No matter what kind of fuel conservation techniques they engaged in. The 1st 17km or so of that 64 km Russian Army column is out of fuel.
They planned a 3-day operation which is in its 8th day.
And given the temperatures and radio use, those vehicles have dead batteries. 3/
This is why that Russian 41st CAA general was killed.
He showed up at the head of the column to unscrew the logistical mess, screaming at people and waving his arms in the air in visual range of a Ukrainian Army Sniper. 4/
The head of this 64km column ain't going anywhere. With or without fuel. The Russians can get neither fuel trucks nor wreckers there.
And this "drop dead effect" is proceeding along the column from south to north. The ONLY way that column will move at all is backwards first 6/
This is assuming it moves at all before the Ukrainians destroy it.
The front and middle of the column showed up with food, fuel & ammo for 3-days, & we are 8-days into the war.
The column is packed so tight that you can only refuel about 100-200 meters of column at a time
7/
via a--holes & elbow by jerry cans. Then carefully back out those refueled trucks in order to get to the next 100 meters with the refueling truck and jerry cans.
It would take a week a month from now, when the ground dries, to unf--k this mess. 8/
The Russian Army will not be able to move trucks off road before then.
The Russians have formed the world's longest POW camp. And the Ukrainians don't have to feed it.
There simply hasn't been anything like this in warfare since the Anglo-American Anzio beachhead in 1944.
11/
The Russian troops in the 40-50 km of the traffic jam closest to Kyiv will run out of food before the jam can be cleared to them.
They'll have to abandon their vehicles and walk north just to get food.
12/
The reason the Russian column got to be so long was due to Russian Army officers “fulfilling the plan”.
They might be shot by the chain of command for disobeying orders to advance into the traffic jam, but won’t be if they obey orders to fulfill the plan.
13/
I'm not saying Ukraine will win or even that Ukraine can prevent Kyiv from being encircled.
I am saying the Russian Army troops in the first 50 kilometers of that 64 km column will have nothing to do with it.
14/End
PS.
The Ukrainians really do want to motti that column.
And the Ukrainians do have the means to hit the fuel trucks at the North end of the Kyiv column to prevent its unwinding before the mud season is over.
In WW2 according to US Army Medical department statistics, the US Army ground forces in NW Europe and the Mediterranean took 65% of their casualties from Artillery.
In 2025, Russia is taking 75% from drones.
2/
Drones are now more lethal in Ukraine than artillery was in the WW2, the most artillery heavy war in human history to date.
Drones have replaced, and then some, tube artillery, rockets and mortars as the indirect fire "King of Battle."
Strategypage -dot- com has a new article out on the decline of Russian that civil infrastructure that makes Frederick Lanchester smile.
Russian Civil Infrastructure Attrition🧵
1/
Text from the article:
"Russia wants to end the Ukraine War via negotiations with the United States. This will work if done from a position of strength. The current Russian situation is weak and getting weaker.
2/
...Russian forces in Ukraine are stalled and too weak to launch another offensive, even a small one.
It will get worse. The Russian economy is starting to collapse in some or many areas because of disinvestment.
3/
The semiconductor industrial base is the foundation of 21st century economic & military power.
The USSR only ever produced single detector element technology like Long Wavelength Infrared (LWIR) Infrared Line Scan (IRLS) or scanning infrared Search and Track (IRST) like those on the MiG-29 Fulcrum A.
2/
The USSR never produced any of the classic nodding or spinning mirror LWIR Forward Looking Infrared (FLIRs) sensors that the US introduced during the Vietnam war.
In fact there is no evidence Russia was able to sustain any of the large Soviet semiconductor industry.
3/
The vast majority of US military aid to Ukraine was in fact spent inside the USA to replace vastly overpriced by the Biden Adm. National Guard & Air Guard surplus weapons.
Spending aid money buying Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) to replace NG surplus Humvees
...was just one of the aid grifts @JakeSullivan46 NSC crew played to pretend they were helping Ukraine while not offending Russia & buying US Defense contractor kit.
Pres. Trump is literally parroting Russian reflexive control scripts from Biden Adm.
This should not be a surprise as I've pounded on the fact for 2 years that Russia has mapped & fed to each specific US tribal & professional demographic the data to eat up messages/memes Russia wants those groups to believe.
This @sambendett thread here makes Russia seem like a poor kid looking through a candy store window at the "candy" of Ukrainian ground resupply drones.
I mean, seriously, Russia is now introducing a camel transport corps because the Russian startups and big defense contractors cannot produce supply UGV's at scale to deliver potable water to front line troops.
This 🧵by @GrandpaRoy2 demonstrating the increasing battlefield obsolescence of tube artillery in the face of fiber optic fiber guided FPV drones is a useful jumping off point the following:
66% of RuAF AFV's & equipment killed in Jan 2025 were victims of drones
Back in November 2024 I did a long thread on how drones were an "effectiveness revolution" on the battlefield and we would see drones displacing other battlefield weapons because of it.