I don’t think most people are really aware the sheer amount of content in these videos. If you view them casually, it may seem like just a stream of anecdotes that mostly favor Ukraine. So I decided to make a short list of the main points Jake Broe is making in this video:
- 3 oil refineries struck in a single night something Ukraine couldn’t do a year ago: 0:07
- Ukraine hit 35 ships in 4 days all identified: 3:17
- The war has to end: 4:59
- Drone boats taking out tankers outside sea of Azov: 7:29
- 70+ percent without power in Crimea, and attacks continue. 8:19
- Governor of Crimea Practically doesn’t sleep! 10:32
- Empty stores in Donetsk. (major city within the occupied territory) 10:58
- Russian citizen admit there’s been a total collapse. 13:30 (12:41 for context)
- Civilians are kept from accessing gas stations, a shadow network is being made: 13:46
- Sorry no gas today, Fuck we live in the 21st century, I don’t even have enough gas to drive home! : 14:58
- You had breakfast!t***?: 15:58 Also watch this for context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue7wM0QC5LE
- Literally nothing will save Russia, there’s going to be famine: 18:00
- SU 35 100 million dollar jet downed by Ukraine18:27
- Russia shooting down their own helicopter. 19:05
- (cheap $5000) Hornet drones destroy 240 supply vehicles in 1 week, compared to 33 for the entire month of April, an exponential increase of 2800%!! 20:05
- The infamous dronewall just taking out Russians at will, Russia losing 90% of their soldiers to drones!!: 21:20
- Russian heavy equipment taken out by drones: 21:49
- Ukraine taking out bridges in Belgorad, hampering Russian logistics. 22:05
- Russia actually trying to extend Ukrainian life expectancy by bombing an American cigarette company: 23:10
- Ukraine to be allowed to make Patriot interceptors not that significant. 23:56
The amount of content is way higher than it may appear, if you just watch it casually.
Every single one of these points could be a 10 minute news cast for other channels.
And although I’ve stated the main points here, the actual video by Jake Bro has additional information and lots of context.
For every point I could explain how they are significant beyond the obvious. but that would make this post extremely long.From the content see posted here it’s all very positive for Ukraine. So positive in fact I wonder how Russia has been able to continue
It honestly wasn’t positive for most of the last ~4 years. Ukraine has been slowly losing ground almost non-stop. Their fortress belt was a brutal, god-awful bloodbath for Russia and it served its purpose to protect the rest of Ukraine, but it still kept crumbling backwards village by village for years. The fall of Bakhmut was the only piece that really got attention, but if you were paying attention you could see that same thing happening day after day after day just in tiny, tiny increments on a much smaller scale.
Ukrainian tactics with long range strikes, artillery and drones were extremely effective and great for minimizing their losses and slowing or stopping the Russian advance in many cases. They made a few, legitimate, sometimes very surprising successes (countless attacks on the Black Sea Fleet and ammo dumps, the infiltration attacks on Russian airbases or the Kerch bridge) or hopeful and dramatic morale-boosters that were sometimes very costly and unrealistic in the longer run (the Kursk/Belgorod incursions). Some of these things were potentially significant but in the end none of them panned out quite as effectively as might have been hoped. The whole time there was a lot of positive spin and looking at the “bright side” of bad situations and some of it was straight propaganda, which is fine and expected. Keeping up morale and keeping up the fog of war is a major part of war and I don’t fault them for it in the slightest, it’s a necessary and important part of the game, but for anyone reading between the lines, taking claims of success with a grain of salt and studying the actual changes and consequences coming out of these events over time, Ukraine was doing pretty good to defend itself with a minimum of losses but that’s not the same as “winning” and it’s a stretch to call it genuinely positive in the long run. It was leading to at best a stalemate situation where Ukraine would’ve eventually been forced to cede their occupied territory to Russia in exchange for ending the slow, death-by-a-thousand-cuts bleeding from the ongoing conflict.
And it’s always been understood that putting political and economic pressure on Russia and collapsing Russia’s internal stability is the only way Ukraine gets out of this with an actual victory, where they can actually reclaim their occupied territories. Putin is never going to be in a political position to withdraw from this war at this point, and Ukraine has no other realistic path to victory than forcing them to voluntarily withdraw. Russia is the larger country and they are absolutely comfortable with continuing attritional warfare forever, they’re legendary for their meatgrinder tactics, and the larger country is going to win at attritional warfare because they simply have more bodies and materiel they can willingly attrit until their goals are achieved. Ukraine was dying slowly to Russian infection and they would’ve eventually had to cut off the gangrenous occupied territories to stop the spread unless they planned to let it continue indefinitely.
The last few months I would say that has changed substantially. I’m a skeptic naturally but I’ve also been watching this war carefully since the beginning and this really feels like a significant shift compared to everything that came before, new and different from what’s been happening in the past. The difference is in how widespread, sustained and relentless this is, and the fact that it’s legitimately hitting Russia on both logistic and economic fronts at the same time for perhaps the first time, taking out their entire fuel supply is no joke and makes it almost impossible to continue their war effectively, and we can see it’s actually having real lasting and undeniable consequences on the Russian economy and population despite the increasingly totalitarian control the Kremlin exercises over the country. This has never really happened before in this war at least on Russia’s side, and this is what Ukraine’s actual path to victory potentially looks like. And now it looks like they’re making significant progress on that path. We’ll see if it holds up. But I’ve got to say it’s looking pretty plausible to me.
Russia can lose thousands of soldiers a day forever. They don’t even need to give the men equipment, guns or weapons, they’ll send their meat waves on foot empty handed, and they have in fact done so. “how Russia has been able to continue” has been by not caring and having a population that doesn’t care because they’ve been insulated from and had the true cost of the war hidden from them, sending undesirables, criminals, peasants and minorities to their deaths in order to accomplish real provable goals, and that made the cost/benefit math balance. That’s how they’ve been able to continue. What makes this different is that “how Russia has been able to continue” is now in genuine question because we’re getting to the point where the Russian population is starting to understand and care about the costs of this war in a way that the Kremlin can’t insulate them from anymore. The costs are real, and they don’t want to pay these costs. At all. It really is going to be a question how they can continue now. We’ll see what their answer is, but I’m not sure they’re going to have any good answers to this, they haven’t seemed to so far.
Thanks very interesting to see your general viewpoint. 👍
Their fortress belt was a brutal, god-awful bloodbath for Russia and it served its purpose to protect the rest of Ukraine, but it still kept crumbling backwards village by village for years.
This is true, this was part of the strategy of attrition, to pull back slowly to avoid heavy losses, and make sure the losses on the Russian side were bigger.
Some of these things were potentially significant but in the end none of them panned out quite as effectively as might have been hoped.
I disagree, operation spiderweb was a major success, and the bombing of the Kerch bridge was the beginning of what we are seeing happening now. Cutting off Russia from the back. This has led to Russia needing to use the long road to Crimea, and Ukraine is absolutely destroying Russian supplies there now. Also the marine drones have been so successful that Ukraine have won the war of the black sea without having a fleet!
some of it was straight propaganda,
Absolutely we have received our share of that too. But the propaganda has never been completely disconnected from reality like the Russian propaganda has.
Ukraine was doing pretty good to defend itself with a minimum of losses but that’s not the same as “winning”
Well this may be true, but IMO that depends on how you look at it. Already early on, when Ukraine was able to stop the Russian convoys with for instance Man Pads. Russia showed incompetence, and Ukraine showed they were both determined and smarter than the Russians. When Ukraine began with the early Bayraktar attacks and made the Bayraktar song, I was pretty convinced that Russia would lose this war. This was already in the first year of the war.
Ukraine would’ve eventually been forced to cede their occupied territory to Russia in exchange for ending the slow, death-by-a-thousand-cuts
Absolutely true especially early on, if Putin had been willing to negotiate on reasonable terms, Ukraine would probably have ceded territory to Russia for peace to save lives. But still I have been very confident for more than 4 years now, that Ukraine would get stronger and Russia weaker as the war dragged on. And it has been happening already for years pretty much as I expected, maybe except for a short period after the failed Ukrainian spring offensive. It’s just very obvious this year.
And it’s always been understood that putting political and economic pressure on Russia and collapsing Russia’s internal stability is the only way Ukraine gets out of this with an actual victory,
Yes, and this has been the plan of Ukraine and their allies all the time. Which is why for instance EU has sanctioned Russia heavily, and heavily reduced purchase of Russian fuel at great cost to ourselves. Only a few countries have refused or been unable to transition to other sources, but we only import about a sixth of the fuel overall now compared to 2021. Oil gas and coal. This has helped weaken the Russian economy, and with economic aid to Ukraine, allowed them to get the upper hand on the economic side.
Russia is the larger country and they are absolutely comfortable with continuing attritional warfare forever,
It may seem so, but the reality is that Russia can’t afford to sustain the effort they have made for the past 4½ years much longer. Even without the successful destruction by Ukraine of their oil industry, Russia was already slowly collapsing. It’s just much faster now.
this really feels like a significant shift compared to everything that came before,
It absolutely is different. All the efforts Ukraine and allies have put in, are now resulting in Ukraine having the military upper hand, so it is no longer a matter of waiting for the Russian economy to collapse under their expenditures on the war.
The difference is in how widespread, sustained and relentless this is
Yes everything about how Ukraine has managed this is impressive. Putin probably thought Zelenskyj was just a comedy actor, way out of his depth. But Zelenskyj turned out to be a true leader from the very first minute of the attack. And he and the Ukrainian people have outmaneuvered Putin and Russia badly from the start, where Russia failed to take Kiev the first day as planned, and Russia never managed it!
taking out their entire fuel supply is no joke and makes it almost impossible to continue their war effectively, and we can see it’s actually having real lasting and undeniable consequences on the Russian economy and population
As they call it: Ukrainian is sanctioning Russian oil. And yes it’s impressive how Ukrainian drones are able to operate unhampered by all Russian defenses, even in Moscow that is the most heavily defended and fortified part of Russia. AFAIK it is still unknown how they do it? Russia has its most advanced air-defenses around Moscow, but also heavy electronic defenses against drones, that should make it impossible for drones to operate. Still they just flew around in the middle of it all, as if they owned the place!
this is what Ukraine’s actual path to victory potentially looks like.
Yes absolutely, it seems like Putin will never pull back by himself. So some sort of collapse is probably necessary.
Either political, economical / infrastructural or militarily. And whichever comes first, will probably quickly be followed by the others.Russia can lose thousands of soldiers a day forever.
No actually they can’t, this is what Putin wants us to believe, but in reality they absolutely can’t. The balance between civilian society that has to carry the cost, and the size of the military is already lopsided, this is a major reason why we could be so sure the Russian economy will break at some point. This problem is slowly getting worse for Russia as long as the war continues, and would sooner or later destroy Russia from within, even without Ukraine being able to attack into Russia like they are doing now.
I’m not sure they’re (Russia) going to have any good answers to this, they haven’t seemed to so far.
Lot’s of leading Russian politicians are threatening to use nukes. and lots are threatening to attack EU and NATO.
But realistically they have no viable response option that I know of.
Lukashenko and Belarus is abandoning Russia, and Lukashenko has a meeting with Xi that resulted in statements that indicate that China is shifting their bet away from Russia. And the Chinese foreign minister has invited the Ukrainian foreign minister.
Which seems like an indication that Russia is more alone now than they have ever been.
There has been a switch since February to clearly favor Ukraine more and more.
Ukraine has consistently stalled Russia for years on the front lines to cause them to waste enormous resources, by withdrawing slowly and keep their defenses strong against Russia. But without retaliating much.
Now the retaliation is happening way behind front lines, using new capabilities Ukraine have used years to build up, while Russia has depleted their resources.We are many that foresaw this outcome shortly after the Russian invasion, based on the early Russian incompetence and the Ukrainian determination to defend themselves.
Russia was able to continue for a long time because it’s a very big country, and because Putin had prepared Russia for years to be able to sustain a war and the sanctions that would follow.
Why hammer and sickle?
?
On the thumbnail there’s a hammer and sickle on Putin, but, like, why?he’s not a communist?
I suppose it’s to symbolize that Russia is collapsing like the Soviet union did.
