18+ One of the insiders from the Russian special services, I will publish without edits or censorship, because it's hell: "I'll be honest: I almost didn't sleep all these days, almost all the time at work, my head is slightly swirling, like in a fog. And from overwork sometimes already catching states, as if it's all not real.
Frankly speaking, Pandora's Box is open - by summer a real horror of world scale will start - global famine is inevitable (Russia and Ukraine were the main grain suppliers in the world, this year's harvest will be smaller, and logistical problems will bring the disaster to its peak).
I cannot tell you what guided the decision to operate, but now all the dogs are methodically brought down on us (the Service). We are scolded for being analytical - this is very much in my line of work, so I will explain what is wrong.
We have been under increasing pressure lately to adjust reports to the requirements of management - I once touched on this subject. All these political consultants, politicians and their entourage, influence teams - it's all been creating chaos. A lot of it.
Most importantly, no one knew that there would be such a war, it was hidden from everyone. And here is an example: You are asked (conventionally) to calculate the possibility of human rights in different conditions, including a prison attack by meteorites. You ask about meteorites, they tell you that this is just a reinsurance for calculations, there will be nothing like that. You understand that the report will be only for a tick, but it must be written in a victorious style, so that there would be no questions, saying, why do you have so many problems, did you not work well? In general, you write a report that in the fall of a meteorite, we have everything to eliminate the consequences, we are good, all is well. And you concentrate on the tasks that are real - we do not have enough strength. And then suddenly really throw meteorites and expect that everything will be on your analysis, which were written from the ball.  
That's why we have total fuck-ups - I don't even want to choose another word. There is no defense against sanctions for the same reason: Nabiullina may well be found guilty of negligence (more likely the point men on her team), but what is their fault? No one knew that there would be such a war, so no one was prepared for such sanctions. This is the flip side of secrecy: since no one told anyone, who could have calculated what no one told?
Kadyrov's going off the rails. There was almost a conflict with us, too: the Ukrainians may have planted the lie that we had given up the routes of Kadyrov's special units in the first days of the operation. They were killed in the most horrific way, they hadn't even begun to fight yet, and they were simply torn apart in some places. And so it went: the FSB leaked the routes to the Ukrainians. I do not have such information, I will leave 1-2% for the reliability (you can not completely exclude it either).
The blitz has failed. It is simply impossible to accomplish the task now: if in the first 1-3 days they had captured Zelensky and government officials, seized all the key buildings in Kiev, let them read the order to surrender - yes, the resistance would have subsided to a minimum. Theoretically. But then what? Even with this ideal scenario, there was an unsolvable problem: with whom to negotiate? If we tear down Zelensky, all right, with whom would we sign agreements? If with Zelensky, then these papers won't be worth anything after his demolition. OPZJ refused to cooperate: Medvedchuk is a coward, he ran away. There is a second leader there - Boyko, but he refuses to work with us - even his own people won't understand him. We wanted to bring Tsarev back, but even our pro-Russian ones have turned against us. Should we bring back Yanukovych? How can we do that? If we say that we can't occupy him, then all our government will be killed 10 minutes after we leave. Occupy? And where are we going to get so many people? Commandant's office, military police, counterintelligence, guards - even with the minimum resistance from the locals we need 500 thousand or more people. Not counting the supply system. And there is a rule of thumb that by overriding quantity with poor management you only ruin everything. And that, I repeat, would be under an ideal scenario, which does not exist.
What about now? We can't declare a mobilization for two reasons:
1) Large-scale mobilization would undermine the situation inside the country: political, economic, social.
2) Our logistics are already overstretched today. We will send a much larger contingent, and what will we get? Ukraine is a huge country in terms of territory. And now the level of hatred towards us is off the charts. Our roads simply can't absorb such supply caravans - everything will come to a standstill. And we will not be able to manage it, because it is chaos.
And these two reasons are falling out at the same time, although even one is enough to break everything.
As for casualties: I don't know how many there are. Nobody knows. The first two days there was still control, now no one knows what's going on there. It is possible to lose large units from communication. They may be found, or they may be dispersed because they came under attack. And even their commanders may not know how many are running around, how many have died, how many have been taken prisoner. The death toll is definitely in the thousands. It can be 10 thousand, it can be 5, and it can be only 2. Even the headquarters do not know exactly. But it must be closer to 10. And we are not counting the corps of the LDPR now - they have their own count.
Now, even if we kill Zelensky and take him prisoner, nothing will change. Chechnya is there by the level of hatred towards us. And now even those who were loyal to us are against it. Because they were planning on above, because we were told that such an option will not happen, unless we are attacked. Because we were told that we must create the most credible threat in order to agree peacefully on the right terms. Because we initially prepared protests inside Ukraine against Zelensky. Without considering our direct entry. An invasion, to put it simply.
Further, civilian losses will go exponentially - and resistance to us will only increase, too. We have already tried to enter the cities with infantry - out of twenty landing groups, only one was a tentative success. Remember the storming of Mosul - that was the rule in all countries, nothing new.
To keep it under siege? According to the experience of military conflicts in Europe in recent decades (Serbia is the largest testing ground here), cities can be under siege for years, and even function. It is only a matter of time before humanitarian convoys from Europe get there.  
We have a conditional deadline of June. Conditional - because in June we have no economy, nothing left. By and large, next week will begin to turn to one side, simply because the situation cannot be in such overdrive. There is no analytics - you can't calculate the chaos, no one can say anything for sure here. Acting on intuition, and even on emotion - but this is not poker. Stakes will be raised, hoping that suddenly some option will shoot through. The trouble is that we too can now miscalculate and lose everything in one move.
Basically, the country has no way out. There is simply no option for a possible victory, and if we lose - that's it, we're screwed. Then they decided to kick weak Japan and get a quick win, then it turned out that the army was a disaster. Then they started a war to the bitter end, then they took the Bolsheviks to "re-educate" them in the army - they were outcasts, nobody was interested in them in the masses. And then nobody really knew the Bolsheviks picked up anti-war slogans and they went crazy...
On the plus side: we did everything to prevent even a hint of mass sending of the "fine men" to the front line. Send in the convicts and "socially unreliable", political (so they don't muddy the water inside the country) - the morale of the army will simply go down the drain. And the enemy is motivated, motivated monstrously. They know how to fight, they have enough middle-ranking commanders. They have weapons. They have support. We will simply create a precedent for human losses in the world. That's all.
What we fear the most: they are acting on the rule of overlapping an old problem with a new one. This was largely the reason why the Donbass conflict began in 2014 - it was necessary to draw the attention of Westerners away from the Russian spring in Crimea, so the Donbass crisis was supposed to draw all the attention to itself and become a bargaining chip. But even bigger problems started there. Then they decided to sell Erdogan on the four pipes of South Stream and went into Syria - this was after Suleimani gave deliberately false inputs to solve his problems. As a result, we failed to solve the problem with the Crimea, there are problems with Donbass too, South Stream has shrunk to 2 pipes, and Syria is another headache (if we go out, they will bring down Assad, which will make us look idiots, but it will be hard and useless to sit still).  
I don't know who came up with the "Ukrainian blitz. If we were given real inputs, we would at the very least point out that the original plan is controversial, that we need to double-check a lot of things. A lot of things. Now we are up to our necks in shit. And it's not clear what to do. "Denazification" and "demilitarization" are not analytical categories, because they have no clearly formed parameters by which to determine the level of accomplishment or non-fulfillment of the assigned task.
Now all that remains is to wait for some fucking advisor to convince the upper echelons to start a conflict with Europe with a demand to lower some sanctions. Either they lower the sanctions or they go to war. And if they refuse? Now I don't rule out that then we'll get into a real international conflict like Hitler did in 1939. And we would then get our Z's flattened with a swastika.  
Is there a possibility of a local nuclear strike? Yes. Not for military purposes (it won't do anything - it's a defense breakthrough weapon), but to intimidate the rest. At the same time the ground is being prepared to turn everything over to Ukraine - Naryshkin and his SVR are now digging the ground to prove that they secretly created nuclear weapons there. They are hammering on what we have studied and analysed on bones long time ago: the proofs cannot be drawn up on a knee-high, and the availability of specialists and uranium (Ukraine is full of depleted isotope 238) is of no importance. The production cycle there is such that it cannot be done unnoticed. "The fact that their old NPPs can give weapon-grade plutonium (stations like REB-1000 give it in minimum quantities as a "by-product" of the reaction) - so the Americans have introduced such control with involvement of the IAEA that it's silly to discuss the topic.
Do you know what will start in a week? Well, even in two weeks. We're going to be so caught up that we're going to miss the hungry '90s. While the auction was closed, Nabiullina seems to be making normal steps - but it's like plugging a hole in the dam with a finger. It will still burst, and even stronger. Nothing will be solved in three, five or ten days.  
Kadyrov doesn't just hoof it for a reason - they have their own adventures there. He's created an image of himself as the most powerful and invincible. And if he falls once, he'll be brought down by his own people. He will no longer be the master of the victorious clan.
Let's move on. Syria. "The guys will hold out, everything will be over in Ukraine - and there in Syria we will reinforce everything by positions again. And now at any moment they can wait there when the contingent runs out of resources - and such a heat will go... Turkey is blocking the straits - airlifting supplies there is like heating an oven with money.
Note - all this is happening at the same time, we do not even have time to put it all in one pile. Our situation is like Germany's in '43-'44. At the start all at once. Sometimes I am already lost in this overwork, sometimes it seems that everything was a dream, that everything is as it was before.
On prisons, by the way, it's going to get worse. Now they're going to tighten the screws until they bleed. Everywhere. To be honest, then purely technically it's the only chance of containing the situation - we're already in a total mobilization mode. But we can't stay in such a mode for long, and our timing is unclear, and it will only get worse. Mobilization always makes management lose its way. And just imagine: you can run a hundred meters in a sprint, but to go into a marathon race and run as hard as you can is bad. Here we are with the Ukrainian question rushed, as on a hundred meters, and fit into a cross-country marathon.  
And that's a very, very brief description of what's going on.  
The only cynical thing I can add is that I do not believe that VV Putin will press the red button to destroy the whole world.
First of all, there is not one person who makes the decision, at least someone will jump out. And there are many people there - there is no "single red button".
Secondly, there are some doubts that everything successfully functions there. Experience shows that the higher the transparency and control, the easier it is to identify deficiencies. And where it is unclear who and how controls, but always bravura reports - everything is always wrong there. I am not sure that the red button system is functioning as declared. Besides, the plutonium charge has to be replaced every 10 years.
Thirdly, and most disgusting and sad, I personally do not believe in the willingness to sacrifice a man who does not let his closest representatives and ministers near him, nor the members of the Federation Council. Whether out of fear of coronavirus or attack, it doesn't matter. If you are afraid to let your most trusted ones near you, how will you dare to destroy yourself and your loved ones inclusive?  
Ask me anything, but I may not answer for days at a time. We're in rush mode, and we're getting more and more tasked.  
On the whole, our reports are upbeat, but everything goes to hell.  
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