Trent Telenko Profile picture
Mar 10, 2022 21 tweets 8 min read Read on X
This is a quick thread on Russian plans, maps, and trucks.🧵

We are going to start with Ukraine & explain.
1/
Most people have no clue as to how truely large Ukraine is. So, to cure that, I have gone to the thetruesize.com appin order to educate people.

In this case by laying the US state of Texas over Ukraine. The Texas-Louisiana border to El Paso is roughly the distance
2/
between Ukraine's Russian & Polish borders.

The distance of Kyiv from the Belarus border to be about that of the Oklahoma border to Dallas, Texas.

The tip of Crimea to the Ukraine-Belarus border is roughly from Brownsville Tx to the Red River border w/Oklahoma.
3/
Driving from Texarkana on the N.E. tip of Texas to El Paso at the western tip is 814 miles & 12 hours 13 min. non-stop on US interstates with a 75 mph speed limit

There was no way the Russian trucks like this were going to make it from Belarus to Kyiv
4/
...let alone cross Ukraine North-to-South or East -to-West. What was the Russian General Staff thinking?

Well, we know because the Ukrainians captured the plans from a Russian Naval Infantry Colonel.

See:
5/
Putin's generals thought it would take 3 days to overthrow the Ukraine government and 12 more days for the 190,000 troops to occupy the entire country of 43 million people, twice that of Texas.

That is one Russian conscript per 266 Ukrainians & 3.1 sq. km
6/
This plan assumed the Ukrainian military would put up a token resistance and the newly installed Puppet government would arrange the surrender of Ukraine's army of 250,000 men and 45,000 man territorial defense force without any weapons or soldiers going insurgent.
7/
Nor do those armed Ukrainian numbers include the six annual conscript classes that filled up that 250,000 man army in the eight years of fighting in the Donbas.

Assuming 1/2 of 250,000 x six, that is 730,000 combat veterans who would take great exception to Russia's puppet
8/
Assuming only a perfect plan for the Ukrainian Army, territorials plus Russians faced only 150,000 of those conscript classes. Russian & puppet forces would only outnumber them 3.2 to one in a popular insurgency.

That isn't enough to win.

9/
See these #'s

"However, when facing broadly popular insurgencies, counterinsurgents lost every time they possessed a force ratio advantage of 5-1 or less, failed half the time with odds between 6-1 and 10-1,

10/
smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/manpo…
...but succeeded three-quarters of the time when outnumbering the insurgents by 10-1 or more."

Short form:

Putin lost the moment he decided to invade Ukraine.

Russia has no political or military options to achieve successful war termination.
11/
The only agents in this war with the power to achieve war termination in Ukraine is the Ukrainian people.

Not the Ukrainian government

The people.

Ukraine is engaged in a national people's war against a Kleptocratic potentate.
12/
The Ukrainian people's terms are "We want the Russians gone, all our lands back and even then we will still keep fighting Russia while Putin is in power."

No Ukrainian government can force them to settle for anything less.
13/
Since Putin's 15-day plan has failed & Ukraine's military is fighting. Lets turn to another map that represents the reality on the Ground in Ukraine.

Ukraine is big.

So big that we have a lot of space between conventional armed formations like the WW2 N. African campaign.
14/
There are more armed Ukrainians than Russians in Ukraine.

While the Russians are fighting conventional Ukrainian Army unit for cities and choke points.

The Ukrainian territorials are fulfilling a role much like the colonial militia of the American revolution.

They are

15/
...filling the the space between armed units and destroying Russian Army truck convoys in the 21st century like the Colonial militia destroyed British army foraging parties around Philadelphia in the 18th century & impelled then to retreat or starve.

16/
Now we are going to address the mechanized battle of attrition between Ukraine & Russia.

Long road marches of 300 AFV's see as many as 100 fall out for mechanical defects.

When these are Russian, the fallen out AFV are destroyed, or worse, stolen.
17/
Over and over again.

All Russian operational losses and the repairable half of combat AFV losses are either permanent losses or they become Ukrainian Army GAINS.

/18

President Zelensky claimed on Mar 9, 2022 that more Russian equipment has been captured than Ukrainian equipment lost in the campaign to date, and thus all Ukrainian losses have been covered in operational units by Russian AFV trophies, especially MBTs.

/19
Contrafactual Short form:

Ukraine is winning the vehicular firepower war of attrition with Russia because it has trained & combat experienced reserves from its previous conscript classes to fill those tractor captured Russian AFV's.

Long conventional war favors Ukraine.
20/End
PS.

Yes, the thread turned out to be long, not short.

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More from @TrentTelenko

Mar 17
The US-Israeli air campaign against Iran is following Warden's "Five Rings" system strategy.

Mullahs & IRGC leaders are inthe dead center of the 5-rings.

The Basij are usually considered "fielded forces" by analysts who don't understand the role of Regime Security Forces in a totalitarian regime.

1/Image
Regime Security Forces live in the "System Essentials" ring of a totalitarian government as they control the communications and information in a totalitarian society as a part of their anti-coup mission.

2/ Image
The fact that any major leadership[ meeting of the IRGC or Basij is catching several smart bombs addresses both of the "inner rings."

3/
Read 8 tweets
Mar 17
People really don't understand how shutting down the internet has flatlined the Iranian economy.

There are no credit card transactions
No electronic bank transfers
No ATM transactions

1/
All the usual electronic traffic between residential & supermarket banks branches to main branches has to be done by paper, if it is done at all.

You cannot do "Just-in-time" inventory management without the internet.

2/ Image
The Mullah shutdown of the internet as a security measure means the "Velocity of Money" in the Iranian economy has tubed.

This will bring on more of the economic hyper-inflation-food insecurity issues in Iran that set off the Jan 2026 insurrection.

"Dead Regime Walking."
3/3 Image
Image
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Read 4 tweets
Mar 15
If Israeli Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) drones are killing Shaheed-136 launch crews.

They are not killing Basij regime security force checkpoints.

The US-Israeli air forces will need to inflict at _least_ 200K casualties to Iranian regime security forces...
1/3
...for a successful civilian insurrection to have a good chance of success.

Even if there are ~200 checkpoint drone strikes per day inflicting 5 casualties each. That is only 1,000 a day, AKA 200 days.

2/3 Image
BLUF:

US-Israeli airpower has to increase the Regime Security Force casualty rates to ~6,700 a day to end the air campaign in another 30 days.

B-52 & B-1's playing 'loitering bomb trucks' can do that, with less restrictive rules of engagement resulting in collateral damage
3/3 Image
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Read 4 tweets
Mar 12
What jumps put for me looking at this report of the Mullah's decamping to Mashad is the US-Israeli intelligence had to know as soon as it started.

I believe that the steaming of the USS Ford through the Suez Canal happened because of this.

Collapse 🧵
1/
If the Mullah's command was moving.

Their ability to command drone and missile strikes on the USS Ford would be minimal, if only to avoid US-Israeli radio-direction finding.

Mashad is also very convenient place to run away from Iran if the government falls everywhere else.
2/ Image
The Mullah's are so afraid of getting the "Maduro Treatment" by US Special Forces in Mashad that they have blocked the local airport runways with cars

3/
Read 12 tweets
Mar 9
The problem with this thought is the Iranian drones being fired now are the uber sophisticated Russian-guilt Geran using radio mesh and cell phone sim card link video-navigation.

1/3
They are flying lower and more sophisticated trajectories taking advantage of radar shadows from oil infrastructure in the Gulf to prevent the generation of good intercept tracks.

Gun armed ships and attack helicopters low amongst oil rigs are the best play here.

2/3
It is only a matter of time until Geran/Shaheed FPV motherships are being fired by the IRGC at Gulf Oil infrastructure using Gulf Cell phone networks as video data links.

3/3
Read 4 tweets
Mar 8
This is a point I have been pounding upon since 2023.

The "Big/Expensive/Few Mafia" in the US Flag ranks and Western Defense Contractors have denied this harsh reality for reasons Upton Sinclair has expounded upon.
1/
Both I and @johnkonrad were mocked for pointing out how deadly drones were for being disintermediated from existing military platforms for ubiquitous commercial transportation infrastructure like cargo containers.
2/ Image
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The Ukrainian Operation Spiderweb showed who were prophets and who were the complete and utter fools.

BLUF:

The Big/Expensive/Few, love the F-35, fanboy community got to eat 💩

3/ Image
Read 6 tweets

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