know what's going on they know it's a war zone so in theory at least you might have fewer civilian casualties if you were to invade into the area that's already a well-known war zone i don't know maybe they might also try to launch with an amphibious landing first and take the city of odessa they might do that they might not land in odessa they might land in the city they already more or less exert a lot of influence over which is maripole to the east they might land troops anywhere along the coastline of ukraine they might land them in crimea just as a simple way of moving a lot of troops around and then drive them up i would think that would not work so well but you know anything's possible i guess right generally speaking i should also point out that a lot of military strategists focus on the dnipa river right the nipper river is a huge a huge body of water uh it's it's not insignificant it's it's um you're going to need some kind of bridge or special craft to get across it right it's not a mud puddle here and a lot of people think that that is kind of like a diplomatic stopping point uh in years past when we've we and others have theorized about when russia invades fully will they stop at that river and and most people seem to think in the past that yes russia will drive as far as the nipper river and that will be kind of their way of exerting influence and taking back that part of ukraine and then further on they'll decide to cross it and when they've gotten a lot more supplies and things set up because remember these btgs are not really good for logistical support right so they can easily overrun their own supply lines and russia has a long history of of doing exactly that uh to some people invading russia so russia doesn't want to to repeat the lessons that they taught to others right however i think that with each passing day and seeing the number of forces that we have in the area now what we're talking i'll give the low ball estimate of 60 btgs 60 btgs in the area that's a lot of people that's a lot of forces and you i don't think you'd need that to to take uh the eastern part of ukraine if that's all you were going to do you wouldn't need all these forces historically i should mention that in talks with diplomats and military strategists throughout europe uh the general theory has been that since the cold war i should say that your uh that russia can take um a nation or or two nations one or two balkan nations with around 30 btgs um and this is a quote that is a statistic right just a made-up theory right that has been repeated at so many military conferences i've i've lost count and if that quote is true if that you know idea is is valid i should say then we're sitting at 60 we're sitting at double that for ukraine right so they've got more troops than what they need then again ukraine's been spending the past what seven eight years now recovering from uh what they what their mistakes of demilitarizing right so now ukraine has got some teeth as well um this is not going to be an easy fight for for anyone involved i think the general consensus is that ukraine is going to lose no matter what but again you also have to remember ukraine whatever you think about it whatever you read in the news or watch on vice right about the ukrainian military you also have to remember they're fighting for their homeland right and again like i mentioned whether or not another foreign nation should fight for someone else's homeland is is irrelevant in that debate because ukraine is fighting for their home and you never want to underestimate the group of people that are fighting for their homeland because they're quite literally fending off a foreign invader so again very important thing to consider because these dudes have been fighting to the last man for years now and that was only during during the fight for the dawn bass really they've been fighting to to literally the last man in every unit in many cases i should say so there's a lot of things that can happen uh i will point out though that as far as what russia is going to have to do russia's got some tall orders right and they're going to have to be quick about it because the spring thaw is about to occur in just a few weeks and really when we talk about the spring thaw what we mean is look at this terrain look at this this terrain to the south and to the east of ukraine that's open tank country that's what russian tanks were made to just punch through really easily but you also have to remember that ukraine would have the advantage when the when the spring thaw happens meaning that tanks while they are of course you know more or less all-terrain vehicles right they have trouble maneuvering in mud just like everything and we're talking you know mud up to your up to your freaking neck here in some of the parts of this country and you get tanks stuck your armored columns start slowing down that's going to tip the scales in the favor of ukraine who are going to have to use a lot more asymmetric tactics uh when it comes to taking out a lot of this russian armor and if russia wants to get in to ukraine do what they got to do and then get their armored columns and their btgs out again um that's going to be a tall order to do because the the clock is ticking so that's why that's that's why all this urgency that's why if you look around you're saying russia's going to do it any day now well it's because the clock's ticking right they only have so many they only have so much time before they start losing the overwhelming advantage or pieces of the overwhelming advantage that they currently have now when it comes to actual locations kharkiv will have to be taken very quickly they're going to have to take car cave quickly in order to provide support for the assault on dinipro so nipro is a city right there on the nipper river and it is a crucial hub for central ukraine so this is going to be very important for russia to take quickly if that's what their goal is they're going to have to punch all the way to the nipple river and if that that's going to have to be what stops them because that's really the only geographic feature that can stop russia in eastern ukraine everything else is very open and there's plenty of roads to drive on so you don't even have to go cross country most of the time so kiev is also another massive military target uh but again bringing the politics back into it for a minute depending on what nato does russia might leave ukraine's capital alone for the time being i don't know it all depends on what russia really wants to do then russia might launch a minor incursion right to the south uh into the war zone area that's already there link up with crimea which they already have tried to do quite a bit and then punch north who knows right it all depends on what nato's reaction is going to be if nato comes down like a freaking sledgehammer on russia and starts you know using russian tactics against them which is unlikely i should mention but if they do that then russia might say oh um don't want to tick off nato too much but right now we're seeing a very much permission being given by the big dogs in nato which are the united states and some of the other more significant military powers so right now i think putin and russia has got they've they've got all they need uh to do this they've got the permission they've got the logistical constraints they've got the energy crisis going on in europe which is complicating things and giving russia the advantage on the economic front when it comes to that kind of stuff so you know i i should also mention that this just just stacking on top of how confident russia is i should also point out that russia has left herself extremely vulnerable to a counter-attack by nato um almost comically vulnerable right it's almost like it's a joke um and again this is very very remote but the forces that have been moved around for this shindig are not something that can hold their own against nato right the btg as interesting of an idea as it is and the btg i should mention is the right tool for this task right the btg is a great style of unit to use in ukraine again it's what it was made for essentially but the btg as a concept is not super great for the powers of nato right this is we're not seeing russia mobilize her entire military we're just seeing her mobilize btgs cherry-picked from here and there we're not seeing main human wave infantry divisions being stood up or anything like that like you would normally see if nato's nato counterattacks were a concern so russia leaving herself vulnerable to a counter-attack by nato that just kind of points to to how confident russia is that nato's not going to do anything at all so if nothing else even if you don't know what nato is going to do i can tell you what russia thinks russia is betting very strongly on uh nato not doing anything uh anything significant that is and we've seen that over the past couple of weeks because i can tell you that that russia has been in the mood to call all the bluffs of nato so nato is not gonna it is not gonna do anything significant because russia is gonna be right there to call those bets so that's all we've got for now uh stay tuned for some more disturbingly outdated maps here from us in the future uh we'll continue these briefs as long as this becomes as long as this is an interesting thing to follow for people and uh yeah i guess we'll have to see uh what the next few days and weeks bring because we don't have that much much more time before russia has got to start moving either either committing one way or the other either invading or start moving all of these troops and men back to where they came from for the for the spring times i guess we'll have to see how that all works out but in any case we'll be here doing what we can so thank you again for watching thanks again for your support and we will see you next time and as always fight in the shade