[Werthead]

Tsundoku, on 17 September 2026 - 10:29 AM, said:

Thoughts?

Russian manpower problems are significant. They are losing troops at an insane rate and this has burned through their huge reserves, which are almost now non-existent. The forces they have are focused overwhelming only two areas, a 30-mile area from west of Dobropillya across to east of Kostyantynivka and then a tight hinge north past Chasiv Yar; and around Orikhiv on the Zaporizhzhia front. To keep these two fronts advancing, albeit slowly, they denuding troops from elsewhere, such as the line of the lower Dnipro in Kherson Oblast. This has allowed Ukraine to advance on the Lyman front, and just recently some indications of a serious counter-attack on the Russian forces holding onto the border areas in Kharkiv Oblast.

Russia still has a lot of troops, obviously, but it no longer has the tons of volunteers and prisoners it could draw upon, so it needs to consider mobilisation. That will not be pretty if they decide to go for it. If they do not mobilise, they have to switch to a defensive posture and that means giving up on taking all of the Donbas, which also means Putin's position will become untenable.

[Tsundoku]

Cheers lads.

[Werthead]

A lot of jumpy OSINT sources at the moment, believing some kind of major Russian provocation is imminent on NATO's eastern flank. More level-headed sources trying to get people to calm the F down. Russia has not amassed troops along the Baltic or Polish borders, no full-scale invasion is about to take place. A continuation and slow escalation of the current strikes very close to the border is likely.

There are some major military exercises going on in Belarus right now, but only 9,000 troops. Not enough to launch an invasion of Poland, which would be the most insane thing to happen in world history. Lukashenko is not that stupid, though Putin might be.

ETA: Ukrainian intelligence is now claiming that both Russia and Belarus have ordered 20,000 emergency beds to be made available in Belarusian and north-western Russian hospitals.

I'm going to tick my "this is concerning" metre up a notch.

This post has been edited by Werthead: Yesterday, 09:15 PM

[Mentalist]

Nothing is gonna happen until people in Moscow get the tally from the so-called "elections" and figure out how much they have to cook the numbers to give United Russia 73% of the Duma seats.

If they need to be adding above 25%, they're going to hesitate before doing anything too crazy.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: Yesterday, 10:56 PM