Russian volunteer Murz on why Russia is not ready to defend [against] Ukrainian winter offensive

Wartranslated ^ | 12/19/22 | Murz

[Greetings_Puny_Humans]

Below is a translation of a long blog post by the Russian volunteer Murz whom we’ve covered extensively during the past several months. In this post, Murz, who has been previously critical of the way the Russian Army is conducting the “special operation”, goes over the potential of a Ukrainian offensive in winter and shows that Russia is completely unprepared for it in terms of armoured vehicles, communication, defensive lines, artillery, and manpower.

This is perhaps the most critical of his texts and was shared by Igor Girkin as “recommended for reading”. The author has a certain way of constructing sentences so we apologise for any misunderstanding while reading.

MURZ

In pursuit of “positives”

Sorry, there will be a lot of swearing. It was actually supposed to be a large and rather strict text, but firstly, I doubt that in this format it will even reach anyone, usually when you yell obscenely at someone, it reaches them faster, and secondly, I simply don’t have time for a big, strict, practically academic analysis of all the garbage. So sorry, it will be short and with swearing.

Those who read my TG channel could already notice that a terrible thing happened to me recently – I watched Russian TV. The story of the morons from “Russia-24” who said that, as it turns out, it is possible to “dismantle Ukrainian fortifications” from a 57-mm anti-aircraft gun, left an indelible impression on me. Well, that is, for any person who understands at least a little about military affairs and who has generally seen these fortifications at least in a photo, such a phrase cannot cause anything but hysterical laughter.

The finale of the news release generally made me doubt that I was watching Russian TV. The weather forecast included a story, typically Ukrainian in essence and presentation, that in Ukraine, the weather is kind of terrible – solid ice, in Dnepropetrovsk so many buses have crashed due to ice. Most of the rest of the time was devoted to rituals about the fact that not only Ukraine, but finally the whole of Europe will freeze this winter.

“The burghers are alarmed,” the announcer said, completing the “forecast”, “by the fact that black smoke poured out of the pipes of German thermal power plants!”

Apparently, it was such a special test moment to see how everything in the viewer’s head has calibrated, because along these words they showed ordinary white steam coming from these same pipes. “If you see white smoke, watch the news again in an hour and repeat until the smoke turns black” or something like that.

After leaving Kherson, the public, instead of soberly assessing the situation, began, with the active help of the media, military correspondents, and all other available means, to suck out the “positivity” from any bullshit, often demonstrating just the opposite – complete fuck ups. A typical example of this, again, was in my TG – a video with grandiose music from the 127th division, in which Ukrainian grenade launchers are allowed to approach tanks at 50 meters. At the 10th month of the war. Unteachable. Moreover, no one is embarrassed by the fact that in the frame it is clear that the tank missed with a return shot – the shell passed over the trench and exploded off-screen. Loud and prolonged applause. Pew Pew! We attack!

Separate fierce fuck-up are the constantly popping up videos from the 1st Army Corps of the DPR showing firing from tanks from closed positions, practiced on a regular basis. The horror here, of course, is not that tanks shoot from closed positions, they can do it, a good tankman should be able to do it, moreover, tankmen were trained for this in 2016-2017 and the KCPN carried manuals for this on the topic. The horror is that with the silent catastrophic lack of shells in artillery (you can’t talk about it, because then someone will have to answer for it, but no one wants to), it was decided to replace artillery with tanks on a regular basis. For tanks, shells seem to still exist. I am not at all surprised, by the way, that the well-deserved media prostitute Vladlen Tatarsky supported this “good undertaking”. More like not surprised. Then he will, with a completely innocent look, expose the consequences of this garbage and, wringing his hands, ask – “What kind of bitch ordered this to be done?” And everyone is like, “Yes, yes! Who could it be?”

REST AT LINK

https://wartranslated.com/russian-volunteer-murz-on-why-russia-is-not-ready-to-defend-ukrainian-winter-offensive/

[Greetings_Puny_Humans]

Dmitry (the translator's) commentary:

"This is a very long 5k+ words text that sent some shockwaves through the Russian military blogger sphere. Murz shows none of the preparations on the "Surovikin line" are sufficient to stop Ukrainians and we will most likely see a similar "knife through butter" move as before.

"Murz is a volunteer who has been involved with marginal Russian political movements since the early 2000's, and from 2014 or so he's been involved in volunteer work in "LPR". For the most part, it's the communications and drone work that he's doing.

"He has been exposing issues with the breakaway republics' armies for a while and since the invasion is doing the same for the Russian army.

"Murz is well-aware of all the efforts that have been made to improve "LPR" forces which are in many ways superior to the Russian cadre army"

[ransomnote]

The Ukraine doesn't have the arms needed for any large offensive movement but is aware that Russia is prepared, according to the head of the Ukrainian military forces. Here's an excerpt of him saying in an interview that he doesn't believe he can get the resources he needs:

https://www.economist.com/zaluzhny-transcript

December 15 interview with General Zaluzhny, according to The Economist.

Interview hi-lights below. Zaluzhny says Russia is preparing a big offensive and then describes problems getting what the Ukraine needs for the 'heavier battles' to come.

SNIP

"Our second strategic task is to get ready for this war which can happen in February. To be able to wage a war with fresh forces and reserves. Our troops are all tied up in battles now, they are bleeding. They are bleeding and are being held together solely by courage, heroism and the ability of their commanders to keep the situation under control. "

SNIP

"I can calculate, based on the task at hand, what kind of resource is needed to build combat capability.

We are talking about the scale of World War One…that is what Antony Radakin [Britain’s top soldier] told me. When I told him that the British Army fired a million shells in World War One, I was told, “We will lose Europe. We will have nothing to live on if you fire that many shells.” When they say, “You get 50,000 shells”, the people who count the money faint. The biggest problem is that they really don’t have it.

With this kind of resources I can’t conduct new big operations, even though we are working on one right now. It is on the way, but you don’t see it yet. We use a lot fewer shells.

I know that I can beat this enemy. But I need resources. I need 300 tanks, 600-700 IFVs, 500 Howitzers. Then, I think it is completely realistic to get to the lines of February 23^rd. But I can’t do it with two brigades. I get what I get, but it is less than what I need. It is not yet time to appeal to Ukrainian soldiers in the way that Mannerheim appealed to Finnish soldiers. We can and should take a lot more territory."

SNIP

[Kazan]

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/12/ukraine-is-there-really-a-change-of-the-narrative.html#more

At the start of the war Ukraine had, at least on paper, a well equipped military:

Ukraine has a lot of tanks and is ranked 13th across the globe with 2,430. In terms of armored vehicles, Kiev also ranks high, occupying the seventh spot globally with 11,435. Kiev’s artillery power is also formidable at 2,040 batteries.

That General Zaluzhny requested all that new stuff is a confession that most if not all the old stuff is gone. That includes the weapons he received after the war started. If the 20 percent of the Russian military that was used in Ukraine could do so much material damage in such a short time how long would a NATO army in a war against Russia survive?

[Kazan]

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/12/ukraine-is-there-really-a-change-of-the-narrative.html#more

Could the U.S. and NATO just limp out of the situation and leave it to Zaluzhny to negotiated his defeat with Russia?

But haven't Biden, NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg and Germany's chancellor Scholz said that Russia 'can not be allowed to win'? Sure, they have.

But Crooke points to Afghanistan and how fast the chaotic retreat from Kabul has vanished from the media and is now mostly forgotten. The Taliban were another enemy that could not be allowed to win. They won. And no one cares about it.

[Kazan]

(https://telegra.ph/file/079f19bc98097a4e502e7.jpg)❗️ Conflict in Ukraine strengthens Russia and ruins the West

🇺🇸👤 Former US Colonel Douglas Macgregor stated that all the efforts of Washington and its allies to destroy Russia only backfire and seriously affect their own economy.

☝️ In his opinion, over the entire conflict period, Moscow has only strengthened its financial and economic position, and as a result of the Ukrainian conflict, the Russian armed forces will become “larger, more combat-ready and deadlier.”

💬 “So all of this is and will continue to turn against us because we can no longer try to impose American or US-led Anglo-American hegemony on the rest of the world. The rest of the world doesn’t want that. Frankly, we don’t need it ourselves. It’s ruinous us. So all this (US hegemony) will collapse and the conflict between Russia and Ukraine will only accelerate this process.” Macgregor concluded.

[Apparatchik]

All that verbal diarrhea above from a Russian propagandist like Kazan means you are directly over the target.

[Greetings_Puny_Humans]

And the mods ended up deleting two of them lol

[Renfrew]

The lesson from the Kherson offensive is that Ukraine is smart enough not to broadcast their plans. In that one they spent months talking about an attack on Kherson while in secret Ukraine prepared a second force that went north and demolished the unprepared Russian defenders around Kharkiv.

Right now Ukraine is saying they might just be able to mount a late winter offensive. I wonder if that mean Ukraine will be ready much sooner.

[ransomnote]

Right now, the Ukraine is out of essential weaponry and only a small portion of surviving troops have ever had any weapons training. They lack basics needed to move whatever weapons they have left to locations where they are needed.

Russia has arms, trained soldiers, air superiority and the means to move arms on the ground. Air superiority alone gives the Russians significant dominance on the battlefield - there is no substitute for that.

The Ukraine is losing, not bluffing. And it doesn’t matter to them how many people they destroy in this continued, pointless effort to play at war. They just want the ‘foreign aid’ funds to keep coming.

[Basket_of_Deplorables]

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[Renfrew]

“only a small portion of surviving troops have ever had any weapons training.”

What a moronic statement. How long do you think basic training takes? The war has been going on for 9 months now.

[Greetings_Puny_Humans]

This is a Russian source

[Widget Jr]

The pro-Russian posters are... fascinating.

To them, even Russians supporting Russia's invasion of Ukraine writing and speaking in Russian are pro-western propagandists when they spell out Russia's problems. When Ukraine supporters disagree with them on the threads they post, they make as many accusations as the TOS allow. Some particularly like to accuse everyone who disagrees with them of being bots. While on threads they don't like, they robotically spam comments over and over again without engaging in the thread.

SMH/CMTU

For this thread, it was a hard read due to the translation barrier. From what I can understand, "Murz" is spelling out the soldiers eye view of Russian field operations. Despite all of the Russian army's problems he thinks they could and should be doing better. Going for any victory at all costs without cohesive plannimg is costing Russia more than all of its other problems.

What I find interesting is what wasn't said. There is supposed to be a unified command now since General Surovikin was appointed overall commander of Russian forces in Ukraine. From the outsider and soldier eye view there are still what looks like a lack of a unified command. Some of this is organizational and from tech limits. Decisions are made by people, not technology. This makes it look like this is either this is Surovikin's plan, given limits of Russian command and control, or there is a lot of political infighting going on getting in the way of better planning and operations.

[tlozo]

Russian volunteer Murz on why Russia is not ready to defend [against] Ukrainian winter offensive

Its going so 'well' for the russians, they are drafting women in the occupied Ukrainian areas.

In the russian controlled "Donetsk People's Republic" they are handing out military drafts to women now.

[tlozo]

Ukraine is out of essential weaponry and only a small portion of surviving troops have ever had any weapons training.

US is training Ukrainian troops in Germany. UK is training Ukrainians in the UK. EU has agreed to train 15,000 Ukrainians in various member states.

Ukrainian troops undergoing training in the UK

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/10/17/eu-ministers-to-sign-off-on-military-training-mission-for-ukrainian-soldiers

[tlozo]

The horror is that with the silent catastrophic lack of shells in artillery (you can’t talk about it, because then someone will have to answer for it, but no one wants to), it was decided to replace artillery with tanks on a regular basis.

Russian lack of artillery shells.

[Travis McGee]

[tlozo]

Thanks for adding to the discussion-nothing.