Some interesting developments. Russia is reported to have started to pull equipment from Syria and other “soft” conflicts and rotate it back to Ukraine. This indicates that Russia is willing to sacrifice its other external goals for the sake of a protracted war in Ukraine. Furthermore Russia has apparently allocated 30% of its 2023 budget to defense spending, indicating he is willing to continue to degrade his economy.
This is interesting to me because it shows that he is probably still heads down and charging in with no intention to make a deal.
Militarily the Ukrainians officially announced they will resume combat operations when the mud freezes. Before it was a “possibility”. Currently the only gains russia is making is with the Wagner group around burkets (I spelled that wrong), otherwise it’s assessed that Russian brigades (15 to 17 in number) are all still severely degraded and will have trouble holding the line in donetsk oblast
This is interesting to me because it looks like the Ukrainians are going to push and the Russians aren’t going to have time to set a defensive line that will hold.
I stole this data from other sources. The “this is interesting” is me