Thread by @wartranslated

🧵 Summary of the daily livestream with Aleksey Arestovych for Day 199, 10 September. Kindly brought to you by Anastasiya: @Anastasiya1451A

wartranslated.com/day-199-septem…

Battlefield update:
🔥🔥 Kharkiv

AFU continue their counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region and potentially in Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The advance of 🇺🇦 troops is conditioned only by the 🇺🇦 command’s plan.

For now, while 🇺🇦 has resources to keep the counteroffensive advance rate 🇷🇺 troops offer minimal resistance. It appears that the 🇷🇺 army lost the defence and attack potential. For now, the AFU captured tens of tanks, close to a hundred of APC and hundreds of 🇷🇺 POWs.

The Russian failure to contain the Ukrainian counteroffensive is mostly due to the low density of troops – having only 170k along 1300km of the front-line between Kharkiv and Kherson.

Another factor is that 🇷🇺 tried to stop the counteroffensive by sending the reinforcement directly to the battlefield without prior organisation and resource concentration. Eventually, 🇷🇺 forces will form some kind of new defence positions.

Yet, after 5days of 🇺🇦 counteroffensive, 🇷🇺 command failed to organise 2nd line defences or initiate any defensive actions.

Due to better military skill and 🇷🇺 command getting tricked into transferring reinforcements to the South, intel and high motivation, a smaller number of 🇺🇦 troops managed to defeat the 🇷🇺 host of approx. 10k or 15 BTG between Kupyansk and Izium.

Official sources report that AFU approaches the 🇷🇺 borders in the North and Northeast of Kharkiv region.

🔥🔥 Kherson
AFU continues advancing and liberating towns in the Kherson region. Further details will be communicated in official declaration.

Some of the most elite 🇷🇺 troops are locked on the West bank of Dnipro River and cannot be easily relocated. While there is no loss of command, the 20k contingent in Kherson region won’t last long in absence of supply routes that are either destroyed or under 🇺🇦 fire control.

🔥🔥 Bahmut/Soledar direction
Based on reports from 🇷🇺 sources, AFU may have penetrated deep into enemy’s defences and 🇷🇺 forces will be forced to retreat 40-50km and establish new defence line or face encirclement.

🔥🔥 The perception of Russia in the West

For years, powered by gas and oil money, the 🇷🇺 propaganda machine and state was projecting for years an image of Putin as a “though man” and 🇷🇺 as a “superpower” for years.

Yet, the failure of Putin’s army in 🇺🇦 and the fast 🇺🇦 advance is demonstrating to even the most indecisive and appeasing Western that Putin’s 🇷🇺 is a failed, corrupt state and not a “superpower”.

🔥🔥 Russian propaganda
While 🇷🇺 many telegram channels reflect on the ground panic and demoralization amongst the 🇷🇺 troops and pro-war populace, the top-tier russian propagandists will try to control the narrative. Their response was as follows:
-Phase 1: It’s not a big deal

-Phase 2: Where are the 🇷🇺 reinforcements? The retaliation?
-Phase 3: Pause & silence
-Phase 4: It’s all part of the plan
This will be their tactic explaining the future abandonment of Donets/Luhansk regions and Crimea.

This will not work even if the 🇷🇺 manage to stop the 🇺🇦 counteroffensive, as loss of occupied territories, impossibility of referendums and annexation discredits all the official 🇷🇺 explanations for the 🇷🇺 invasion of 🇺🇦.

Even if 🇷🇺 succeeds in retreating and establishing new defence positions, the explanation and purpose of the 🇷🇺 invasion of 🇺🇦 remain elusive for the troops on the ground.

Therefore, every soldier digging the second line 🇷🇺 defences to try and stop the AFU advance should ask himself: “What is he fighting and dying for in Ukraine?”.

🔥🔥 Prospects
The 🇷🇺 telegram channels are panicking and turning against the higher military and political leadership, reflecting the demoralising atmosphere in the 🇷🇺 troops.

Any additional counteroffensive attack in 3rd direction by the AFU will lead to further demoralisation and a complete collapse of 🇷🇺 army logistics in Ukraine.

The 🇷🇺 Army has a good chance to repeat the Napoleonic failure in the East and retreat chaotically from the occupied territories.

🔥🔥 Potential sabotage of the 🇷🇺 generals
The 🇷🇺 generals are facing the potential consequences of unwise and delusional political decisions by the Kremlin and the resulting 🇺🇦 army failure in 🇺🇦.

Therefore, they may refrain from initiative and resort to passive sabotage – avoiding the blame and deferring the military decisions to the political leadership. Yet, currently, there is no concrete evidence supporting this hypothesis.

The failure to establish new defence positions, concentrate, and introduce the reinforcements are signs of collapse of the front-line and loss of control.

Furthermore, any attempt by russia to relocate the troops from any other part of the front-line to reinforce Kharkiv will result in a potential 3rd 🇺🇦 counteroffensive in that direction.

🔥🔥 Failure, discontent & scapegoating

The failure and futility of the 🇷🇺 invasion of 🇺🇦 and the perceived betrayal by the political leadership (Putin, Shoigu) of those who full-heartedly believed in the “Russian Spring” (e.g. Girkin) creates a dangerous environment in the 🇷🇺 populace.

Putin will try to find a scapegoat amongst the 🇷🇺 generals and the so-called “D/LPR” leadership. At the same time, the generals have the incentive to nominate Putin himself as the main culprit of the catastrophic military and governance failure.

Thus, there is a potential for a union between 🇷🇺 generals trying to avoid scapegoating, soldiers with PTSD and the disgruntled 🇷🇺 patriots. As a result, the failure of the imperialistic war of conquest may transform into a civil war in russia.

No stream on 11.09.2022.